Ecolinguistics and Environment

in Education
 Bloomsbury Advances in Ecolinguistics

Series Editors:
Arran Stibbe and Mariana Roccia

Advisory Board:
Nadine Andrews (Lancaster University, UK)
Maria Bortoluzzi (University of Udine, Italy)
Martin Döring (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Sue Edney (University of Bristol, UK)
Alwin Fill (University of Graz, Austria)
Diego Forte (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Amir Ghorbanpour (Tarbiat Modares University, Iran)
Nataliia Goshylyk (Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, Ukraine)
Huang Guowen (South China Agricultural University, China)
George Jacobs (Independent Scholar)
Kyoohoon Kim (Daegu University, South Korea)
Katerina Kosta (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
Mira Lieberman-Boyd (University of Sheffield, UK)
Keith Moser (Mississippi State University, USA)
Douglas Ponton (University of Catania, Italy)
Robert Poole (University of Alabama, USA)
Alison Sealey (University of Lancaster, UK)
Nina Venkataraman (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
Daniela Francesca Virdis (University of Cagliari, Italy)
Sune Vork Steffensen (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark)

Bloomsbury Advances in Ecolinguistics emerges at a time when businesses,

universities, national governments and many other organisations are
declaring an ecological emergency. With climate change and biodiversity loss
diminishing the ability of the Earth to support life, business leaders, politicians
and academics are asking how their work can contribute to efforts to preserve
the ecosystems that life depends on.
This book series explores the role that linguistics can play in addressing the
great challenges faced by humanity and countless other species. Although
significant advances have been made in addressing social issues such as racism,
sexism and social justice, linguistics has typically focused on oppression in
human communities and overlooked other species and the wider ecosystems
that support life. This is despite the disproportionate impact of ecological
destruction on oppressed groups. In contrast, this book series treats language
as an intrinsic part of both human societies and wider ecosystems. It explores
the role that different areas of linguistic enquiry, such as discourse analysis,
corpus linguistics, language diversity and cognitive linguistics can play at a
time of ecological emergency.
The titles explore themes such as the stories that underpin unequal and
unsustainable industrial societies; language contact and how linguistic
imperialism threatens the ecological wisdom embedded in endangered
languages; the use of linguistic analysis in ecocriticism, ecopsychology and
other ecological humanities and social sciences; and emerging theoretical
frameworks such as Harmonious Discourse Analysis. The titles also look to
cultures around the world for inspirational forms of language that can lead to
new stories to live by. In this way, the series contributes to linguistic theory
by placing language fully in its social and ecological context, and to practical
action by describing the role that linguistics can play in addressing ecological
issues.

Titles published in the series:

Corpus-Assisted Ecolinguistics, Robert Poole

Language and Ecology in Southern and Eastern Arabia, edited by Janet C.E.
Watson, Jon C. Lovett and Roberta Morano
Storytelling and Ecology, Anthony Nanson
TESOL and Sustainability, edited by Jason Goulah and John Katunich
iv
Ecolinguistics and Environment
in Education

Language, Culture and Textual Analysis

Emile Bellewes
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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Title: Ecolinguistics and environment in education : language, culture and textual analysis /
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advances in ecolinguistics | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This
book argues for the need to develop classroom practices which aid students in critically
reviewing and evaluating different perspectives on discourses of environmentalism and
sustainability. Employing ecolinguistics as a form of eco-critical pedagogy, Emile Farmer
presents key concepts underpinning ecolinguistics, before guiding readers through their
application in the classroom. Bridging environmental discourse analysis and linguistics, this
book shows how environmentally significant messages can be analysed and decoded in
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 Contents

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

Part I Textual Analysis and the Natural World

1 Situating Ecolinguistics within the Humanities as a Form of
Environmental Pedagogy 15
2 Cultural Narratives and Our Relationship with the Living World 28
3 Critical Approaches and Perspectives on Language and the
Natural World 47
4 Ecolinguistics 75

Part II Pedagogical Concerns

5 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 109
6 Ecopedagogy 132
7 Ecojustice Education and Pedagogy of Responsibility 150
8 Creating Tasks for Ecocritical Language Awareness 183
9 Setting Out the Conceptual and Pedagogical Foundations for
Working with Critical Language Awareness and Ecolinguistics
in the Classroom 206

References 235
Index 248
 Acknowledgements

The production and culmination of a book often come as the result of many
different direct but also indirect sources and influences. I would first like to
thank Ken Paterson, formerly of the University of Westminster, whose advice
and encouragement came at a crucial point in my career. It is fair to say that
this book would never have been written had it not been for that help. It is also
important to acknowledge Arran Stibbe’s role in this work. His warm, positive
and instructive response to my original pitch was the catalyst for setting the
whole process in motion. But his influence goes much deeper, as, like many, I
found my way to the wonderful field of ecolinguistics through his writing. I must
also recognize the support of my PhD supervisor Nigel Musk, who has been a
constant source of wisdom and guidance, and I should also include patience.
Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewer of this book, whose feedback
helped shape it into its current form. I must also acknowledge the input that
I have received on ideas and materials from the many students whom I have
taught at Linköping University over the years. In this regard, I owe special thanks
to my former student, Astrid Linder, for allowing me to include her writing
in this book. I would also like to express my heartfelt thanks to my editors at
Bloomsbury Publishing, Sarah MacDonald, Laura Gallon, Morwenna Scott
and Andrew Wardell, whose patience and professionalism have been crucial in
facilitating the production of this work.
My deep gratitude also goes to my partner, Malin, for your endless support
through the writing process, as well as your encouragement and insightful
reflections and comments on my manuscript. Our shared love of nature has
been a source of endless inspiration and joy, and the impact that you have had
on the process of writing this book will never be forgotten.
And last but certainly not least, I must thank my mother, Mary, who, despite
difficult times, forever encouraged my love of the natural world. You supported
and nurtured my childhood fascination for the ponds, rivers and streams in
the countryside around Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge and helped me care
for the many non-human animals that came into our lives. This book in many
ways exists as a legacy of the compassion and care with which you taught me to
approach the living world. For this, I will be eternally grateful.
 Introduction

Many in the scientific community now recognise that planet Earth has left the
predictable Holocene, a period in Earth’s history that nurtured our species
throughout its development, and has now entered the Anthropocene, an epoch
defined by planetary-scale impacts on geology, the biotic community, and
climatic processes (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). When it comes to this biotic
community, we are already seeing devastating changes to the population sizes of
the planet’s wild animals. In 2022, the World Wide Fund’s (WWF) ‘Living Planet
Report’ found that between 1970 and 2022, assessed populations of vertebrate
animals, that is, mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, had fallen by an
average of 69 per cent. With an average fall of 94 per cent, the report found that
populations in Latin America and the Caribbean had experienced the biggest
reductions. Globally, it was freshwater species that had suffered the greatest
reductions in population sizes, falling by an average of 83 per cent. According
to Ceballos (2017), we have entered the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, a
process through which 32 per cent of the world’s vertebrates are in decline, with
40 per cent of the studied species having undergone significant reductions in
population size. Novacek and Cleland (2001: 5466) state that ‘[t]here is consensus
in the scientific community that the current massive degradation of habitat and
extinction of many of the Earth’s biota is unprecedented and is taking place on a
catastrophically short timescale’ and that it is not ‘unrealistic’ that we will have
seen ‘30% extermination of all species by the mid-21st century’. This, the authors
(ibid.) argue, can be compared to ‘catastrophic mass extinction events of the
past’. Significantly impacted are marine ecosystems, which are being intensively
fished by huge industrial trawlers, which use vast nets that catch targeted species
of fish measured by the tonne in addition to untold numbers of other marine
organisms as by-catch. It is estimated that if current levels of exploitation
continue, by 2048, global populations of all fished species will have collapsed
(Worm et al. 2006). In addition to this, Iceland, Norway, Japan and the Faroe
Islands continue to kill large numbers of whales and dolphins every year, citing
cultural values and sustainable yields.
2 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Another major way in which humans are contributing to the dramatic

reduction in wild animals globally is through an acceleration of the destruction
of natural ecosystems for agriculture, much of which is devoted to feeding
animals that will be slaughtered for meat. For example, more forests, wetlands,
wild meadows and other natural features have been turned into agricultural land
in the last half century than in the 150 years prior to that (MEA 2005: 2). This has
contributed to wholescale, human-caused changes in the animal composition of
planet Earth. For example, Bar-On et al. (2018) studied the relative degree to
which different organisms and members of the Earth community contribute to
the overall vertebrate biomass of the planet. They found that while humans make
up around 36 per cent of the biomass of mammals, it is through the production of
our food that we make the biggest impact. For example, farm animals comprise
60 per cent of the biomass, while wild animals make up only 4 per cent. Their
analyses showed similar values for the difference between poultry and wild
birds, with the former having a biomass around three times that of wild birds. In
addition to the destruction of wild habitats and the decimation of wild animal
populations that come as a result, Steinfeld et al. (2006: 122) reported that farm
animals produce 18 per cent of all anthropogenic climate change emissions.
Indeed, the total emissions from all human activities continue to increase
despite international declarations and pledges to the contrary. In 2022, the
World Meteorological Organization reported that in 2021 carbon dioxide
(CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) reached their highest levels ever
recorded (WMO 2022: 3).
We have already started to see the effects of these atmospheric concentrations
of greenhouse gases as they start to affect the stability of the climate. According
to the IPCC 2022 report, changes in climatic processes have already resulted
in considerable ecological damage to the planet with the irreversible loss of
land, freshwater and coastal and marine ecosystems (Kikstra et al. 2022).
The report states that around half of the species that have been assessed have
shifted their ranges in order to escape climate change-related warming. In the
oceans, this has resulted in marine species moving towards the poles, while
on land many species are seeking the refuge of higher elevations. In addition
to the gradual increase in global temperatures, the increased intensity of
extremes of heat during heat waves has resulted in the loss of hundreds of
localized species accompanied by mass deaths on land and in the sea (ibid.).
We are also now seeing species extinctions on a global scale. One of the more
worrying observations from the IPCC’s 2022 report was that both the degree
and magnitude of the impacts caused by climate breakdown are greater than
 Introduction 3

