Environmental Discourses Peter M ¨ uhlh¨ ausler 1 and Adrian Peace 2 1 Linguistics Discipline, University of Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia; email: [email protected]2 Discipline of Anthropology, University of Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia; email: [email protected]Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2006. 35:457–79 First published online as a Review in Advance on July 6, 2006 The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at anthro.annualreviews.org This article’s doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123203 Copyright c 2006 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved 0084-6570/06/1021-0457$20.00 Key Words ecolinguistics, ethnography of communication, environmental metaphor, biocultural diversity, greenspeak Abstract Discourses concerned with the perceived global environmental cri- sis have increased dramatically over the past couple of decades. This review consists of an ethnographic analysis of the principal com- ponents of environmental discourses as well as a discussion of the approaches employed to analyze them. These include linguistic dis- courses (ecolinguistics, ecocritical linguistics, discourse analysis) as well as approaches developed within other disciplines (anthropology, literary studies, philosophy, and psychology). Over the years, the structural properties of environmental dis- courses have developed into a distinct discourse category. It remains unclear to what extent the numerous environmental discourses and metadiscourses significantly contribute to improving the health of the natural environment. 457 Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2006.35:457-479. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by University of Sussex on 07/30/12. For personal use only.
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ANRV287-AN35-23 ARI 13 August 2006 8:5
Environmental DiscoursesPeter Muhlhausler1 and Adrian Peace2
1Linguistics Discipline, University of Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia;email: [email protected] of Anthropology, University of Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia;email: [email protected]
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2006. 35:457–79
First published online as a Review inAdvance on July 6, 2006
The Annual Review of Anthropology isonline at anthro.annualreviews.org
This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123203
ecolinguistics, ethnography of communication, environmentalmetaphor, biocultural diversity, greenspeak
AbstractDiscourses concerned with the perceived global environmental cri-sis have increased dramatically over the past couple of decades. Thisreview consists of an ethnographic analysis of the principal com-ponents of environmental discourses as well as a discussion of theapproaches employed to analyze them. These include linguistic dis-courses (ecolinguistics, ecocritical linguistics, discourse analysis) aswell as approaches developed within other disciplines (anthropology,literary studies, philosophy, and psychology).
Over the years, the structural properties of environmental dis-courses have developed into a distinct discourse category. It remainsunclear to what extent the numerous environmental discourses andmetadiscourses significantly contribute to improving the health ofthe natural environment.
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Environmentaldiscourse: thelinguistic devicesarticulatingarguments about therelationship betweenhumans and theirenvironment.
INTRODUCTION
Discourses about the contemporary environ-ment, and the economic and political pro-cesses that impact upon it, are by no means ofconcern solely to environmental anthropolo-gists. Such is the reach and depth of disquietand anxiety about the environmental future inboth Northern and Southern hemispheres; itseems unlikely that the concerns of local andregional populations will not surface, at somepoint or other, during most anthropologists’periods in the field. At the same time, suchis the linguistic complexity of environmen-tal discourses that the need to marry anthro-pological perspectives with those prominentin other disciplines appears distinctly press-ing. In recent years, we have spent consider-able time as a linguist-anthropologist tag teamunpacking the natural discourses with whichpeople make sense of a unique island envi-ronment off the east coast of Australia. Con-vinced of the merits of pooling the strengthsof our disciplines and taking the ethnogra-phy of speaking in new directions, we havemore recently turned our attention to thecompeting and contentious discourses fo-cused on environmental crisis at the globallevel.
Our main problem is the sheer quantityof environmental discourses, which has vastlyincreased in recent decades in response toworldwide awareness of the global environ-mental crisis, and which is produced fromnumerous disciplinary and linguistic back-grounds. Anthropology, linguistics, philos-ophy, sociology, and other disciplines nowaddress the question of how environmentaldiscourses work. A blurring of disciplinaryboundaries is paralleled by a blurring betweendiscourse and metadiscourse. In our terms,discourse refers to specific ways of talkingabout particular environments and their fu-tures. Metadiscourse refers to practices of the-orizing, which categorize issues to establishtheir significance.
DEFINITIONS
We define environmental discourse as com-prising the linguistic devices articulating ar-guments about the relationship between hu-mans and the natural environment, but werestrict the definition further. Language hasalways been used to explore this relationship.But until recently most discourse took place inthe belief that a largely self-regulating naturecould be taken for granted. The new discoursediffers in that its principal focus is the endan-germent of nature and the human species in aglobal context.
The ambiguity of the terms environmentand nature is central to understanding thisglobal discourse. Environment in essence isan anthropocentric notion: “The term has in-creasingly come to mean a nature tangiblyimportant only to human health and liveli-hood” (Hochman 1997, p. 82). Rowe (1989, p.123) and Fill (1993) criticize the vagueness ofthe term, and Howard includes it among his“weasel words” (1978, pp. 81–84). As exam-ples, he cites U.S. game parks, where “visitorscan see bears not, as we used to say in our old-fashioned way, in natural surroundings, but inthe environmental habitat,” and aerosol cans,which “kill most household germs on ‘envi-ronmental’ surfaces.”
Williams (1983) calls nature “perhaps themost complex word in the language”; itsmeaning is far removed from the technicalnotion of “entities and processes uninterferedwith by human agency” (p. 219). In a studyof “naturalness” as it is applied to Australianecosystems, Taylor (1990) concludes that“failure to recognize that naturalness is a cul-turally constructed concept, rather than a uni-versal one, has produced . . . inconsistency andambiguity in the terminology used for theseassessments” (p. 411).
Jagtenberg (1994) says “we are confrontingboth ecological decline and an explosion ofdiscourses about nature” (p. 14). However,this explosion is evidence not for some direct
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influence of environmental factors on lan-guage, but rather for the emergence of risksociety (Beck 1992) and technologies such asnuclear power, which no insurance companiesdare touch. We interpret environmental dis-course as an attempt by risk society membersto make sense of the global changes that af-fect them (Spaargen et al. 2000). Another taskis to explore how the study of environmentaldiscourse can make contributions to environ-mental understanding.
Our key questions are as follows:
� Are there any salient properties of envi-ronmental discourse?
� Which linguistic approaches are mostsuited to analyzing them?
� What contribution can the previouspoints make to environmental sustain-ability?
CLASSIFICATION
To reduce the polyphony of environmen-tal voices to the common denominator of“political discourse” (Leuthold 1999, p. 5)seems too simplistic. Harre et al. (1999) dis-tinguish between scientific, moral, economic,and aesthetic macro discourse. Clear distinc-tions exist between such micro discoursesas green economic policies (Gerbig 2000),green consumerism (Elkington et al. 1988),and green advertising (Muhlhausler 1996,Luke 1997). Herndl & Brown (1996) sep-arate pretheoretical classifications into eth-nocentric, ecocentric, and anthropocentricdiscourse. Dryzek (1997) adds a politicaldiscourse with four subcategories: problemsolving, survivalism, sustainability, and greenradicalism.
