Framing Discourse on the Environment: A Critical Discourse Approach [Paperback]

In this study, Richard Alexander presents a series of original and empirically based case studies of the language and discourse involved in the discussion of environmental and ecological issues. Relying upon a variety of different text types and genres  including company websites, advertisements, press articles, speeches and lectures  Alexander interrogates how, in the media, press, corporate and activist circles, language is employed to argue for and propagate selected positions on the growing ecological crisis. For example, he asks: How are ecological and environmental concerns articulated in texts? What do we learn about ecological problems through texts from differing sources? What language features accompany ecological discourse in differing contexts and registers? Attention is especially directed at where this discourse comes into contact with business, economic and political concerns.

Acknowledgements  1. Introduction  2. Integrating the Ecological Issue  3. Ecological Commitment in Business  4. The Framing of Ecology  5. Talking About Sustainable Development  6. Wording the World  7. Shaping Environmental Discourse  8. Resisting Imposed Metaphors of Value  9. Engineering Agriculture. Who Pays the Price?  10. Language and Orwells Problem  11. Concluding Obfuscation and Disinformation.  Appendices.  Notes.  Bibliography.  Index

In this book, Alexander demonstrates the linguistic distractions, euphemisms and pitfalls of corporate-political discourse on the environment subjecting them to a trenchant analysis.

Richard J. Alexander, Full Professor of English Business Communication at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.  Publications include Aspects of Verbal Humourlss