previous estimates (ibid.). Accordingly, the message from the report stated
categorically that urgent and drastic actions are needed to provide us with any
chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, and therefore any possibility of
averting the effects of devastating heatwaves, crop failures, and water shortages
on those least able to adapt.
Thus, we find ourselves confronted by not one but multiple environmental and
ecological crises, and instead of clear solutions, we are surrounded by countless
discourses and narratives on what our relationship to the natural world should
be and how we should react to ecological destruction on a planetary scale. Many
of these perspectives are based on vested interests or a desire to avoid change.
They will often cite cultural values and traditional ways of life, which in modern
societies very often result in subsuming the non-human natural world into the
realm of human culture rather than acknowledging culture as an inherent feature
of nature. In modern, Western societies, these perspectives are often associated
with the perpetuation of centuries-old behaviours that represent an exploitative
and destructive relationship with the non-human world. Other voices will
claim that saving the planet is all down to the individual, thus discouraging
us from holding our politicians to account for ecologically damaging policies
or complete inaction. Others will, quite rightly, make the case that the natural
world is suffering under the weight of an ever-more pervasive human impact,
while some progressive voices risk establishing apathy towards the degradation
of the natural world by arguing that such has been our impact on the planet
that the notion of a pure, uncontaminated nature is now a fallacy and that we
should therefore intensify our manipulation of nature in order to maximize
benefits for human society (Kareiva et al. 2011, 2014). To add to this, debates
exist over what should be prioritized. For example, is it idealistic to prioritize net
zero climate change emissions as soon as possible when there are fears over fuel
security? And if things were not already confusing enough, recent months have
seen the emergence of the ‘climate sceptic’, who, while distancing themselves
from the out-and-out climate denier, use phrases such as ‘the climate change
narrative’ in order to pour scorn on the environmental movement, muddy the
already cloudy waters and portray scientific consensus on climate change and its
effects as nothing more than a difference of opinions between two groups with
equal claims to the truth. Many will advance technological solutions irrespective
of whether they exist or may never exist. Such perspectives allow us to believe
that the problem is not us, but somehow out there, for someone else to fix, thus
leaving us absolved of any responsibility. This is a world view that also eschews
the notion that there are larger, cultural factors relating to how we view and
4 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

understand nature, which manifest their effects on a societal scale. Addressing

this point, Neimanis et al. (2015) argue that there is a huge imbalance in terms of
the ways in which humanity relates to the natural world, in that ethical, political
and relational perspectives are backgrounded, while a strong emphasis is placed
on technical or managerial aspects of relating to and addressing ecological
and environmental problems (ibid.). They cite Palsson et al. (2011: 5; cited in
Neimanis et al. 2015: 65), who state the ‘need to re-frame global environmental
change issues fundamentally as social and human challenges, rather than
just environmental issues’. Relevant here is the culturally and linguistically
propagated nature–culture dichotomy, which conceptually separates humankind
and the rest of nature by positioning humans within the world of culture and
meaning while at the same time relegating the non-human to the status of mere
materiality, and therefore the object of science. A prominent theme running
through the environmental humanities is a recognition of the need to challenge
and ultimately collapse this binary concept and thereby resituate nature within
culture with all the implications that has for imbuing the former with the sorts
of meanings that we automatically associate with the latter.
For the environmental educator, David Orr (1992), our lack of connection
and relationality regarding the rest of nature is mirrored in mainstream
education, where the human world is placed front and centre, while any sense of
our complete dependence on a functioning natural world is excluded. The result
of this, suggests Orr, is that students are left with little if any awareness of their
natural surroundings and their responsibilities towards them (ibid.). Orr (1992:
12) famously stated that: ‘[a]ll education is environmental education. By what is
included or excluded, students are taught that they are a part or apart from the
natural world’. Thus, for Orr, curricula take on an ideological stance on what is
or is not important, which can be understood by what is or is not included, and
where the natural world is included as a topic of study within curricula, it is
subject to particular discursive representations.
Indeed, within education, but also more broadly, we are surrounded by a
bewildering milling mass of discourses and perspectives on our relationship with
the natural world. The field of ecolinguistics represents a vital tool in helping us
and our learners make sense of all of these messages. For example, ecolinguistic
analyses can help us scrutinize perspectives and world views on nature and the
environmental crises that make claims that might be questioned. They can also
allow us to filter unhelpful perspectives on our relationship with nature through
a framework of normative concepts taken from areas of environmental ethics
and philosophy. In applying a critical eye to such perspectives by viewing them
 Introduction 5

against well-established environmental philosophies and perspectives they can

be seen in a new light and contextualized. Ecolinguistic analyses allow us to
tease out the ideologies, cultural metaphors and narratives that underpin certain
world views on our relationship with nature and expose them to scrutiny and
different perspectives. Similarly, language use that normalizes and naturalizes
destructive attitudes and actions towards the living world can be exposed and
critiqued.
However, as a field dedicated to the study of language and semiosis regarding
the natural world but which is situated within the larger area of the environmental
humanities, ecolinguistics is perfectly poised to not only identify and critique
examples of language in use but also highlight those that represent the natural
world in ways that encourage us to nurture and protect it (Stibbe 2015). Part of
this endeavour can take the form of questioning the nature–culture dichotomy
that conceptually and linguistically constructs non-humans as nothing more
than a resource to be exploited for human utility, as opposed to a complex
network of agential organisms upon which our very survival depends. Towards
this goal, the analyst can investigate and celebrate uses of language and forms of
semiosis that blur the conceptual boundaries set up between humans and nature
by, for example, emphasizing the agential and dynamic aspects of the natural
world as well as highlighting what humans and other animals share, such as their
agency, cognition and emotions.

Who Is This Book For?

As a subject, ecolinguistics is something of a child of two worlds. On the one

hand, it is a subfield of linguistics and therefore relates to the academic study of
language and how it works. Thus, ecolinguists, in line with other linguists, are
interested in the individual components and structure of languages as well as
how they function as forms of communication. On the other hand, this interest
is not merely academic; it comes with the normative notion that the natural
world is under threat and that it should be protected. In this way, ecolinguistics
also functions as a form of environmental education where the content learned
relates not to scientific facts about nature but rather theories, concepts and
world views about the natural world, our place in it, and how we can look for the
linguistic traces of these in examples of language in use. In this way, ecolinguistic
analyses tend to focus not on single-issue or piecemeal solutions to ecologically
damaging behaviours and policies, but instead larger societal or cultural
6 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

structures or narratives and discourses are often understood as the underlying

source of ecological destruction. Ecolinguistic analyses often involve identifying
evidence of these in language use and critiquing them, often in relation to an
ecological philosophy (ecosophy) comprised of a set of tenets that sets out a
particular view of the world or normative stance. Thus, what is learned about
the living world through ecolinguistic analyses pertains very much to the world
of ideas and ethics.
There are two overall ways in which we might utilise ecolinguistics in
educational settings. Decisions about which of these we choose will depend
on the teaching context and the preferences of the teacher concerned. At one
extreme, ecolinguistics can be used as a form of environmental education
that is based on environmental humanities ways of sensitizing learners to
environmental philosophies and theories while at the same time teaching them
how language users either align with them or resist them. At the other end, a
critical approach to how the natural world is signified in language by language
users can be put into practice as an overall theme by which language structures
and vocabulary and so on are contextualized in order to facilitate learning
about language and motivate learners. In the middle, there is huge scope for an
approach to education that can develop in learners a keen awareness of concepts,
theories and philosophy regarding the natural world and our responsibilities
towards it, while also promoting a deep knowledge of the ways that language
both functions as a system of meaning-making and can also be used in order to
advance particular ideologies in ways that are not always transparent or direct.
The activities presented in this book are provided as a general reference
and therefore do not need to be slavishly adhered to. They can, for example,
be used as a foundation that can be altered in order to suit one’s requirements
and teaching contexts. Alternatively, the overall structure of each activity can
be applied to different language items according to the level of the learners
and particular aspect of discourse the teacher wants to focus on. The teaching
context in which I have worked with ecolinguistics is that of English language
teacher education. These are learners who will go on to become English language
teachers. Therefore, learning to take a critical stance on language and how
forms of language come with different meaning affordances and can be used to
represent different entities in different ways often due to vested interests can be
argued to be a crucial aspect of the learning of a language. This takes on particular
relevance and importance in relation to the receptive skill of understanding how
the resources of a language construct particular meanings – a skill language
learners will need in order to become competent users of the language. However,
 Introduction 7