Such pretheoretical taxonomies are indica-tive of a nascent field of inquiry. We ap-proach the salient features of environmentaldiscourse in terms of an ethnography of speak-ing (Hymes 1972) such that
� the ethnography of communicationlends itself to organizing large bodiesof observation;
� the result is etic rather than emic, andtherefore facilitates comparative study;
� the main level of analysis has been theevent, a unit well provided for by theethnography of communication; and
� an ethnographic approach highlightsareas that have received insufficientattention.
Hymes observes (1972), “[T]he commondyadic model of speaker-hearer specifiessometimes too many, sometimes too few,sometimes the wrong participants” (p. 59)and advocates a distinction between addresser,sender, hearer, and addressee. These distinc-tions are relevant to understanding global en-vironmental discourses.
The addresser. Addressers are the source ofa message, and a number of analysts haveshown that speaking on behalf of the Earth(“vicarious advocacy” in Harre et al. 1999,p. 182) is a salient feature of environmen-tal discourses. It entails assigning intelligence“to nonhuman entities such as ecosystems”(Dryzek 1997, p. 17) or a personified god-dess such as Gaia (Lovelock 1979). Earlierblack and white categorization between twoaddresser groups, environmentalists and de-velopers, persists in more recent discourses,but others (Killingsworth & Palmer 1992) of-fer more complex classifications.
Addressers have been classified in terms oftheir key metaphors (Dryzek 1997) or dom-inant behaviors: ecofreaks, tree-huggers, fer-als, greenies, NIMBY (not in my backyard),and NIABY (not in anybody’s backyard) (seeMuhlhausler 2003). Dryzek (1997) empha-sizes the discourses of principal “agents” suchas survivalists, prometheans, democratic prag-matists, and green rationals, whereas Jamison
Increasing the number of addressers wouldseem timely; environmental discourses are nolonger dominated by a small coterie of West-ern professionals. But addressers have alsochanged over time from concerned individu-als (Carson 1962, Ehrlich 1969) to nationaland international organizations. Collectiveaddressers fall into two main categories: thoseconcerned with management and govern-ment, and those focused on moral and aes-thetic aspects of the environment.
Big business has succeeded in repackagingits ideology by promoting green consumerism(Alexander 2002, Doyle 1991, Beder 1997,Gerbig 2000, Stauber & Rampton 1995).This is often green tokenism, but the actionsof ethical enterprises differ markedly fromtraditional big business. Governments havebecome the most powerful producers ofenvironmental messages. Transnationalbodies such as the European Union, WorldBank, and UNESCO increasingly broadcastenvironmental messages. Alongside powerfulorganizations such as Greenpeace, WorldWildlife Fund, and the Sierra Club, we findconcerned groups of scientists, the Clubof Rome (Meadows et al. 1972), and greenpolitical parties.
The idea that there is a genuine global dis-course remains problematic. Jamison (2001)comments that in the 1970s such a discourseappeared to “transcend the ideological dis-putes and other sources of division, like class,race, gender, and national identity” (p. 1) butcomes to the conclusion that national identitydefines discourse communities. The notion ofglobal discourse also sits uneasily with incom-patible value systems in intercultural settings.Jones (1994) details the incommensurabilityof Maori and Pakeha languages in environ-mental debates. Marnham (1981) observes,“African opinion would be hostile to everyassumption” upon which an expatriate no-tion of “game parks” is based (p. 8). “Wilder-ness” is particularly problematic, as Burnett &
Kamuyu wa Kang’ethe (1994) have illustratedfor east African languages. Richards (1992)highlights the problems with “wildlife con-servation” (p. 1) in Sierra Leone. Genske &Hess-Luttich (2002) underscore interculturaleco-semiotic problems between developingand developed nations; similar conclusionscan be found in Muhlhausler (2003). Rhetor-ical claims about globalization have resultedin a hyperbolic emphasis on integration andinterdependence, which undervalues the per-sistence of national and local forces.
Speaker. The mainstreaming of environ-mentalism has resulted in a disjunction be-tween the roles of addresser and speaker. Themedia are important speakers, and their rolehas attracted considerable attention (Dyer &Dyer 1990, Gerbig 2000, Hansen 1996, Rissel& Douglas 1993). A survey of the media’s rolein sustaining environmental discourse is givenin Muhlhausler (2003).
Speakers who represent large organiza-tions can be found on all sides of the environ-mental debate. CEOs and professional envi-ronmental communicators, speakers for largecorporations, spokespersons representing or-ganizations such as Greenpeace, and greenpoliticians increasingly speak with the voiceof their party rather than as individuals.
Hearer. Hymes (1972) subscribes to a mech-anistic metaphor of messages being sent andreceived that equates hearers and addresseeswith passive recipients. In reality, environ-mental meanings emerge in active or inter-active discourses between all players. We donot develop this criticism but note that amechanistic view of communication is sharedby numerous producers of environmentalmessages.
One design feature of human language isthat it is broadcast and that an uttered mes-sage can be heard by all and sundry. In theWest, environmental discourses are heard allthe time as the media untiringly churn outstories about environmental disasters.
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The concept of risk society implies alack of certainty on all sides (Caplan 2000).Hearers are exposed to messages they do notcompletely understand even when “ecoliter-ate” and numerous conflicting messages areencountered. This concept suggests a classi-fication of hearers into those who are eco-literate or earthliterate (Verhagen 2000) andthose who ignore or filter out messages, orsuffer from ecofatigue.
Corporate discourses about the environ-ment are capable of manipulating even theecoliterate. Ehrlich & Ehrlich (1996) havedrawn attention to the practice of brown-lash, which minimizes the severity of environ-mental problems; Brosius (1999) explains howgreenwashing by public relations firms man-ufactures “uncertainty about environmentalthreats” (p. 28).
The ability of hearers to filter out infor-mation depends on whether they are directlyaffected by environmental issues. Farrell &Goodnight (1998) observe that during dis-asters a rhetorical crisis occurs where “audi-ences struggle to understand information, setcriteria for policy evaluation, and locate vi-able options for action . . . . [T]he crisis doesnot so much invite discourse as defy it” (p.76). In the wake of Three Mile Island, peo-ple simply fled. In other disaster situationssuch as Bhopal (Fortun 2001) or Exxon Valdez(Browning & Shetler 1992), hearers’ reactionswere influenced by patchy understanding andan inability to act rationally in the face of con-flicting messages.
Addressee. Addressees are members of tar-get audiences. Given the economic and ideo-logical importance of green discourse, identi-fying target audiences is a central task of en-vironmental rhetoric. Environmentalists tendto assume their message alone will appeal tothe commonsense of those waiting to be en-lightened. But their lack of attention to thequestion of how to target particular audi-ences has rendered them less effective thanexpected. Penman (1994) has drawn attention
to their failure to acknowledge limited envi-ronmental awareness.
