Summer School - Description and Material

DESCRIPTION

LINGUISTIC APPROACHES TO ECOLOGICAL DISCOURSE 

Daniela Francesca Virdis (University of Cagliari) 

Maria Cristina Caimotto (University of Turin) 

With a guest lecture by Andrew Goatly (Lingnan University) 

The Summer School will open by exploring the theoretical framework and the methodology of Ecostylistics, and how it is used to analyse discourses of nature, the environment and sustainability in contemporary non-literary texts. This framework and this methodology will be applied to the examination of texts dealing with ecological issues and concerning the environment. 

Following this introduction to Ecostylistics, students will be guided through the construction of their own Ecosophy (Stibbe, 2021). In order to analyse texts through Ecolinguistics, scholars need to be aware of their own ecosophy that will allow them to establish whether a story is destructive, beneficial or ambivalent. 

Next, we shall focus on metaphors. Metaphors are a central “story-we-live-by”. In order to observe the effects of metaphors in speeches about the environment and the economy, we shall observe metaphors in two texts: Mia Mottley’s speech delivered at COP26 in 2021 and Liz Truss’ speech at the Conservative Party Convention in 2022.  

On the second day, a session will examine SardegnaTurismo, the institutional web portal in English dedicated to promoting tourism on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. The “Interests” section of the portal will be investigated, along with its stylistic features and evaluative strategies at several linguistic levels, by applying the analytical approach of ecostylistics. 

Our work will then move to “Mobility Justice” (Sheller, 2018). This approach observes how the three main crises (climate, urbanization, migration) revolve around unjust power relations and access to mobility. Observing discourses in texts concerning urban mobility, we shall see how the hegemonic neoliberal ideology emerges in texts that promote “sustainability”. 

The use of metaphor and framing will also be scrutinised from an ecostylistic perspective. We will analyse The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, two lectures by the Victorian polymath John Ruskin, and will demonstrate that the ‘storm-and-cloud’ metaphors and frames in the text are beneficial discursive strategies urging us humans to preserve the ecological structures all living beings rely on. 

The Summer School will close with a session exploring the mainstream definitions of the term “sustainability”. We will identify the beneficial and destructive features of these definitions, and will compare them with the linguistic data and the value-system of a beneficial text from the environet focusing on ecological and social sustainability.