ecolinguistics and the ideas, theories and activities in this book can be applied to
a wide range of learning contexts. My learners are learning English as a second
(or other) language (ESL), but there is the need for an academic slant to their
education as they are student teachers studying towards a teaching degree. This
can sometimes result in the prioritization of the receptive skills of learning about
a language rather than being able to produce language. While this emphasis
will move towards the latter in ESL learners, there still remains the need for
knowledge about how the target language functions to create meanings and how
some of these meanings are neither direct nor literal. Indeed, in this regard, the
application of critical approaches to linguistics can be a fruitful endeavour when
working with ESL learners, and the ideas and activities presented in this book
can be applied or adapted to many ESL contexts.
However, the application of critical approaches to language and the
natural world also brings with it huge potential for enriching many other
educational contexts that are not necessarily based around language. Courses
in environmental ethics or philosophy could benefit significantly from teacher
presentations and learner investigations on how particular attitudes and world
views play out in language use and how language can be employed in order to
advance particular environmental ideologies. In such educational contexts, it
is necessary to both bring the subject of ecolinguistics closer to the learners
and bring the learners closer to the subject. By this I mean reducing the
degree to which descriptions and discussions about language rely on technical
linguistic terminology and concepts while at the same time sensitizing such
learners to some linguistic concepts. In addition, courses in philosophy,
both at the university level and below, can be enriched by implementing an
ecolinguistics approach. Ecolinguistics can and often does address issues
related to environmental and animal philosophy and ethics and can allow
insight into how these theories become materialized in language use. They
can be applied to the real world through an awareness of how they are often
used as orienting concepts regarding how we think and act towards the non-
human natural world. For example, students might learn about the theories
of the Enlightenment philosopher René Descartes. Ecolinguistic analyses of
texts and other forms of language in use can be used to uncover linguistic
examples of the Cartesian concept of the mind–body split as well as how this
manifests as a form of conceptual and linguistic dichotomization whereby
human and non-human animals are placed within very different categories
suggesting very different treatment. Similarly, students of political science and
social studies might be presented with texts that relate to ways in which people
8 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

employ language in such a way as to position themselves politically in relation

to environmental issues such as climate breakdown, climate refugees, the
biodiversity crisis, farming, hunting, food production and land use. Courses
in sustainable development and education for sustainable development could
also benefit in a whole range of ways from the inclusion of textual analysis from
an ecocritical perspective. Ecocritical analyses can shine a light both on what
sustainable development is and on what it should be while also problematizing
its fundamental assumptions, not least those that are suggested through the
very collocation, ‘sustainable development’.

The Organization of the Book

Part I
This book is organized into two main parts. Part I establishes the concept of text
analysis and applies it to the investigation of uses of language that relate to the
natural world and the relationships we have with it.
Chapter 1 aims to establish the field of ecolinguistics as a form of humanities
environmental education. It makes crucial connections between culture,
pedagogy as a broad concept, language and the perspectives and ideologies that we
develop about ourselves and the rest of nature and therefore our responsibilities
towards it. In this chapter, the concept of transformational learning is introduced
as an important pedagogical perspective which can be employed in order to
unseat the sorts of mindsets and ways of thinking that encourage ecologically
destructive ways of living. Ecolinguistics and other approaches to the analysis
of language and semiosis are positioned as having a crucial role in facilitating a
critical approach that seeks to challenge such deep-seated perspectives.
Chapter 2 takes a comprehensive view of some of the important cultural
narratives that have been identified within ecocriticism and environmental
humanities modes of investigation. These pervasive ideas and ways of thinking
are seen as influencing human society’s understandings and orientations towards
the non-human natural world. This chapter both builds on and complements
Chapter 1 by detailing the very cultural concepts and metanarratives that are
implicated in playing a role in forming how our habits of mind and mental
models conceptualize and construe the natural world. In addition to this broader
pedagogical goal of accessing and unsettling deeply ingrained and ecologically
unhelpful perspectives on the natural world, the concept of cultural narratives
 Introduction 9

and discourses will be shown to represent an important area for environmentally

oriented text and discourse analysts.
Chapter 3 explores the origins and development of critical approaches to
language. The chapter discusses how both the literary field and that of linguistics
have developed the notion of criticality and applied this to the analysis of texts
in order to read between the lines and unearth particular perspectives and
ideologies that can be called into question. In both fields, the concept of power
and more specifically the power of language over people has been an important
orienting factor. In addition, both fields have applied the notions of power and
language to the natural world in the fields of ecocriticism and ecolinguistics,
respectively. However, due to its importance to the field of ecolinguistics, the
chapter is most devoted to an exploration of the area of critical discourse studies
and its key ideas and assumptions. One of these is the notion of discourses.
The chapter explores how these discourses and the subordinate themes that
comprise them work to construct reality in particular ways, often through their
interactions with other discourses. In addition, the chapter will investigate a
range of analytical concepts that are used in critical discourse studies to analyse
texts and highlight ways in which positions and particular representations which
otherwise might not be noticed are advanced in texts.
Chapter 4 will both introduce and investigate in more detail the field of
qualitative ecolinguistics. The chapter will run through the origins of the field
and its main theoretical assumptions before looking at the ideas that characterize
how the approach is currently conceptualized. In order to obtain a good grasp
of what qualitative ecolinguistics can do, how it can be applied and what it can
uncover and highlight, the chapter will investigate an important ecolinguistic
study by Andrew Goatly (2017).

Part II
Part II of the book aims to relate ecolinguistics to prominent forms of critical
and environmental pedagogy in order to view the former as an approach to
environmental education that follows the humanities traditions of investigating
the products of human culture in order to understand more about the human
condition. In this respect, it is human-centred, but crucially, only insomuch as
human cultural perspectives and mindsets regarding nature are seen as necessary
for changing patterns of behaviour that impact nature negatively. This part of
the book brings together the educational ideas of Paulo Freire, the linguistic
theory of Per Linell (2009), and the new materialist concepts of diffraction and
10 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

agential realism of Karen Barad in order to formulate an educational theory for

the application of ecolinguistics and other approaches to text analysis.
Chapter 5 introduces us to the world-renowned educational philosopher,
Paulo Freire, one of the world’s most prominent and influential theorists in
critical pedagogy. The ‘critical’ in critical pedagogy, as is the case in critical theory
and critical discourse studies, comes with an agenda – that learning about the
world in order to understand it is not enough. Instead, learning should be used
to change it. In Freire’s original conceptualization, the world was understood
as the societal structures that oppress people. However, the underlying critical
concepts and view of education that are central to Freire’s vision all represent a
resource for the application of ecolinguistics to education. In addition, Freirean
critical literacy sets the foundations for further investigation of forms of critical
environmental pedagogies.
Chapter 6 naturally leads on from foundational Freirean educational principles
and views them in relation to ecopedagogy, a field that seeks to apply Freirean
concepts to environmental education. The chapter argues that ecolinguistics can
be applied in order to facilitate the overall goals of ecopedagogy, a field that
also sees the critical analysis and critique of forms of human communication
regarding the natural world as an important educational endeavour in combating
oppression and coercive forms of power. Crucially, in the field of ecopedagogy,
the concept of oppression, like other Freirean concepts, is broadened to include
the natural world. For example, this chapter investigates how the concept can
be directly related to human impact on nature or the human need for healthy,
functioning ecosystems and how the degradation of these can be understood as
a form of oppression.
Chapter 7 continues the theme of critical humanities approaches to
environmental education by investigating the related approaches of ecojustice
education and a pedagogy of responsibility. This chapter will argue that
ecojustice education represents a particularly worthy and suitable pedagogical
foundation for the application of ecolinguistics to education, generally, and,
more specifically, environmental education. Moreover, ecojustice education
contains many concepts that are either shared with the field of ecolinguistics
or extremely compatible with it. For example, ecojustice education comes with
its own ecologically normative framework as well as a strong focus on the
influence of language on our attitudes towards the natural world. A pedagogy of
responsibility shares some of the foundations set in place by ecojustice education
but contributes important concepts. While the field of ecopedagogy extends the
Freirean concept of oppression so that it can include the notion of the destruction
 Introduction 11

of the natural world upon which people and other species depend, by placing a
strong emphasis upon the concept of responsibility towards the living world, a
pedagogy of responsibility broadens the notion of oppression further to include
the discourses, discursive networks and ecologically destructive actions within
which we all participate.
Chapter 8 contextualizes the kinds of activities that we might use with
students when using an ecolinguistics approach in educational settings by
situating them within a wider cartography of receptive and analytical language
learning approaches. This chapter also discusses these types of activities and the
theories of learning that underpin them.
Chapter 9 sets out some important foundations for the application of
ecolinguistics in educational settings. It establishes the concept of declarative
and procedural knowledge and the need for the former in order to facilitate
the latter. In addition, the chapter cautions against the assumption that learners
will easily and naturally be able to apply notions inherent within environmental
philosophy, the environmental humanities, ecocriticism and ecolinguistics
to the natural world from the outset. In this chapter, I therefore argue for the
establishment of a conceptual bridge that will help learners make the important
connections between the human and non-human animal and to see the concept
of oppression and subjugation in terms of those who are impacted, regardless of
species.
 Part I