Businesses and politicians have adoptedmore sophisticated strategies. Public opinionsurveys (Luke 1993, pp. 165–66) increasinglyshape the agenda of corporations and politi-cal parties, and the appeal of environmentalmessages has become important in election-eering and market research on green con-sumer behavior (Elkington et al. 1988, Lenz2003, Muhlhausler 2000). Limited consumerinterest slows down the production of envi-ronmentally friendly vehicles and green tele-vision programs.
Ends
The gap between goals and outcomes is par-ticularly noticeable in the area of environ-mental policy-making, in which policies are asubstitute for, rather than a means of, achiev-ing desired outcomes (Schiewer 2002, Strang2004).
Goals/Purpose. Much environmental dis-course elaborates the theme that human ac-tions are detrimental to the survival of hu-manity. Each speech act warns that it is inthe interest of the individual to desist fromsuch activities. Waddell (1998) argues that theultimate purpose is “the preservation of fu-ture choice” (p. xiii). Changes in individualbehavior or government policy range fromsingle topic (do not chop down more treesin the parkland) to generalist ones (save theplanet/world).
“Proper conduct of the relation betweensociety and nature” (Rutherford 1994, p. 40)has grown in importance, and it is to beachieved by government control and manipu-lation of environmental awareness. Neuwirth(2002) details the rhetorical strategies usedby the Austrian government and the BritishBroadcasting Corporation (BBC) in supportof nuclear power and in downplaying therisk of launching plutonium-laden spacecraft.Schultz (2001) analyzes the linguistic devices
(euphemism, vagueness, hyperbole) em-ployed by big government and large corpo-rations to control public opinion.
One important discourse goal is to locatethe speaker on the high moral ground, forexample, in promoting vegetarianism (Marko2000): To what extent vegetarianism is anybetter for animals than animal husbandry re-mains unclear, and it goes hand in hand withhabitat destruction, use of pesticides, and highstorage costs. Harre et al. (1999) have usednarratology to explore the general principlesof taking the moral high ground: The narra-tives of opposing groups (e.g., supporters andopponents of nuclear energy) are structurallyidentical; the only difference lies in the rolesassigned (hero, helper, innocent bystander).
In spite of widely held views on the cen-trality of discourse in constructing reality,discourse often seems to postpone action.Talk about the plight of the River Murrayin Australia, for instance, is not matched bycomparable action; as we are running out ofwater, we are also running out of time. Adam(1997) comments on the difficulties humansexperience when calibrating time. Environ-mental consequences of human actions canoccur with a time lag varying between mil-liseconds and millennia. Humans typicallyperceive consequences that occur a few hours,at most a few years, after the event.
Outcomes. Bruner & Oelschlaeger (1994)emphasize the relative lack of consequen-tial change in environmental discourses com-pared with those of antienvironmentalists who“have been effective in accomplishing theirobjectives at least in part, because of their abil-ity to articulate persuasive rationales throughslogans, myths and narratives” (p. xviii). Thiscontrast in degree of linguistic adaptation wasanticipated by earlier writers who commentedon the way environmental rhetoric leaves a re-ality gap “because it uses old language to de-rive the terms of a new condition” (Segal 1991,p. 3). Continued exposure to more alarm-ing facts about topics such as global warm-ing does not lead to enhanced alertness but
rather to “an atmosphere of fading interest”(Killingsworth & Palmer 1992, p. 270).
The new discourse about the environmentcomprises the greening of the language of in-dustrial societies, the proliferation of new lex-ical resources, the emergence of green wordformation, and green metaphors becomingroot cultural ones. Green language height-ens peoples’ awareness of environmental is-sues. As Hajer (1995) notes, “the discursivepower of ecological modernization manifestsitself in the degree to which its implicit futurescenarios permeate through society and ac-tors reconceptualize their interests and recog-nize new opportunities and new trouble spots”(p. 261).
Act Sequences
In Hymes’s (1972) model, act sequences areconcerned with the form messages conven-tionally take as well as their semantic content.The model separates formal from semanticproperties, a separation difficult to uphold indiscourse analysis. We nevertheless try to sep-arate form and content, noting first that theintensity of environmental discourses is char-acterized by peaks (Rio, Kyoto) and troughs.
Ecolinguists argue that the contours ofWestern languages are increasingly at oddswith the contours of their speakers’ environ-ments. According to Halliday (2001), modernWestern languages are the outcome of pastdevelopments and their grammars are memo-ries of past experience: Their layers reflect ourpast as hunter gatherers through to modernbureaucratic modes of existence. This mem-ory of the past influences how we perceive theworld today, although what seemed functionalin the past is now no longer so. The notionthat bigger is better (in English we typicallyfind conjuncts where bigger comes first, as in“all creatures great and small”) is deeply en-trenched in most languages, but in the currentcrisis such “growthism” is dysfunctional.
Forms of speech. The greening of mod-ern languages manifests in the changing
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norms for using lexical items. Lexical innova-tions in English combine deliberate creationof terminology with spontaneously evolv-ing terms. There has been a proliferationof specialist dictionaries for environmen-tal words (surveyed in Muhlhausler 2003),which reveal substantial changes in everydaylanguage.
Formally, most new lexical items are (a)morphologically complex, (b) built predomi-nantly from Latin and Greek roots, (c) of lim-ited transparency, or (d ) misleading. The factthat major Western languages have in excessof 100,000 words for environmental mattersdoes not mean that many of them enter intoeveryday discourse. Where specialist commu-nities have redefined popular words such as“trash,” “garbage,” or “rubbish,” miscommu-nication is frequently the result.
Like other unpleasant phenomena, envi-ronmental degradation has promoted the useof euphemisms which either replace existingterms—“to harvest” rather than “to hunt,”“landfill” rather than “rubbish dump,” “tocull” rather than “to kill”—or take the formof formalized collocation, as in “sustain-able development” or “green business.” Thetrends outlined in English are paralleled else-where. Stork (1998) has documented theenvironmental lexicon of French, whereasTrampe (2001) takes on the German lexiconof agribusiness.
Message content. Lanthier & Olivier(1999) observed that “the environmentalistdiscourse originates in the environmental andhuman disasters provoked by technology”(p. 67). These origins can be traced back todebates about deforestation, drought, andwater shortages following the economic andcultural conquest of the earth by Europeancolonizers (Grove 1992). The impact ofmining, overgrazing, and overuse of forestshas been discussed by Weigl (2004). The fol-lowing areas have been identified by Trampe(2001, p. 233): pollution and waste problems,habitat destruction, species extinction, andnuclear energy. New topics are constantly
Bioculturaldiversity: impliesthat the well-beingof languages is aprerequisite for thewell-being of naturalspecies
added, bearing out Sapir’s (1912) observationas to the social dimension of all discoursesabout nature. In the discourses about animalextinction, a small number of charismaticspecies (whales, seals, wolves, tigers, koalas,pandas, and dingoes) prevail (Knight 2000),biologically equal or more important species(scavengers, dung beetles, weevils, or wasps)rarely feature, nor do equally endangereddomestic subspecies (Penman 1994).
