Ecolinguistics provides a comprehensive introduction to an emerging field that sets out to critically analyze how language is implicated in human engagement with the natural environment in both destructive and life-sustaining ways. From urban development and agribusiness, to nature writing and climate change, Arran Stibbe transports the reader through a series of engaging analyses across ten chapters that progressively develop and apply the theories and methods of ecolinguistics summarized in the introduction. The introductory chapter presents ecolinguistics as a rigorous approach well suited to reveal, resist, and intervene in the ideologies, discourses, and social practices – all different aspects of the ‘stories we live by’ – influencing our perception of and engagement with the natural environment. The next eight chapters proceed to delve into the different forms these stories take.
Chapter 2 begins with a theoretical overview of discourse and ideology in ecolinguistics, giving attention to a set of discourse-analytic methods and sample analyses that both expose and resist environmentally destructive discourses. In chapter 3, Stibbe delivers an overview of framing in discourse analysis drawing on methods from a variety of research approaches and applying these various methods to an examination of the framing of ‘sustainable’ development discourse. With chapter 4, the author investigates the role of metaphor, notably with regards to ‘the corporation is a person’. This metaphor is examined in depth in this chapter as a powerful linguistic device for shaping perceptions of the corporation and its role in society. Stibbe then moves to a study of evaluation and appraisal patterns in chapter 5, analyzing a diversity of texts, from weather forecasts in the UK to Japanese haiku.
In chapter 6, turning to identity, Stibbe explores how different identity constructions establish different relations towards the environment, providing in the latter half of the chapter a more in-depth analysis of the ecological connections between health, consumerism, and gender identity. Chapter 7 transitions to an examination of facticity patterns deployed in discourse. Noteworthy is the final section of this chapter where the author examines climate change counter-movement discourse, investigating how uncertainty is manufactured around the science of climate change. In chapter 8 the role of erasure in discourse, or the marginalization of certain areas of life as irrelevant or unimportant, becomes the focal topic. In this chapter Stibbe considers the role of erasure in ecosystem assessment reports. The author shows how these reports erase the natural world as animals and plants are absorbed by categorization schemes that render nature a ‘resource’ or a ‘service’. In contrast to erasure, chapter 9 examines the role of salience in discourse, notably analyzing the multimodal representation of animals in imagery of livestock food production. The concluding chapter summarizes the previous chapters, acknowledges past criticisms of ecolinguistics, and concisely argues for new directions for future ecolinguistic research. Taken together, Ecolinguistics provides a valuable contribution to sociolinguistic research by exploring how the critically motivated study of discourse in society can address the ecological crisis of our time.