Textual Analysis and the

Natural World
14
 1

Situating Ecolinguistics within the Humanities

as a Form of Environmental Pedagogy

The word ‘pedagogy’ typically brings about particular associations connected

to the application of a set of educational theories to formal educational settings.
However, within some fields of education, such as critical and emancipatory
pedagogy, there is a rather more expansive understanding of what pedagogy is
and can be. For example, Henri Giroux has introduced the concept of public
pedagogy (2011). Public pedagogy for Giroux refers to the pedagogical force
inherent within the discourses flowing from institutions of general society. It is
these institutional and cultural flows of information that make up the cultural
webs within which we exist and make sense of the world. Therefore, built into the
concept of public pedagogy is the notion that discourses, information, ideologies
and normative stances that carry the power to shape our minds and the very
knowledge we develop stem from a wide variety of sources outside of formal
educational settings. When viewed in this way, almost any arena within which we
are subject to perspectives and flows of information can be seen as representing
the potential to exert a pedagogical force. Both traditional and social media
are key elements within public pedagogy and play a hugely significant role in
forming society’s understandings and orientations towards the natural world.
Likewise, the media literally mediates how we come into contact with the
majority of environmental and ecological issues. For many theorists, within these
institutional frameworks of knowledge dissemination, environmental crises
have been framed as scientific phenomena and more specifically very much the
preserve of the natural sciences. For the late environmental philosopher and
ecofeminist Val Plumwood, such conversations are characterized by what she
referred to as ‘the tyranny of narrow focus’, a form of environmental discourse
that constrains our ecological imaginations by establishing clear and rigid
discursive boundaries that limit how we can conceptualize solutions (Plumwood
2014: 111). Ecological problems are portrayed and indeed constructed through
16 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

particular choices of language items and other forms of semiosis such as images
and video. These choices set limits to what can be understood and discussed and
constitute the lenses through which environmental issues can be approached and
understood. If ecological problems are constantly portrayed as separate from
us and beyond our control, as areas that are solved through the manipulation
of nature and technological implementations made by scientists, they will be
treated as apolitical and in managerial terms by the consumers of media.
Indeed, Neimanis et al. (2015: 75–76) lament that we are in a period of
“post-political milieu”, a de-politicization of environmentalism in which our
focus is on scientific and fact-based perspectives at the expense of cultural and
political reflections on our relationship with the non-human natural world. This
de-politicization, perhaps conveniently, maintains the notions of the environment,
nature and ecology as very much outside the realm of not only political thought
but also beyond the fields of philosophy, ethics, ideas, imaginaries or aesthetics.
Our inability to tackle the year-on-year increases in CO2 emissions, or species
extinctions and falls in wild animal populations are sometimes portrayed in terms
of an information gap, simply a lack of research or information on what to do. An
unfortunate example of this perspective was demonstrated by calls by conservative
commentators for Greta Thunberg to ‘go back to school’ if she wanted to save
the planet. According to this position, societal-level behavioural change or the
implementation of new technologies is seen as apolitical and as unhindered and
uncomplicated by human or cultural factors. Those holding this perspective see
no need for us to address our cultural ways of orienting to the rest of the living
world. We can, by this token, continue talking about how we are wreaking havoc
and destruction on Earth’s systems and organisms and wondering what we should
do about it while at the same time adhering to the very cultural perspectives and
norms that are inherently rather than incidentally destructive to the living world.
Plumwood deftly exposes the fallacy of this narrow focus by evoking the
predicament of the Easter Island populations before their eventual fall into
ecological oblivion:

The northern tribe of Easter Islanders never question the desperate religious
cult that has devastated their section of the island as they try to placate with tree
sacrifice the angry gods who withhold the rain. Instead, their leaders look around
for new sources of trees, casting their eyes perhaps on the still-forested lands of
the smaller tribe to the south. Meanwhile, their clever men, their scientists, are
set to search for tree substitutes – other types of vegetation perhaps. But the need
to consume the trees, given by the religion, is never questioned. (Plumwood
2014: 111)
 Situating Ecolinguistics within the Humanities 17

Indeed, our mainstream media tend to portray solutions to environmental and

ecological problems as relating to superficial behavioural change, managerial
issues and technofixes without ever attempting to step out of this discursive
paradigm in order to question the cultural narratives that influence how we
understand our relationship with the living world and constrain our thinking
about nature to narrowly defined parameters. This perspective is also seen in
positions and movements that are ostensibly pro-environmental. The late
philosopher and environmental activist Arne Naess used the concepts of deep
and shallow in order to highlight key differences between different environmental
movements. This notion of deep and shallow ecology or environmentalism
formed a significant foundation for his Deep Ecology environmental movement.
For Naess, the shallow environmental position eschews the need for probing
investigations into our cultural relationship with the non-human world in favour
of an emphasis on seeing environmental problems as separate technical issues,
with their solutions coming through the development of new technologies
(Naess 1995: 71–4). Such shallow perspectives only address the symptoms of
environmental destruction while ignoring the deeper political and cultural
causes (Kopnina and Cherniak 2015: 37). A shallow environmental perspective
therefore skirts around the possibility of cultural or societal reflection and self-
examination in the sense that it avoids explorations of the ‘deeper’ cultural
foundations and causes of environmental problems, instead focusing its
attention on a ‘shallow’ perspective that prioritizes the ‘everyday’ and more
tangible concerns of safeguarding the health and prosperity of people in the West
through preventing pollution while investigating the best ways to exploit nature
for human ends (Naess 1995: 71–4). The environmental educator, Chet Bowers
(2001a: 5), made the case that this tendency to focus on piecemeal solutions to
environmental problems rather than acknowledging the cultural foundations to
the causes of ecological destruction is a dominant feature of Western society: ‘The
marginalization of culture as a major contributor to environmental degradation
is matched by a collective silence about the nature of cultural practices that have
a smaller environmental impact’ (ibid.). Bowers (ibid.: 10) expressed concern
that this perspective is also prevalent within environmental educators, who
‘socialize’ students into taking on ‘eco-management approaches’ in the guise of
genuine solutions to environmental problems, when in reality they represent
mere stop-gap measures.
However, academic fields such as the environmental humanities,
ecocriticism, feminist new materialism, post-humanism and ecofeminism are
now increasingly highlighting this ecologically destructive cultural foundation
18 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

to Western society. Such an understanding opens up and suggests very different

orientations on how we think of nature and how we might go about solving
the myriad ecological and environmental problems we face. One entailment of
such a societal shift is that it is culture itself that is the problem. This position
suggests that managerial, behavioural and technological changes carried out
within a culture that estranges us from the rest of the living world will never
succeed in enacting the kinds of changes that are needed to reverse the climate
and ecological crises.
Another interpretation is that environmental problems should be
reconceptualized through deeper, more radical understandings of our species’
ontological relationships with the natural world (Neimanis et al. 2015; Bowers
2001a; Kahn 2010; Martusewicz 2001; Naess 1995; Opperman and Iovino 2016;
Plumwood 2004). Indeed, when environmental problems are understood not
simply as those to be addressed by the natural sciences, but instead as issues
connected to our cultural ways of being, such as our relationality towards the
rest of nature, ecological issues can suddenly be viewed as those pertaining to
the field of ethics and normative concepts. They can be seen as problems that
pertain very much to cultural ways of understanding and as such enter the realm
of humanities modes of inquiry, such as ecocriticism and ecolinguistics.
We have seen how the concepts of language, media and culture are intimately
intertwined. Language acts as a form of media, often coming between us and the
world we want to understand, experience or portray. At the same time, culture
includes material objects, such as a pen, and mental constructs such as systems
of belief, cultural narratives and semiotic systems, such as language (Duranti
1997: 41). Both physical cultural artefacts and symbolic artefacts can act as
vehicles for cultural ways of seeing the world. Language can act as a cultural lens
that influences how we experience the material and social worlds by offering up
language entities that carry pre-set cultural assumptions and presuppositions
about the world. Thus, one’s ability to use these linguistic features in order to
create novel messages is always constrained by the set meanings they carry
and how they have tended to be used by others. However, culture in the
form of ideational objects brings with it a huge potential for mediating our
understandings of reality and therefore the natural world.
Clearly, language and other forms of semiotic practices have a significant
role to play here. However, cultural frames of reference also mediate both
our understandings of nature and our experiences of it. Anthropologists, for
example, have long held objections to the notion that one can have unmediated
and therefore direct engagements with nature (Duranti 1997: 42):
 Situating Ecolinguistics within the Humanities 19

[E]ven when we stand naked in the middle of the rain forest or swim in the
middle of the ocean, we have our culture with us. We stand (or swim) in culturally
defined ways and we think and represent ourselves in that environment through
conscious thought, which has been shaped by culture-specific socialization
practices, including practices defining our relationship with the forest and the
ocean. (Duranti 1997: 42)