Brosius (1999) discussed the criticism thatEuro-American discourses often ignore theplight of inhabitants of developing nationsand pointed out that “environmental dis-courses are changing in response to critiquesof elitism, to charges that they ignore socialjustice issues, to accusations that they are aform of neo-colonialism” (p. 282). The emer-gence of discourses of biocultural diversity(Maffi 2001) illustrates this change.
Tone or Key
The key of a message on one hand is a productof choices made in the domains of languageform, content, and channel; on the other handit impacts on the norms of interpretation andinteraction. Although the terms key and toneare used interchangeably, our preference is forthe latter.
Tone. Different macro discourses about theenvironment vary with respect to tone, al-though most are distinctly serious. In Kahn’s(2001) summary, “Scientific discourses aboutthe environment have been criticized fortheir ‘cold, dry-as-dust objectivity, their an-tiseptic gaze on death and indignity, theirconsistent use of the passive voice to avoidthe appearance of responsibility’” (p. 242).Killingsworth & Palmer (1992) observe thatthe attempt by scientists to write in a neutraldetached tone is undermined by “anthropo-morphizing the effect of scientific language”and their use of a “teleological kind of lan-guage for nonteleological concepts” (p. 114).Halliday & Martin (1993) criticize scientificdiscourse similarly: It constructs a reality that
is “fixed and determinate, in which objectspredominate and processes seem merely todefine and classify them” (p. 20). However,this register gives scientific discourse its au-thoritative tone.
Whereas Myerson & Rydin (1996) havedrawn attention to the frequent use ofirony in environmental discourse, othershave characterized it as irrational and emo-tional (Schiewer 2002) and as hysterical(Killingsworth & Palmer 1992). Harre et al.(1999) note that often “there is a coupling ofterms such as ‘global warming’ and the ‘riseof sea level’ in disaster stories, such as the sce-narios in which ‘densely populated low-lyingareas are flooded,’ which in their view justi-fies characterizing such discourses as ‘apoca-lyptic’” (p. 68).
INSTRUMENTALITIES
Environmental discourse involves both nu-merous channels and numerous speech forms.With increasing global involvement by moreparticipants, further greening of communica-tion can be anticipated. A range of studies ad-dresses the production of environmental mes-sages, but these studies are not matched by asimilar concern with perception.
Channels/Media
The emergence of environmental discoursescoincides with the proliferation of new me-dia and their globalization. A brief survey byMuhlhausler (2003, Ch. 11) reveals that envi-ronmental discourse is fully embedded in thisglobal multimedia structure.
One exception is Phillips, who illustrates(2000) how six couples try to cope discursivelywith the proliferation of ecological risks. Hemaintains, “People’s sense of responsibilityis limited by being constituted within dis-course, which constructs political action be-yond a limited amount of political consump-tion as belonging to a separate realm towhich they have access only via mass media”(pp. 171–207).
Environmental discourse in the main-stream and alternative press has receivedsome attention. Dyer & Young (1990) andDoyle & Kellow (1995) provide accounts ofthe media treatment of environmental is-sues in Australia, including coverage of anorthern Australian World Heritage Site,the Daintree Forest. They explain (Doyle& Kellow 1995) that once the researcherleaves the realm of major newspapers and en-ters the arena of small rural ones, antien-vironmental bias appears well-entrenched.All papers created and perpetuated stereo-types; sympathetic portrayal of green is-sues by the media became widespread onlyrecently.
In a critical review of Time’s special edi-tion (2 February 1989) on “The Planet ofthe Year, Our Endangered Earth,” Grossman(1989) comments on the language therein,which perpetuates the myth that the envi-ronmental crisis is caused by the recklessness,carelessness, sloppy handling, and profligacyof individuals. It did not include the deliberatedecisions of governments and corporations,nor that of criminal organizations, which con-tinue to exacerbate the crisis.
In the realm of television and video,the imperative of newsworthiness is evenmore pronounced. As Delli et al. (1994,p. 79) have pointed out, most environmen-tal degradation, unlike much less frequenteco-catastrophe, is an ongoing and slowlychanging process and is therefore low on thescale of newsworthiness. Specially nominateddays provide the media with an opportunityto compress slow-moving events into a fast-moving story. The green calendar is full ofdays focusing on particular issues or invitingparticular actions, such as “Buy Nothing Day”or “Clean Up Australia Day.” Public percep-tions of major “crises” in American domesticlife do little more than occasionally heightenpublic interest to alleviate boredom (Downs1972, p. 89).
The main problem with such mediacoverage is that it articulates the viewthat sufficient information is known about
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environmental problems for successful ame-liorative measures to be undertaken. Noth-ing could be further from the truth, butthe ideological impact is understandablysubstantial.
One principled linguistic limitation of en-vironmental media is that the subject matteris immensely complex and that most languageis ill suited to expressing the connectivity be-tween relevant factors. This kind of discretelinguistic restriction accounts for the radicalsimplification of environmental informationby stereotyping, accumulating ill-digestedinformation on the Internet, and portrayingcomplex information in new ways. Jagtenberg& McKie (1997) and McKie (2000) havedeveloped the notion of media scape or mediaecology to examine the complex feedbackrelations between messages and audiences.They note considerable differences betweenpublic and private media. Eco-advocacy textsemerge primarily from public television,whereas commercial networks generate fewtexts of that type. These divergences anddiscrepancies reflect the limited appeal ofenvironmental reporting compared with lightentertainment and bear out that television isnot an effective medium of mass education(Vivanco 2002). McKie (2000) adds thatthe anthropocentric properties of humanlanguages are reinforced by unconscious anddeliberate selection.
Forms of Speech
The forms of speech component refers tothe dialect, accent, and variety used in speechevents, all of which have received littleattention.
Environmental discourses are predomi-nantly in English and other major West-ern languages. As environmental concernsare most prominent among the middleclasses, standard varieties of the languageare the norm. Such circumstances are com-pounded by the fact that standard writ-ten forms are used in print and electronicmedia. Protest movements attempt to em-
ploy nonstandard forms of speaking as akind of antilanguage against the establish-ment. The protest against the proposed nu-clear power station at Whyl was voiced inAlamannic, the shared vernacular of Swiss,German, and French citizens affected by thedevelopment.
