1,721,004 research outputs found
Taste the feeling: an ecolinguistic analysis of Coca-Cola advertising
Get PDFThis article presents an ecolinguistic framework for analysing advertising
and applies it to a wide range of TV advertisements for Coca-Cola. This particular
product was selected because of well-publicised criticisms of its impact on health and
the environment. The framework classifies advertisements into one of five types:
classic-type, identity-type, narrative-type, cause-type, and counter-type, with many
advertisements being hybrids of more than one type. The analysis uses multi-modal
discourse analysis to reveal underlying messages behind the advertisements, and
judges these according to an ecosophy based on the World Health Organisation’s
concept of One Health. The aim of the analysis is to reveal linguistic and multimodal
features that are used to persuade people to purchase products which potentially
harm both the consumer and the environment. The results can be practically applied
in critical language awareness materials that can promote healthier and more
environmentally beneficial purchasing
Natural health awareness: maintaining the health of the planet by maintaining optimum personal health (multimedia version)
No full textAs consumerism grows year on year, there are impacts not only on sustainability but also on human health. Economic structures push people away from physical activities such as walking, playing, gardening, singing and cleaning because they do not have an impact on economic growth or involve consumption. Instead consumers are offered an incredible range of labour saving devices from cars and artificial grass to powerful chemicals, which allow cleaning to occur without ‘moving a muscle’. Entertainment is delivered conveniently at the push of a button, and food supplied frozen in a plastic tray, allowing the sedentary consumer to simultaneously eat and be entertained. At the same time, however, buying into this sort of lifestyle leads to debt and stressful employment to repay the debt, often requiring sitting in front of a computer screen for long hours or repetitive movements on a production line. All this is terribly bad for health, but bad health itself supports even more industry and consumption as medical corporations supply products and services to keep people going, despite the inhuman conditions in which they live their lives. And conventional medicine itself has a strong negative environmental impact through all the machines, hospitals, medicines, instruments and products it depends on
Ecolinguistics as a transdisciplinary movement and a way of life
No full textAt first, ecolinguistics appears to be an interdisciplinary combination of linguistics (the study of language) and ecology (the study of the life-sustaining interactions of humans with other species and the physical environment). However, every area of social life from religion and politics to economics has an influence on how humans treat each other and the ecosystems that life depends on, and all of these areas are influenced by language. Ecolinguists find themselves analysing economics textbooks, political speeches, biology textbooks, religious texts, literature and films, exploring whether the use of language in these areas encourages environmentally destructive consumerism and disregard of other species, or whether they inspire people to reconnect and protect the natural world. The study of ecolinguistics therefore crosses many different disciplinary boundaries, straying into economics, political science, literary studies, film studies or religious studies. When ecolinguists venture into other disciplines they treat them critically – sometimes disciplines provide useful tools for analysis, but sometimes the conventions of the disciplines themselves are ecological destructive, e.g., the way that the discourse of neoclassical economics overlooks the impact of economic activity on the environment. Ecolinguistics therefore touches on a great range of disciplines, so could be thought of as multi-disciplinary, but it does not just draw from disciplines – it critically engages with them with the aim of disrupting and changing disciplinary conventions. Since ecolinguistics explores life-sustaining interactions it inevitably includes deep ethical issues about the effect of human activity on the ability of the earth to support life into the future. This gives ecolinguistics a goal which goes beyond narrow disciplinary concerns, and beyond academia: the goal of protecting the ecosystems that all life depends on. To do this, ecolinguists use linguistic analysis to critically examine the stories that our unequal and unsustainable industrial civilisation is built on and search for new stories to live by. In doing so, they begin to see the world in new ways and glimpse different ways to find wellbeing and meaning in their own lives. What may start as an interdisciplinary study of language and ecology becomes multidisciplinary, then transdisciplinary, and then expands out from academia altogether to influence the personal life of the researcher and their actions in the world. This chapter provides an account of the inter/multi/transdisciplinary nature of ecolinguistics through a personal narrative of the experience of the author
The Corporation as Person and Psychopath: Multimodal Metaphor, Rhetoric and Resistance
Get PDFThis article conducts a detailed analysis of multimodal metaphor in the documentary film The Corporation, with particular focus on the metaphor the corporation is a person. The metaphors that make up the film are analysed within the immediate context of the rhetorical structure of the film, the discursive context of the use of the corporation is a person metaphor by corporations to gain power, and the background context of the corporation is a person as a ubiquitous conceptual metaphor in everyday cognition. The metaphors in the film are then compared with other multimodal metaphors from two protest videos. The article can be thought of as Positive Discourse Analysis, in that the use of metaphors in the film and videos is held up as an example of how multimodal media can be used to resist hegemonic discourses that harm people and the environment. A practical aim of the analysis is to reveal the detailed workings of the metaphors in order to provide resources that can be drawn on in the construction of effective materials for challenging hegemonic constructions of the corporation in the future
Environmental Education Across Cultures: Beyond the Discourse of Shallow Environmentalism
Get PDFEnvironmental education has increasingly become part of the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum worldwide. This article analyses 26 EFL textbooks used in Japan, to discover what kind of environmental education they offer, and what this says about intercultural communication in the teaching/learning process. The results show how textbooks, by concentrating mainly on technical solutions to environmental problems, fail to open to criticism the cultural values at the heart of the environmental crisis, and direct attention away from important alternatives rooted in the deep ecological insights of traditional Japanese culture. The conclusion discusses ways to move away from unidirectional transfer of technical knowledge, towards a productive intercultural dialogue on ecological issues
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