Culture in this sense can be understood as a set of mediating systems that

are each separate and different but related to each other. It can, therefore, be
seen as comprised of material as well as ideational artefacts. The latter can
themselves be further broken down into symbolic systems and cognitive frames
of reference for seeing the world. Therefore, cognitive structures, as artefacts of
the human condition, mediate our understandings of what we experience and
come into contact with. One such structure is that of knowledge, comprised
of hierarchically organized, mentally stored categories of concepts and schemas
consisting of relationships between persons, groups, objects and actions (van
Dijk 2015: 68). In fact, an important theory of culture suggests that it inheres
within knowledge. This idea is seen as quite uncontroversial when we consider
the rather widely held understanding that culture is learned and taken up by
individuals through their participation in interaction and exposure to discourse
(Duranti 1997: 24). As we have seen, language is an important carrier of cultural
ideas, beliefs, assumptions and presuppositions; therefore, socialization through
language practices inculturates the individual into the culture of those they
are surrounded by (ibid.). Thus, culture can be learned like any other sort of
knowledge. As the same knowledge of the world can be learned by groups as well
as just individuals, the implications of this are that certain aspects of mind and
ways of understanding the world can also exist as social cognition distributed
among members of a community (van Dijk 2014, 2015). Therefore, ways of
understanding, seeing and also representing the natural world in discourse
exist as culturally shared aspects of knowledge across communities. Key to this
notion is the relationship between the kinds of everyday knowledge that people
have about the world and the concept of belief. Van Dijk (2014: 28) defines
belief as thoughts about the world that are tentatively expressed because they
represent ideas and portrayals of the world that might not satisfy the knowledge
requirements of a particular epistemic community and therefore be accepted
by its members. Therefore, knowledge is understood as beliefs that meet the
epistemic requirements of particular communities (van Dijk 2015: 68). Thus,
knowledge and belief are not constructed as different in kind; instead, they are
20 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

positioned on a spectrum of relative levels of validation by specific communities.

What is, therefore, generally considered to be knowledge in one social group
will be thought of as belonging more to the realm of belief in another. This
placement of the two concepts on a cline highlights the constructed nature of
knowledge and positions it as a type of belief and belief as a type of knowledge.
It also shifts the concept of knowledge away from the area of hard verifiable
facts towards that which people use in order to orientate to the world on an
everyday basis. Van Dijk refers to this sort of knowledge as natural knowledge, a
type of knowledge that is ‘relativistic and contextual’ and which is ‘used by real
people in real situations and in real epistemic communities’ (ibid.: 16). However,
as one of the main premises undergirding this book is the need to challenge
ecologically destructive, cultural narratives and ways of thinking about nature
that are prevalent in modern societies, it is necessary to explore the interplay
between socially shared aspects of knowledge and beliefs and the relationship
that these have with individual cognitive structures.

Mental Models

Van Dijk’s sociocognitive theory of cognition and knowledge posits that there
is a three-way relationship between discourse, cognition and society, or the
social component. How knowledge relates to the individual is catered for by the
cognition element within the triangle. Human beings form mental models or
cognitive representations of both personal experiences (experience models) (van
Dijk 2015: 66) and scenarios that play out in discourse, which van Dijk refers to as
situation models (van Dijk 2014: 51). These mental representations are stored in
our long-term memory (ibid.: 50). They are multimodal in nature and organized
in terms of time, setting, participant roles, identities, relations, actions and so
on. Interestingly, van Dijk (2015: 67) argues that our mental models engage in
a two-way relationship with discourse and that they not only control how we
understand discourse but can also determine how situations are represented in
language (ibid.). Crucially, situation mental models are both formed and updated
through exposure to the grammatical and discursive construction of events by
users of language and semiosis (van Dijk 2014: 52). In syntax, for example, we
can relate different entities to different sentence functions or clause elements
within sentences and subordinate clauses. Of course, this is a very structural way
of relating to situations and one that does not cover all of the subtle meanings
that are needed in order to indicate and represent the actions and relationships
 Situating Ecolinguistics within the Humanities 21

between participants of the situation. Such intricate and multitudinous

relationships constructed in discourse are better captured and identified through
the use of a range of different approaches. The fields of semantics and Hallidayan
linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen 2013), for example, offer us the concept of
semantic or participant roles in clauses, which assign a meaning relationship to
the discursive representation of the roles taken by entities in mental models. For
example, we can identify the agent, in other words, the doer of an action indicated
by a dynamic verb, and a theme, the entity that is affected by or undergoes an
action (Yule 2016). Longacre (1983) expands the concept of theme (referred to
in this book as the goal) by also relating it to the entity that is subject to a change
of state or location, or that which is owned, obtained or exchanged. Yule (2016)
refers to the clause participant of senser as the entity that does not perform an
action but instead experiences an event, process or feeling. In addition to this,
we have the circumstance role, which indicates information such as location,
time or direction of travel (Halliday and Mathiessen 2013). These are just some
of the many participants or semantic roles that can be described in linguistic
representations and which form part of our mental models.
Participants’ actions and the relative degree of agency they have can be
emphasized or backgrounded through the formation of discourse. Within
clauses, verbs can be categorized in terms of material, relational, verbal,
behavioural, existential and mental processes (Halliday and Matthiessen 2013).
Each of these process types and the clause participant roles that are assigned to
entities represent them in terms of having varying degrees of agency.

Material processes signal the greatest level of agency that can be associated with
an entity as they often indicate actions that impact others.

The forestry company cut down the trees.

Other process types indicate a lower degree of agency attributable to entities

(ibid.). Relational processes, for example, signal relationships of having or being or
attribute entities with particular characteristics rather than indicating their actions.

Most snakes are harmless.

Similarly, existential processes indicate the existence of entities rather than what
they do or what is done to them by others.

There are many beautiful chalk streams in southern England.

Mental processes represent entities as perceiving things and having mental

activity and can feature verbs such as think, believe, feel or understand.
22 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Verbal processes indicate a degree of agency associated with the ability to

communicate. Verbal processes therefore feature verbs such as say, ask, shout or
bark. Behavioural processes indicate entities as performing actions that do not
directly impact others. Some examples of behavioural verbs are laugh, breathe
and snort.
When entities are portrayed as the agents of material or behavioural processes,
or the experiencer of mental processes, they are represented as having varying
degrees of agency. However, agency can be backgrounded or even hidden by
featuring entities as different clause participants. For example, entities featured
within circumstances are often represented as significantly less agential.

circumstance
We waded through the shoals of minnows.

Our personal mental models are influenced by socially shared knowledge and
cognitions (van Dijk 2015: 69), and the features and elements of these shared
cognitive structures, as well as those of our personal mental models, are often made
visible as linguistic traces in discourse (ibid.). Thus, culture can be reproduced and
carried in discourse. For example, the natural world and how we should orient
towards it can be represented in very particular ways. As van Dijk (2014, 2015)
argues, the resources that language systems provide for the representation and
the construction of the world affect the sorts of mental models that we develop.
Thus, the interplay between culture and the cultural artefact of language and other
forms of semiosis can have a powerful effect on the nature of the knowledge and
belief systems we develop regarding the non-human natural world.
When it comes to such components of mind and thought as knowledge and
belief, Mezirow refers to the concept of frames of reference. For Mezirow, frames
of reference are:

[T]he structures of assumptions through which we understand our experiences.

They selectively shape and delimit expectations, perceptions, cognition and
feelings. [. . .] We have a strong tendency to reject ideas that fail to fit our
preconceptions, labelling those ideas as unworthy of consideration – aberrations,
nonsense, irrelevant, weird, or mistaken’. (Mezirow 1997: 5)

Frames of reference are composed of emotions, intentions and cognitions and

are made up of two main elements: habits of mind and points of view (ibid.).
For Mezirow, habits of mind are abstract and overarching ways of thinking
and feeling about the world that control how we orientate to and behave in
the world. They are guided by an orienting set of assumptions about states of
 Situating Ecolinguistics within the Humanities 23

affairs. These assumptions congregate around and relate to categories such as

culture, education, economy, politics and so on (ibid.). Van Dijk’s sociocognitive
approach to critical discourse studies features rather similar ways of relating
to these structures of mind. As we have seen, social knowledge is that which
relates to beliefs that are widely shared across not only cultures but also specific
communities (van Dijk 2015: 69). Social beliefs here can be understood as
relating to ideologies, attitudes, prejudices and so on (van Dijk 2014: 106). Within
a sociocognitive approach to discourse studies specific attitudes about people or
specific situations are steered and organized by more general ideologies. Where
van Dijk talks of specific attitudes and beliefs, Mezirow mentions points of view,
and by referring to larger ideological structures of the mind, van Dijk is relating
to something very similar to Mezirow’s notion of habits of mind. For Mezirow,
these habits of mind can be seen in the specific points of view that people express.
Similarly, van Dijk’s social attitudes and beliefs are considered to be the product
of overarching and internalized ideologies.