Genre
Environmental discourses employ traditionalgenres such as narrative, myth, and sermonand add new ones such as Environment Im-pact Assessments. Rose (2004) states, “it maybe that narrative is the method through whichthe reason of connectivity will find its mostpowerful voice” (p. 6). Killingsworth et al.(1992) share this “hope for a generally acces-sible narrative, the story of how human actionreconciles conflicting demands and the searchfor a good life” (p. 21).
Narratives are employed because of theirimportant role in creating sense, reducingcomplex phenomena to accessible texts, andmaximizing on their rhetorical force. Harreet al. (1999) focus on the first aspect, nar-ratives as frameworks, “for our attempt tocome to terms with the nature and conditionsof our existence” (p. 20). This idea of nar-rative includes folk tales, fairy stories, nov-els, and insider autobiographies (Kelly 1984).Harre et al. (1999) note the importance ofthe Bildungsroman, a novel reflecting the threeGerman meanings of Bildung : “formation,education and creation” (p. 72): It is con-cerned with the development of the protag-onist’s mind in the passage to maturity, forexample, Lovelock’s (1979) earnest biologistwho realizes too late the consequences of hismeddling with nature. Similar narratives arediscussed by Bowerbank (1999).
Cronon (1992) argues that narratives im-pose a single vision of reality when thecomplexity of issues facilitates the produc-tion of several possibilities. Harre et al.(1999) show how the same formal narrato-logical structures are used in constructinga range of stories about the environment.
Factors that militate against normative consensus in environ-mental discourse include its novelty, its global nature, andthe constant changes in issues, ideologies, and participants.Agreed norms take time to develop. One can observe the grad-ual emergence of norms within regional and wider commu-nities, but the presence of environmentalist and antienviron-mentalist discourses limits emergence of shared norms. At theglobal level, there is little chance of norms developing from be-low: Contact between participants is insufficient. National andregional norms (Hajer 1995) for different European countriesremain because they take place in widely different languagesthat favor different perspectives on the environment.
Bruner & Oelschlager (1994) argue, “Anti-environmentalists play to the established cul-tural narrative that ‘Man’ is over nature, thatnature is nothing more than an ecomachinewhich we technologically manipulate, andthat a good society is one which totally fulfilsitself through market preferences” (p. 383).
Nature writing is another establishedgenre that continues to inspire environmen-tal discourse. This genre precedes all oth-ers, although, as Raglan (1991) observes, en-vironmental thought is underrepresented inthe Western canon, despite writers such asThoreau, Rousseau, or the German Roman-tics having been influential. Early nature writ-ers are nevertheless attacked as dangeroussentimentalists by others (Weissman 1996).We note that their modern equivalents havebecome semantically bleached and trivializedwhen Suzuki’s or Attenborough’s televisionseries become items of popular culture.
Environmental history has emerged as animportant genre over recent years, rangingfrom large-scale surveys such as Crosby’s(1986) account of the biological consequencesof European colonization, through to morefocused accounts of the histories of commodi-ties such as sugar, coffee, cod, or the historyof landscapes (Worster 1990, Cronon 1996).
Although normative expectations can beimposed by those who define the global
agenda, such as the Western educated andelite organizers of the 1992 Earth Summit(Harre et al. 1999, pp. 12–17), when a globalmessage was whisked around the world fromRio (Conca & Dabelko 1998) and comprised“a fusion of local discourses into one mediaevent” (Harre et al. 1999), no genuine normsresulted: “[A]s yet, it is far from the expressionof a unified voice” (p. 20).
Norms of Interaction
The validity of environmental discourses de-pends on their accreditation as defined by as-sumptions about commonsense and sharedmetaphors. As Carbaugh (1992) has illus-trated, outsiders have difficulty in makingtheir voice heard. Western experts pronounc-ing on environmental matters in the develop-ing world are at times accused of being neo-imperialists and eco-missionaries (Agarwal &Narain 1991). For their part, Western ex-perts frequently ignore the proposition thatscientific knowledge can be culture bound andprovincial.
Interaction on environmental matters ischaracteristically defined by two opposingmodels of communication. The model used inscientific, economic, and political discourse isthe conduit metaphor (Reddy 1979) of mes-sages generated by experts being passed on tothe unenlightened. But the assumption of pas-sive hearers is an inadequate view of commu-nication and yields undesirable consequences.
Environmentalists also subscribe to thismodel, but there are some within their rankswho instead aim to generate genuine col-laboration and recognize that input neverequals intake in human communication. Insuch models, knowledge-flow from the de-veloping to the developed world is called for(Peet & Watts 1996).
Norms of Interpretation
The title of Taylor & Buttel’s (1992) paper“How Do We Know that We Have GlobalEnvironmental Problems?” suggests that the
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central problem is one of making sense ofcomplex, conflicting information. One keyproblem again is accreditation, that is “onrelations obtaining between what is said orwritten and the circumstances in which it isbeing produced and/or interpreted” (Harris2001, p. 154). Alexander (2000) writes, “Partof the problem of changing people’s behaviorregarding environmental and ecological issuesis appreciating that differing social, economicand political forces employ language and dis-course in persuasive terms in different ways”(p. 186).
One reason for the lack of common inter-pretive norms is the different time perspec-tives of different communities (Harre et al.1999). The proportion of the world’s pop-ulation who do not think ahead for morethan a few days at a time is large and grow-ing, whereas those who understand the conse-quences of events in the distant future remaina small minority. As Posner (1990) summa-rizes, “Given that this generation has createdtechnologies and technological problems thatwill be around for very long periods of time(e.g., nuclear waste, genetically engineeredspecies), what will be the code, message andmedium necessary to alert future generationsto potential dangers?” (pp. 7–8).
The norms governing environmental dis-course again draw heavily on those emanatingfrom powerful institutions in society. Thus,the view in the West that one can trust sci-entists more than politicians also holds forgreen discourses and is one of the princi-pal reasons why “greenspeaking” draws ex-tensively on scientific language. The green-ing of business and the emergence of greenconsumers pose additional problems of inter-pretation. Almost all products offered for salenow have environmental claims attached tothem, which makes informed decision makingincreasingly difficult. Interpretation is hugelyproblematic when it comes to complex dis-asters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl,or Bhopal. Farrell & Goodnight (1998) de-tail the insufficiency of official and private dis-courses to make sense of them and conclude
Greenspeaking:replacing orpostponingenvironmental actionby just speakingabout it in “green”language
Ecolinguistics: abranch of linguisticsthat integrates thestudy of languagewith its cultural andnatural environment
that “no one understood all that was going on”(p. 76).
Environmental discourse concerns the rela-tionship between language and the world.Muhlhausler (2003, p. 2) highlights four dif-ferent linguistic approaches to this relation-ship:
� Language is for cognition: It existsin a social and environmental vacuum(Chomsky).
� Language is constructed by the world(Marr).
� The world is constructed by language(structuralism, poststructuralism).
� Language is interconnected with theworld: It both constructs and is con-structed by it (ecolinguistics).