Foucault on Discourse, Knowledge and Power

The relationship between language, discourse, knowledge and cognition is viewed

as significant in several fields connected to a discourse theoretical position.
However, in the context of the present discussion regarding the influence of
cultural narratives and mental objects on our understandings and experiences
of the natural world in addition to the critique of the information gap model
of learning as a basis for transformative learning, it is important to carefully
unpack the relevance of the concept of knowledge and to further explore the
relationship between knowledge and belief. Michel Foucault’s conceptualization
of the power of discourses was closely tied to the idea of knowledge or particular
knowledges existing at specific times in history. More specifically, Foucault
famously defined discourses as ‘practices that systematically form the objects of
which they speak’ (Foucault 1972: 49). Such discoursal practices, for Foucault,
represent ‘ideological streams of information’ that have the power to ‘constitute
the world through their use in language and texts, assigning “subject positions”
to individuals’ (Foucault 1984). Thus, Foucault related the use of symbolism to
thought through the concept of knowledge, specifically in terms of how what
we know shapes our view of the world. Foucault made the case that systems of
discourses enable particular forms of knowledge in particular societies while
suppressing others at particular periods of history (Mitchell and Hansen 2010: 1).
24 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Indeed, the concept of how individuals within societies come into contact with
knowledge as well as how knowledge shapes perception and thus thought are
key concepts for Foucault’s conceptualization of discourses:

Discursive practices . . . take shape in technical ensembles, in institutions, in

behavioural schemes, in types of transmission and dissemination, in pedagogical
forms that both impose and maintain them. (Foucault 1984: 12)

Thus, Foucault believed that the ways in which discourses are distributed as
well as how we come into contact with them are crucial to how their effects
play out in society as forms of power and control. However, more important in
the context of the present discussion is that for Foucault it is the institutional,
social, educational and medial networks that produce and project discourses as
normative flows of knowledge that mediate our understandings of the world by
limiting and enabling that which can be known, thought about and done. As
we have seen, it is questionable whether we can ever claim a purely unmediated
interaction with nature, though we can conceive of differing levels of mediation
(Duranti 1997). For van Dijk, most of the knowledge we accrue in our lives
comes not as a result of personal experience but through discourse (van Dijk
2014: 16). However, how we produce discourse is also affected by our mental
objects. In fact, as we have seen, the cognitive structures of the mind are a crucial
mediator of both how we understand discourse and that which we produce (van
Dijk 2014: 16).

Addressing Our Mediated Understandings of the World

The humanities are interested in the ways in which humans make meanings
and understand their worlds. ‘Their worlds’ are assumed to be the realm of
human relations and forms of meaning-making. Thus, humanities research has
traditionally focused on the material and symbolic artefacts of human experience.
One such human artefact is of course semiosis, the use of symbols to represent and
index the material and social worlds. However, fields such as ecocriticism and the
environmental humanities seek to break down the age-old and Cartesian notions
of a human–nature dichotomy and highlight nature’s position within culture and
our species’ situatedness within the natural world. Such an acknowledgement
of the significance of the concept of nature to cultural ways of being opens
up opportunities for the study of the natural world to be included within the
humanities or the environmental humanities. An important area where nature
 Situating Ecolinguistics within the Humanities 25

becomes a cultural entity and an integral part of the cultural and mental lives of so
many is language. Ecolinguistics is a branch of language study that has embraced
this opportunity. For example, Alexander and Stibbe (2014: 105) define the field
as ‘the study of the impact of language on the life sustaining relationships among
humans, other organisms and the physical environment’. This description of
ecolinguistics therefore highlights not only the interactions between the human
artefact of language and nature but also the significance of the natural world to
humanities fields of study. Thus, such fields within the humanities can engage
with ecological issues by investigating, highlighting and emphasizing normative
perspectives, ethics, desire, relationality, imagination, identities, representation
and so on. This, therefore, shifts environmental and ecological problems from
being purely scientific in nature to existing within the cultural, psychological,
affective and linguistic realms. It is exactly at this juncture that we can work with
ecological issues in the language classroom, relating them to our students by
highlighting issues of ethics, politics, discourses, narratives and imaginaries of
an ecological future rather than as simply the domain of science.
Bowers (2001a: 10) laments the tendency for the field of environmental
education to encourage students to view the natural sciences and the world of
culture as inhabiting two very different conceptual but also moral categories.
However, by positioning the study of the natural world and the ecological
crises within the remit of humanities modes of investigation, we are able to
investigate and highlight overarching cultural narratives and discourses that
guide our thoughts, understandings, representations and behaviours towards
nature. Instead of seeing nature and ecological problems as technical and
managerial issues that exist outside of the concepts of ethics, politics or ideology,
such an awareness would allow us to become open to the notion of the deep-
seated, culturally mediated narratives of human societies that prevent us from
developing an orientation towards nature that is compatible with an ethic of
care, respect and responsibility.
From an educational perspective, collapsing the nature–culture binary, which
both keeps the non-human out of the political and moral realms and represents
it purely in terms of being a resource for the human subject, has many potential
benefits. But it is also necessary to take seriously the interplay between culture,
language and mind discussed above. For example, Bowers expresses concern
about forms of environmental education that do not take this into consideration:

The assumption that students construct their own conceptions of the world
fails to take account of the meta-schemata encoded in the languaging processes
26 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

that are basis of thought, communication, and behavior. Depending upon

the biographical distinctness of how students acquire the shared cultural
schemata, their interpretations and decisions will represent various degrees of
individualizing the shared patterns. (Bowers 2001a: 10)

In line with van Dijk’s understandings of the connections between discourse and
the mental models we form about the world (2014, 2015), Bowers here points out
the potential for culturally propagated ideas about nature and our relationship
with it to become internalized on an individual level. The entailment of this is
the need within all forms of environmental education for modes of learning that
target the very ecologically unhelpful mental models and ways of thinking that
have been formed or shaped through contact with a range of pervasive cultural
narratives.

Transformative Learning

A pedagogical approach that provides key insights for this endeavour and
which is central to the theme of this book is that of transformative learning.
Transformative learning is an approach to education that seeks changes in the
ways learners orientate to the world and make sense of their own and others’
culturally mediated maxims and mental models. For Boström et al. (2018), what
transformative learning brings to sustainability education is a rejection of the
information gap perspective, whereby the failure to bring about behaviours and
practices conducive to sustainability goals is attributed to a lack of scientific
knowledge. Instead, transformative learning aims to bring about a qualitative
difference in the frames of reference through which individuals view the world
and their place in it. Therefore, underlying changes to learners’ perspectives
on the world as well as how these perspectives are arrived at are prioritized
over simply accruing more information about ecological issues. Deep change
or transformation, therefore, crucially involves targeting learners’ frames of
reference rather than simply accumulating more knowledge (ibid.: 2). However,
exposure to unecological cultural narratives, the hegemonic discourses that
carry them as well as the mental models that are shaped by them can impede
educational efforts towards new more ecological orientations and mindsets.
Such discourses can, for example, represent or reproduce particular perspectives
on the natural world as normal natural, and beyond question. However,
perhaps a more pressing need to examine the very stories that drive Western
 Situating Ecolinguistics within the Humanities 27

society comes through a recognition of their crucial role in bringing about the
ecological crises that face us on multiple fronts (Stibbe 2015). As Plumwood
(2014: 111) highlights, discourses centring around this or that form of energy,
for example, indicate a lack of desire to transcend the same narrow conceptual
sphere that brought us to this point in the first place. Therefore, a key element
for change within transformative learning is the development of an awareness of
dominant discourses as being potentially ‘oppressive, unfair or unsustainable’,
with a resulting change in one’s underlying perspectives (Boström et al. 2018: 7).
A major premise of this book then is that ecolinguistics represents an exciting
vehicle and pedagogical approach for the application of transformative learning
within classrooms that focus on language and the use of semiosis. This position,
however, necessitates an understanding of the nature of these unsustainable and
unecological cultural narratives and discourses within which our learners are
immersed as social actors.
 2

Cultural Narratives and Our Relationship with

the Living World

Critical approaches to text analysis often place emphasis on discourses or larger

patterns rather than individual items of language. Discourses can be thought
of as particular perspectives formulated into language through a certain
systematicity to the way these ideas are constructed and expressed (Fairclough
2003a; Sunderland 2004). They often relate to and draw on larger narratives
or metaphorical understandings of the world that undergird society’s ways
of orienting to the non-human natural world. They play an important role in
the sorts of attitudes that individuals develop regarding nature. Therefore, a
knowledge of such cultural narratives and the discourses that carry them can
provide the analyst with a useful background for analysing texts that relate
to nature and our relationship with it. This chapter will detail some of these
important cultural narratives.

Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism is a dominant cultural narrative that assigns value and

meaning to nature purely on the basis of its usefulness to humans (Clark
2019: 14). For many, anthropocentrism is a culturally inherited narrative that
places the human in the position of sole subject on this Earth and accordingly
constructs non-human animals and the rest of nature as nothing more than
an inanimate resource for our species. This world view rests on a notion of a
clear conceptual separation between nature and culture and the human and the
natural world. This perspective is realized by a complex of closely related and
intertwined concepts.
 Cultural Narratives 29

Hyperseparation

The late ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood (2004: 44) argued that the
anthropocentric world view can be said to rest on the concept of human-
centredness, which is itself based on a categorization of the human and non-
human as occupying starkly different and separate spheres of existence. For
many ecocritics, for the origins of this strand of anthropocentrism and the
nature–culture dichotomy that hyperseparation produces, one must go back
to the ideas of Aristotle, who claimed that non-human animals lack rationality
(Clark 2019: 13). However, other theorists point to the book of Genesis, where
according to some biblical interpretations of the word dominion, humans are
given the mandate to take control of the Earth while subduing all else that
lives (Klages 2017: 143). Plumwood (1993) traces the origins of the conceptual
hyperseparation of humans and the rest of nature to Antiquity and makes the
case that ancient Greek society viewed the world in terms of a set of binary
relationships. In each, one half of the binary was elevated, while the other was
considered the dispreferred category, for example, man/woman, human/animal,
nature/culture, slave/master and rational/irrational (ibid.). Ancient Greek
society therefore was centred around the elite male population who were seen to
represent the qualities of spirit, mind and reason. The rest of society, women and
slaves were associated with the concepts of materiality and the physical world of
nature. Thus, within this binary relationship, the physical world of embodiment
and those associated with it are devalued. Those who transcend it in death are
seen as becoming liberated from nature and the body and moving on to a higher
realm of truth, reason and timeless ideas (ibid.). Plumwood (ibid.: 44) argues
that according to this position, it is not only nature but also ‘supposedly inferior
orders of humanity’ who inhabit the lower realm, characterized as they are in
terms of key features of nature such as bodily materiality and higher levels of
emotionality as opposed to mind, reason and logic.

The Human Subject and Non-Human Object

The portrayal of nature as an entity that is understood, studied and utilized by

others as the object of the human subject has tended to construct nature as a mere
foil to the notion of the humanist construction of the human subject. Indeed,
the human subject has been understood in terms of representing everything
that nature is not. Crucially, this humanist subject has been conceptualized
30 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

as separate and distinct from all other life forms (Schatzki 2002). Indeed, the
traditional notion of the subject is characterized by a rational, autonomous
consciousness and as representing a source of agency (ibid.); in other words,
a free-thinking and independent entity who represents the centre of agency
and meaning (Hall 2001: 79). For Pennycook (2017: 22) this construction of
the humanist subject has had a profound emancipatory effect on the human
condition by defining humans as free, agential, in total control of their minds
and actions and representing the centre of value and meaning in the world.
However, perhaps equally important here is how we come to understand who or
what falls into the category of subject or object; in other words, how this image
of the human subject of the Enlightenment has been discursively constructed
and then disseminated.
For this we need to draw again on the ideas of the French postmodern
philosopher, Michel Foucault. For Foucault, the concept of the subject of
discourse relates to the meaning of the word ‘subject’ itself as paradoxically
denoting the notion of being subject to something or someone. More
specifically, we understand the concept as denoting the idea of being connected
to a particular identity or characterizing knowledge about the self. For Foucault,
this represents a form of everyday power that is particularly impactful on
entities as it ‘categorizes the individual, marks him by his own individuality,
attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must
recognize and which others have to recognize in him’ (Foucault 1982: 781). It is
therefore a form of power that conceptually and discursively forms entities as
particular subjects (ibid.). From a Foucauldian discourse theoretical perspective,
these subjects relate to discursively constructed individuals or groups that are
endowed with the ability to think, feel and perform actions in particular ways
(Jäger and Maier 2016: 112). They have typically been human and behave in
ways that are in line with the particular human-focused discourse in history
that they characterize, for example, the discourse of the madman, the hysterical
woman or the homosexual and so on (Hall 2001: 80). Thus, entities as subjects are
themselves ‘subject’ to discourses and their discoursal construction. Ironically,
there is of course an aspect of passivity in this enactment of discourse as power,
as although the concept of the subject has traditionally been understood as a
free-acting entity with agency, it only emerges as a particular subject who has
a particular identity and thinks, feels and acts in specific ways according to
how the discourse positions and constructs them. Indeed, Foucault criticized
the traditional concept of the subject as denoting highly individualized,
autonomous and agential entities. This criticism stemmed from Foucault’s
 Cultural Narratives 31

vision of discourses as both representations and enactments of particular

regimes of truth at different points in history. In other words, for Foucault, we
are not as free to act as we might think we are. Rather, we are constrained in
how we act and speak through particular normative and cultural knowledge
formations that are in place at particular times. If we understand discourses
as discursive performances of these particular knowledge formations, it is
not the subject who speaks a discourse, but discourses that speak the subject
(Jäger and Maier 2016: 117). We are therefore dealing with rather complex and
overlapping conceptions of the subject. The humanist concept of a subject, as we
have seen, relates to a conscious, rational and free-thinking and acting entity.
However, in Foucauldian, discourse theoretical understandings of discourses,
the subject is itself subject to discourses in two ways: first in terms of their
discoursal construction, as a product of discourses, and second by being a user
of discourses that represent specific perspectives and flows of particular forms
of knowledge of the world.
The notion of the subject as being a conceptual entity constructed through
discourse as being free, in possession of mind, capable of agency and a source
of self-generated meaning is hugely relevant to how we think and communicate
about the non-human natural world. As we have seen, these characteristics
have been the preserve of the human subject. The non-human, however, has
traditionally not been granted the same level of privilege in their representation
and treatment. The discourses carrying this humanist narrative portray humans
as dynamic, agential entities playing out their affairs against the background of
a natural world that is seen as devoid of the sorts of characteristics and qualities
bestowed upon the human subject, such as ethics, values and meaning (Plumwood
2003: 2, cited in Rose et al. 2012: 3). This exclusion of the non-human from the
category of the philosophical and literary subject has both left it outside of the
realm of moral concern and constructed it as a mere resource for human wants
and needs. From an ecolinguistic perspective, if we are to encourage learners
to re-examine their assumptions and preconceptions towards the ultimate
goal of bringing about changes to points of view and habits of mind concerning
the natural world, an important place to start is with our culturally mediated
conceptions of the categories of subject and object; in other words, re-evaluating
our notions of who can fall within the category of the conceptual subject as
an entity that thinks, feels, acts and is a source of self-generated meaning and
inherent value. Thus, classroom explorations of the cultural narratives that have
contributed to a particular view of the philosophical subject form a useful strand
to any attempt to bring ecolinguistics into educational settings.
32 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

A major theme running through this notion of human exceptionalism is

that which views the human and non-human realms as different on the basis
of latter’s supposed lack of intentionality and subjectivity. When defined against
nature, humans are constructed in terms of being agential, as representing a fully
fledged subject, and as being in possession of the quality of mind, reason and
meaning. These are contrasted against nature’s passivity, lack of consciousness
and its status as the object rather than subject of knowledge. While speaking
at the US National Animal Rights Convention in 2002, philosophy scholar and
activist Steve Best singled out the key failings of Western philosophy that have
perpetuated this aspect of the hyperseparation of human animals and non-
human animals:

On the whole, Western philosophy has badly misunderstood human and animal
natures: it created a dualistic division where there is only an evolutionary
continuum, it attributed too much reason to human animals and too little to
nonhuman animals, it imagined a purposeful universe that relegates animals
to a desert of non-moral and legal status, and it enthrones human beings at the
reign of life. (Best 2002; cited in Kahn 2003)

Best highlights here the arbitrary and antiscientific dichotomy of forming two
categories from an ‘evolutionary continuum’, a form of classifying that falsely
represents human and non-human animals as different in kind rather than
degree. Whether we call it anthropocentrism, human supremacy or the nature–
culture dichotomy, the cultural narrative that imposes an artificial binary
relationship between humankind and the rest of nature constructs the latter as
the conceptual object to humanity’s subject and as a mindless, inert and passive
substrate that is without meaning or purpose until designated in that role by
humans. Thus, the non-human world is considered ethically irrelevant, which
facilitates its construction as a mere resource for human utility. Plumwood (2003:
2 cited in Rose et al. 2012: 3) suggests that this set of assumptions constructs us
as free agents within a non-human world that is purged of concepts reserved for
the human sphere, such as ethics, values and meaning.

Ecological Consequences of the Human–Nature Dichotomy

For Plumwood (1993, 2014: 115), the placement of the human and nature into two
separate categories rather than on a spectrum has dangerous implications for the
continuation of life on planet Earth. This plays out in two distinct ways. First, the
 Cultural Narratives 33

human–nature dichotomy for Plumwood has been instrumental in creating the

necessary conceptual distance between the two realms in order to allow Western
culture to be able to conceptualize non-human nature as nothing more than a
world of resources to be plundered (ibid.). By viewing nature in this way, human
actions can continue unhindered by notions of ethics or restraint. Second,
a consistent theme in Plumwood’s writing is that of the folly and ecologically
suicidal consequences of the notion of the hyperindividual, hyperseparated,
agential human subject. Plumwood argued that this understanding of the human
imbues our species with the hubris of ‘an illusory sense of agency and autonomy’
that backgrounds our sense of our own materiality and therefore embeddedness
in ecological systems and relations and blocks understandings of ecological
limitations (2002: 117). For Plumwood, in addition to portraying nature as being
devoid of meaning, the nature–culture dichotomy or ‘hyperseparation’ creates
a false illusion of our ‘disembeddedness’, thereby inhibiting our awareness of
our ecological limitations as members of ecological communities. Thus, not only
does this view of the human produce devastating consequences for the non-
human world, but it is also one that threatens our own existence on this planet
(ibid.: 1993, 2014: 115).