These approaches recognize that what onecan know about the global environment is in-extricably linked with language inasmuch asknowledge is dependent on effability. We be-gin with language because one can use lan-guage about all effable aspects of the world;but the converse is not the case. There isdiscourse about the environment, but no en-vironment about discourse. The first per-spective (Chomsky’s independence hypothe-sis) takes the position that language is a neutraltool or that all human languages (potentiallyor actually) have the same capacity for talkingabout the environment. But both Saussurianstructuralists and Chomskyan generativistsdisconnect language from external influences.This disconnection has been labeled “limitingthe arbitrary” by Joseph (2000), who offers anincisive critique of modern linguistics, as doesthe ecolinguist Finke (2002).
The inability of modern linguists toaddress environmental discourses is com-pounded by their largest unit of analysis beinga single sentence. Moreover, the meaning ofsentences has been established with reference
Ecology oflanguage: the studyof interactionsbetween any givenlanguage and itscultural and politicalenvironment
to internal sense relations, not external refer-ents. The view that languages are constructedby the external physical or social world hasnot been popular in mainstream linguistics,but it continues to be argued in connectionwith language origins.
Saussurian structuralism was in part a reac-tion against a historical approach to language,which sought to explore how linguistic dif-ferences could be explained in terms of dif-ferent environmental factors. The marginal-ization of onomatopoeia (Nuckolls 1999) andiconicity of signs further widened the gap be-tween language and the world. When lan-guage change was considered, its explanationremained restricted to internal factors suchas system organization, reanalysis, or faultytransmission.
External actors in language change wereconsidered by the “ecology of language” ap-proach pioneered by Haugen (1972), who fo-cused on the deliberative man-made polit-ical ecologies in which languages competewith one another. Haugen defined languageecology as “the study of interactions betweenany given language and its environment”(p. 336), but he restricted this to the culturaland political environment while also empha-sizing the survival of the fittest. This some-what skewed perspective was followed by sev-eral European scholars (surveyed by Fill 2003and Muhlhausler 2003). Contemporary eco-linguists have modified Haugen by emphasiz-ing the cooperative principle in ecology andthe value of linguistic diversity.
More effective approaches emerged inother disciplines or in the still-marginalizedcritical linguistics (Fairclough 1992), integra-tional linguistics (Harris 1981, Toolan 1996),and ecolinguistics (Fill 2003, Muhlhausler2003). Critical linguistics and critical dis-course linguistics are based on the post-structuralist notion that perceptions of theenvironment are discursively constructed.
Ecolinguistics can be traced back to the1980s when a group of linguists asked whetherthe looming environment crisis was due inpart to language. Early writers such as Fill
(1993) drew on the experience of languageand gender studies because the linguistic den-igration of women is, in many languages, ac-companied by a denigration of nonhuman lifeforms (Leach 1968, Tansley 1991, Dunayer2001).
One issue that drew much attention wasthe development of a new lexicon for talkingabout environmental matters. Muhlhausler(1983) in a review of Landy (1979) proposedthat this new language is characterized bythree problems:
� semantic vagueness: e.g., terms like pol-lution, progress, and pest.
� semantic underdifferentation: e.g.,growing, which can refer to naturalgrowth, man-made growth, arithmeticgrowth, exponential growth, etc.
� misleading encoding: e.g., zero-growth(which fails to recognize what is be-ing added), labor saving (which doesnot say whose labor is being saved),and fertilizers (which can render soilunproductive).
Muhlhausler (1983) detected a widespreadunease among environmentalists who be-came aware of their linguistic limitations.Alternative discourse approaches such asJohnson (1991) and Jung (1996) became avail-able in due course, whereas an address byHalliday in 1990 (published 2001) broughtthe nonecological nature of many languagesto the attention of applied linguists. His pro-posal combined a detailed critique of lexicaland grammatical categories of contemporaryEnglish in an attempt to correlate differenttypes of grammar with different stages in cul-tural and technological development. Empha-sis was given to the role of nominalization,transitivity, and countability of nominal ex-pressions in distorting the fit between the con-tours of language and the contours of the en-vironment (Martin 1986, Goatly 2001, Fill2003).
The Whorfian notion that lexicon andgrammar of individual languages are theroot causes of our environmental crisis is a
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recurrent theme (surveyed by Muhlhausler1998). It has promoted the search for eco-logically more adequate ways of speaking innon-Western cultures and has suggested waysin which an ecologically correct biocentriclanguage can be developed. The first kind ofsuggestion, surveyed by Little (1999), rangesfrom romanticizing tribal languages consid-ered to have privileged environmental insightto selectively mining them for traditional eco-logical knowledge.
That environmental language was a newarea for language planning was suggestedby Halliday in 1990; others have taken upthe challenge. Stibbe (2004) surveys studieson environmental verbal hygiene and con-cludes that tinkering with language is unlikelyto produce “a consistent and effective over-all discourse for expressing ecological issues”(p. 4). However, in view of widespread eco-fatigue, a robust discourse about speciesism,growthism, and other linguistic shortcom-ings could drive the wider adoption of envi-ronmental discourse. An examination of howdifferent meanings of “sustainable develop-ment” prevent intelligent discourse about thesubject (Alexander 2000, Redclift 1987) cer-tainly seems worthwhile, likewise with the ter-minology applied to charismatic species (Lee1988, Peace 2005).
Two principal resources for ecocriticalanalysis are rhetorical studies and critical anal-ysis. Several publications deal with rhetoric(Killingsworth & Palmer 1992; Herndl &Brown 1996; Muir & Veenendall 1996;Myerson & Rydin 1996; Waddell 1998; Harreet al. 1999). Waddell (1998) has argued thatenvironmental discourse must be cognitivelyplausible, evoke sentiment, and relate to mostpeople. He implies the rhetorical study ofcurrent discourse rarely meets these criteria.Segal (1991) argues that “all arguments rep-resent themselves as arguments for environ-mental protection. The absence of a clearlyidentifiable opposition means we encountergestures in support for the environment, evenfrom those who would despoil it” (p. 2). Theresult is a blurring of boundaries and the
Ecocritical analysis:studies how thedynamics of socialprocesses such asracism, sexism, orspeciesism shapediscourses andperceptions ofecological matters
appropriation of “ecospeak” (Killingsworth& Palmer 1992) and “greenspeak” (Harreet al. 1999) by antienvironmentalists. The newrhetoric is one of appropriation and manipu-lation by big business and government. “Weperceive, in the increasing greening of Englishand other Western languages, a kind of lin-guistic Ersatzhandlung, with the very real dan-ger of talk replacing or postponing action”(Harre et al. 1999, p. ix).
A common focus in rhetorical studies isthat environmental discourse involves a multi-tude of voices, a “new hybrid discourse” (Rojas2001, p. 8) involving a “Babel of discoursecommunities” (Killingsworth & Palmer 1992,p. 21).
METAPHOR STUDIES
Given the limitations on environmental un-derstanding, it comes as no surprise thatscholars pay a great deal of attention tometaphor. Myerson & Rydin (1996) andHarre et al. (1999) devote a chapter to it.It is most commonly analyzed from the per-spective of Lakoff & Johnson (1980). Rootmetaphors are used either as convenient pa-rameters for distinguishing different types ofenvironmental discourses (Drysek 1997) or astargets for criticism. Bullis (1992) for exam-ple attacks mechanistic metaphors as “havingoutlived their usefulness” (p. 347) and criti-cizes metaphors such as eco-defense and eco-warrior for constructing confrontation “asa means of achieving peace and harmony”(p. 352).
The centrality of medical metaphors inthe construction of environmental awarenesshas been emphasized by Stratford (1994) andLanthier & Olivier (1999). A concern forhealth is shared across a wide range of ideo-logical positions. Metaphors of healing or pre-ventive medicine are widely employed, but themain interest lies in showing how metaphorscan fudge discursive differences.
Mills (1982) identifies three coremetaphors by which Western societieshave lived for the past 1000 years: nature
as a book written by God (Middle Ages);nature as a reflection of the human body(Renaissance); and nature as a machine, first aclock, then a steam engine, and most recentlya (bio)computer (the present). Ecofeministshave drawn attention to the root metaphorof rape (Schaffer 1988) in expressions such as“opening up virgin territory” or “penetratingthe land.”
Two principal reasons for the proliferationof metaphor are the novelty of the subjectmatter, which brings into being new heuris-tic possibilities, and the conflicting agendasof those who use environmental discourse. AsHarris (2001) observes, “There is a fundamen-tal division about the role of language, whichcan surface in all kinds of ways. At its sharpest,it emerges in where you draw the line betweensense and nonsense . . . . For some people, un-doubtedly, the claim trees have rights is non-sense, or at least utterly confused” (pp. 155–56).
Doring (2002, 2004) illustrates that themetaphors by which certain groups live areimportant factors in influencing people’s en-vironmental actions. The use of metaphor ingreenwashing has been described by severalanalysts and surveyed by Muhlhausler (2003,Ch. 10). Farrell & Goodnight (1998) havelooked at the use of metaphors in relation toThree Mile Island, and Liebert (2001) simi-larly compares the emergence of the money-equals-water metaphor in the construction ofnineteenth-century public water systems.
A recent trend looks at the total commod-ification of nature. Muhlhausler & Peace’s(2001) analysis of the language of ecotourismhas highlighted the metaphorical tendency toanthropomorphize animals and to portray na-ture as a battlefield where the nonhuman com-batants are in a permanent struggle for sur-vival. Marko (2002) observes that although thesexuality of whales and their rearing practicesare talked about in zoological terms, discourseabout their communicative and social abilitiesis couched in anthropomorphic metaphor (seealso Peace 2005). That disassociation is em-ployed when animals are exploited or hunted
is a common theme, as in the case of baby sealsversus seal pups (Martin 1986, Lee 1988).
Waddell (1998) comments on synecdoche(the part stands for the whole), and this de-serves more scrutiny, as charismatic creaturestypically stand for “nature” while endangeredspecies are talked about as “miners’ canaries”(p. xvi). That metonymy (being next to makessomething similar to) plays an importantrole in naturalizing nonnatural practices andproducts has been shown for environmentaladvertising (Muhlhausler 1999). Character-istically, such advertisements visually locateproducts or trademarks in unspoiled nature.
What unites the varied contributions to eco-criticism is the objective of creating awarenessof the cultural roots of the environmental cri-sis and the hope that such discourses will resultin action. There is also an emphasis amongecocritics on connectivity, as Estok (2001)explains: “Ecocriticism at its best seeks un-derstanding about the ways that dynamics ofsubjugation, persecution, and tyranny are mu-tually reinforcing, the ways that racism, sex-ism, homophobia, speciesism and so on are, touse Ania Loomba’s term, interlocking” (p. 9).
Ecological discourse has featured promi-nently in green cultural studies with its em-phasis on popular culture and the mechanismsthat define common sense, as illustrated by aspecial issue of the Australian Journal of Com-munication (1994). Contributions range fromanalysis of media stories (Lucas 1994) andfilms (McKie 1994) to governmental appro-priation of environmental discourse. Otherobjects of analysis are listed on a resource siteat Warbaugh State University (http://www.wsu.edu/∼amerstu/ce/ce.html accessed 10October 2004).
One recurrent theme of green culturalstudies is the limited efficacy of environ-mental discourse and the call for moreactive involvement in the environment.
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Penman (1994) shows how the discursivepractices of environmentalists and farmershave enabled her to become a better farmer,an experience shared by Trampe (2001).
THE BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITYAPPROACH
Concern for the loss of biodiversity can betraced back to Carson (1962), but it has onlyrecently become a topic of ecolinguistics. Theequally dramatic disappearance of cultural andlinguistic diversity is also a more recent focusfor attention. That the two phenomena arecausally connected was argued independentlyby Harmon (1996), Muhlhausler (1995), andThompson (1994). Muhlhausler (1995) ar-gued that life in a particular human environ-ment is dependent on people’s ability to talkabout it. Maffi’s (2001) edited volume con-tains several programmatic, empirical studiessuggestive of interdependencies between lan-guage knowledge and environmental manage-ment. Given that 96% of languages are spokenby 4% of the world’s population, almost threequarters of which are endangered or highlyendangered, further acceleration of environ-mental degradation is probable.
The biocultural diversity approach con-siders a wider range of parameters than iscommon to discourse analysis, but its find-ings are tentative. One attempt to limit therange is Muhlhausler’s (1996) study of younglanguages among small populations on smallislands such as Norfolk Island and Pitcairn Is-land. Preliminary findings suggest unnamedlife forms have a considerably greater chanceof becoming extinct than do named ones.The converging environmental and linguis-tic crises and their causes have been examinedby Harmon (2002).
In the domain of language planning (e.g.,Liddicoat & Bryant 2000), arguments in favorof biocultural diversity have become main-stream in a short period. The assimilationistand rationalist approach has recently begunto give way to ecological language planning,which favors maximum linguistic diversity.
The relations between linguistic diversity andbiological diversity are now being discussed bymajor bodies such as UNESCO. May (2003)detailed the scepticism among those linguistsand language planners who question the linkand argued that speakers must be free tochoose to abandon their language in favor ofglobal culture. The concept of free choice isnot problematized by these advocates.
CONCLUSIONS
When considering the relationship betweendiscourse and the environment, one can starteither at the linguistic end and explore howlinguistic devices are employed in talkingabout the environment or at the environ-mental end and ask to what extent languagesare shaped by environmental correlates. Ourchoice was motivated by the fact that the bulkof the literature surveyed here starts at thelanguage end.
The first question of our survey concernedthe salient properties of environmental dis-courses. We noted
� there is a tendency to equate the notionof environment with what sustains hu-man life and what pleases humans. Mostdiscourses are anthropocentric.
� most discourses are focused on localconcerns and issues covering no morethan a human life span.
� there are discursive attempts to global-ize environmental discourse, but this isa small part of the totality of possibleones.
One further salient property is widespreaduncertainty under conditions of risk society,which leads to a greater use of narratives andrhetoric than in many other discourse genres.
As environmental discourses are con-cerned with the everyday, so they are be-coming institutionalized and bureaucratized,the more so as discourse analysis becomespart of environmental management programsbeing promulgated by big business or biggovernment.
The most noticeable feature of green dis-course is lexical choice. In addition to newdescriptive expressions, many loaded termsare currently available for rhetorical purposes.Euphemisms, buzz words, weasel words, andemotive terms are prolific; their translationequivalents are beginning to spread, althoughEuropean and American ones remain promi-nent. One of the outcomes of the greeningof linguistics is the emergence of a new ap-plied linguistics, which, according to Halliday(2001), may not hold the key to solving envi-ronmental problems. But it is assuredly im-perative for us to write instructions for theuse of the key.
The emergence of environmental dis-course in the 1980s coincided with the dis-integration of a single paradigm of modernlinguistics. Practitioners of new approaches tolinguistics began to ask new questions and em-ploy new analytic methods. The emergence ofecolinguistics was likely inevitable, as has beenexploration of the interconnectedness of lan-guage endangerment and biocultural diversitymore recently.
Our final question concerned the contri-bution environmental discourses can make to
environmental sustainability. We concur withWaddell (1998), who comments on the roleof language in revitalizing the public at largeand underlines the need to discover language“for both experts and generalists alike” (p. xv).Language may not be the key, and focusing onthe nature of the linguistic code to producean ecofriendly dialect is unlikely to prove suc-cessful. Renaming the vulgar names for lifeforms in the English language of the eigh-teenth century and replacing them with scien-tific ones did little to improve Britain’s naturalenvironment (Thomas 1983). What is impor-tant rather is to recognize the importance ofmultiple perspectives, dynamic dialects (Døør& Bang 1996), and the inevitability of change.This requires adopting Halliday’s instructionsto be critically aware of the instrument of lan-guage and its uses. Green approaches to dis-course can promote awareness that the lan-guage one uses privileges certain perceptionsand actions and that expressing matters differ-ently will privilege others. The view that per-fection is not in any single entity, but requiresa diversity of expressions (Harmon 2002), isone of the central insights of ecological think-ing and ecological approaches to language.
SUMMARY POINTS
1. The study of environmental discourse requires a number of approaches. It is neces-sarily an interdisciplinary exercise.
2. The study of environmental discourses is typically carried out by scholars who haveagendas other than merely describing such discourses. As a consequence, there is ablurring between discourse and metadiscourse.
3. The vastness of the topic requires a descriptive framework that can accommodatea maximum number of properties of environmental discourses. An ethnography ofcommunication approach was chosen for this reason.
4. The study of environmental discourses is a relatively recent phenomenon dating fromthe late 1980s. Most studies challenge the mainstream view of language as found instructuralist and generative linguistics.
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FUTURE ISSUES TO BE RESOLVED
1. It remains to be established how precisely and to what extent discursive practicesimpact on the natural environment. One particular problem is that human discoursesselectively focus on only a small subset of environmental phenomena.
2. It is not clear to what extent the anthropocentrism of human languages can be over-come by deliberate acts of language planning.
3. The efficacy of environmental discourse for resolving the global environmental crisisremains ill understood.
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The firstbook-lengthintroduction toecolinguisticscontains both ahistory of the fieldand numeroussuggestions forfuture research.
Fill A. 1993. Okolinguistik–Eine Einfuhrung. Tubingen: NarrFill A, ed. 1996. Sprachokologie und Okolinguistik. Tubingen: StauffenburgFill A. 2003. Language and ecology: ecolinguistic perspectives for 2000 and beyond. AILA Rev.:
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Fill A, Muhlhausler P, eds. 2001. The Ecolinguistics Reader. London/New York: Contin-uum
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Fill A, Penz H, Trampe W, eds. 2002. Colourful Green Ideas. New York: Peter LangFinke P. 2002. Die nachhaltigkeit der sprache-funf ineinander verschachtelte puppen der lin-
guistischen Okonomie. See Fill et al. 2002, pp. 29–58Fortun K. 2001. Advocacy After Bophal. Chicago: Univ. Chicago PressGenske DD, Hess-Luttich EWB. 2002. Gesprache ubers wasser ein okosemiotisches projekt
zur umweltkommunikation im Nord-Sud-Dialog. See Fill et al. 2002, pp. 299–326Gerbig A. 2000. Patterns of language use in discourse on the environment: a corpus-based
approach. See Ketteman & Penz 2000, pp. 191–216Goatly A. 2001. Green grammar and grammatical metaphor, or language and myth of power,
or metaphors we die by. See Fill & Muhlhausler 2001, pp. 203–25
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Grossman R. 1989. Of time and tide: media and the environment. Chain React., Winter,pp. 18–19
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Process. Oxford: ClarendonHalliday MAK. 2001. New ways of meaning: the challenge to applied linguistics. See Fill &
Muhlhausler 2001, pp. 175–202Halliday MAK, Martin J. 1993. Writing Science, Literacy and Discursive Power. London: FalmerHansen A, ed. 1996. The Mass Media and Environmental Issues. Leicester: Leicester Univ. PressHarmon D. 1996. Losing species, losing languages: connections between biological and lin-
guistic diversity. Southwest J. Linguist. 15:89–108Harmon D. 2002. In Light of Our Differences: How Diversity in Nature and Culture Makes Us
Harre R, Brockmeier J, Muhlhausler P. 1999. Greenspeak: A Study of Environmental
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Mosaic 30(1):81–97Howard P. 1978. Weasel Words. London: HamiltonHymes D. 1972. The ethnography of speaking. In Anthropology and Human Behavior, ed. T
Gladwin, WC Sturtevant, pp. 15–53. Washington, DC: Anthropol. Soc. Wash.Jagtenberg T. 1994. The end of nature? Aust. J. Commun. 21(3):14–25Jagtenberg T, McKie D. 1997. Eco-Impacts and the Greening of Postmodernity: New Maps for
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Diet in Early Homo: A Review of the Evidence and a New Model ofAdaptive VersatilityPeter S. Ungar, Frederick E. Grine, and Mark F. Teaford � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 209
Diet in Early Homo: A Review of the Evidence and a New Model ofAdaptive VersatilityPeter S. Ungar, Frederick E. Grine, and Mark F. Teaford � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 209
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