Nature without Meaning

Constructed as we are as independent, autonomous beings controlling own

path through life, humans and the artefacts we produce are seen as imbued with
meanings. These cultural meanings contrast starkly when viewed against the
backdrop of a nature that is seen as lacking its own inherent meanings and which is
incompatible with concepts such as values and ethics (Rose et al. 2012: 3). Indeed,
it has become difficult to think of culture and not assume it to be synonymous with
or at least imbued with the expression of meanings. Nature, on the other hand,
has become purged of all meaning. At best, the living world has been viewed as a
conceptual void, a blank slate onto which we impose and write our own meanings
(Fredengren 2018: 220). However, many scholars within fields such as ecocriticism
and the environmental humanities make the case that understanding ourselves
as conceptually and culturally separated from the rest of nature in this way has
resulted in the latter being viewed as a mere resource, devoid of significance, and
has resulted in an oppressive and abusive relationship with the natural world that
has in turn led to a whole host of climatic, geological and ecological ills in the era of
the Anthropocene (Opperman and Iovino 2016: 4; Alaimo and Hekman 2008: 4).
34 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

As we have seen, traditionally, the humanities have applied the concepts

of meaning, value, ethics and justice to the notion of the human (Rose et al.
2012: 4). In response, the environmental humanities have challenged the notion
that these concepts cannot be applied to nature (Neimanis et al. (2015). In fact,
by applying these notions to environmental concerns, we become positioned
as fellow participants enmeshed within networks of human and non-human
‘ecologies of meaning and value’, which form the kinds of subjects we are (Rose
et al. 2012: 4) and in turn position non-human nature as existing within the
meaningful realm of culture.

Passive Nature

Another strand to the nature–culture dichotomy and anthropocentrism is

the idea that non-human nature represents nothing more than a resource for
humankind due to its passivity. According to this perspective, non-human
nature represents an inert, passive materiality that has no meanings of its
own unless given meaning by humans and human culture. Many consider
this position to have cultural and historical origins. For example, during the
Enlightenment, Isaac Newton established a set of principles based on the laws of
motion (Prigogine and Stengers 1985: 62). However, the view within Newtonian
dynamics of change being indicated by physical and measurable movement
backgrounded the possibility that natural phenomena could undergo chemical
or biological changes. The result of this was that nature came to be viewed as
passive, inanimate and separate from us (ibid.).
Similarly, Amitav Ghosh (2016) highlights how before the Anthropocene,
nature was seen as being characterized by steady, gradual processes and shifts
occurring over long periods of time. This for Ghosh reflected the relative
stability of the Holocene epoch. This stability was reflected in literature through
the representation of nature as a fixed reference point and a steady and reliable
backdrop against which dynamic, human affairs are played out. However, in the
current epoch in which we find ourselves, such a perspective is seen by many
theorists as being problematic. For example, Neimanis et al. (2015) suggest that
in light of our transition from the stable Holocene into the relative instability of
the Anthropocene, we are no longer able to continue relying on our traditional
and time-honoured cultural narratives of a separation and a clear distinction
between the agential human and a passive nature. This new epoch, they say,
requires us to open our culturally mediated eyes to the importance of seeing
 Cultural Narratives 35

our reality as existing as embedded, entangled and enmeshed within a wider

material world of lively matter – a world in which, due to our own doing, agential
and dynamic geological, biological and crucially, dangerous forces have been
unleashed. One only has to reflect on the events of the last few years for evidence
of this new reality, with the Covid-19 pandemic and extreme weather events
wreaking havoc, misery and death across the globe and exposing our material
vulnerability and connectedness to the rest of nature.
We are therefore required to reflect on our previous notions of human
subjectivity and agency, with an emphasis on how these are now entangled with
those of other material entities in complex assemblages of matter and biological,
climatic and ecological processes. Similarly, within the field of new materialism,
theorists apply the concept of agency to all matter, not just what we would
traditionally refer to as living and sentient organisms. This is a perspective on
the concept of actor that transcends a need for a mind or intentionality or even
biological processes, but instead views all matter as dynamic and agential. Jane
Bennett is one such theorist who shares with many other posthumanist new
materialists the idea that the human should be dethroned in terms of being seen
as the centre of all agency. Instead, we need to increase our awareness of how all
elements within nature, such as rocks, chemicals, compounds and so on have the
potential for their own agency as part of a system of self-organizing and ‘vibrant’
matter (Bennett 2010):

[B]y vitality, I mean the capacity of things – edibles, commodities, storms, metals
[. . .] to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities or tendencies
of their own. (ibid.: viiii)

For many new materialist theorists, the attempt to extend the concepts of agency
and animacy out to inorganic as well as organic matter also carries a variety of
ethical implications. Similar to Plumwood’s assertion that moving beyond the
confines of neo-Cartesianism and extending moral worth to all living organisms
brings with it an ethics of heightened awareness of our impacts on the ecological
foundations of our own existence, Jane Bennett makes the case that there is an
ethics to transcending our view of matter as mere dead and inanimate resource:

[T]he image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris

and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption. It does so by
preventing us from detecting [. . .] a fuller range of non-human powers [. . .]
which can aid or destroy, enrich or disable, ennoble or degrade us, [but] in any
case call for our attentiveness, or even ‘respect’. (ibid.: 9)
36 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Instead, we need to be open to the possibilities that not only are we able, in a
Newtonian sense, to impact matter, but that matter is very often agential itself
and can impact us and our societies:

We might then entertain a set of crazy and not-so-crazy questions: Did the
typical American diet play any role in engendering the widespread susceptibility
to the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq? Do sand storms make a
difference to the spread of so-called sectarian violence? [. . .] Can an avian virus
jump from birds to humans and create havoc for systems of health care and
international trade and travel? (ibid.: 107)

For Bennett then the recognition of the vitality and vibrancy of inorganic
matter comes with a posthuman agenda that seeks to destabilize and disrupt
the anthropocentric idea that humanity is in complete control of this planet. For
new materialist theorists such as Jane Bennett, a posthuman conceptualization
of what it is to be human is to embrace the humility of seeing oneself as existing
within an embedded and embodied relationship with a dynamic material
world of agential matter. Indeed, Rose et al. (2012) suggest that the onset of
the Anthropocene as a concept necessitates a reconceptualization of the human
that rejects the humanist notion of the autonomous, individual human enacting
agency upon an inert world. Instead, what is needed is a broader or ‘thicker’
notion of the human that incorporates our position within assemblages of
interacting forces (ibid.) (see Chapter 4 for a learner activity).

The Mechanistic View of Nature

As we have seen, the ancient Greeks established dichotomizing representations

of those entities fortunate enough to be endowed with the enduring and
transcending properties of rationality, spirit and mind and those that were
associated only with earthly materiality. This would be followed centuries later,
by a concerted attempt to further disenchant the natural world and conceptually
erase any animistic and spiritual notions connected to nature in order to establish
a suitable state of affairs upon which modern science could be advanced (Berman
1981; in Best and Kahn 2011). To this end, the scientific revolution set in place
a reductionist metaphorical representation of nature as a mechanical machine,
which replaced the long-existing view of the world as a living, organic system
(Sessions 1995: 161). This involved the denial of indigenous religions, ideologies
and world views that saw magic and spirit in nature (ibid.). For European society,
 Cultural Narratives 37

this also meant decentring God as the centre of value and knowledge in favour of
a secular project that advanced mathematics, technology and the experimental
method to expunge all mystery from the universe by unlocking its secrets (Best
and Kahn 2011). The call by philosophers, Francis Bacon and René Descartes, to
dominate and control the natural world together with Newton’s theories on the
laws of gravity lay the conceptual ground upon which Enlightenment theorists
and philosophers developed a view of the natural world as that of a machine that
is organized on the basis of stable, predictable principles and as something that
can be studied and understood by rational minds for human uses (ibid.).
René Descartes is widely thought of as a major contributor to Western
philosophical thought. He would come to have a huge impact on how we view
our species in relation to all others. After a series of cruel experiments, Descartes
concluded that animals lacked any sort of consciousness and that their cries
were akin to the mere ringing of a metal alarm clock (Garrard 2011: 147). In
line with his Christian faith, Descartes’ resulting philosophy of ‘mind–body
dualism’ ascribed to humans the characteristic of a mind and therefore a soul,
while viewing all other organisms as mere mechanical bodies (Sessions 1995:
161). As a mere class of biological machines, other animals were denied not only
intelligence and the presence of a mind but also any kind of sentience (ibid.).
This Cartesian mindset in philosophy and science separated emotions from
reason and the mind from its embodied materiality (Garrard 2011: 147). The
replacement of an understanding of nature as a realm imbued with agency and
mysticism to that of a machine that is entirely knowable through the process
of breaking down its constituent parts emptied nature of any enchantment or
mystery. In a sense, the architects of the Enlightenment and modern science had
presided over ‘the death of nature’ (Merchant 1980). Merchant’s main premise
here is that Western society’s perspective on the natural world underwent a huge
shift in terms of the overriding cultural metaphor that controls it – from that of
organism to machine:

[F]or sixteenth-century Europeans, the root metaphor binding together the self,
society and the cosmos was that of an organism. As a projection of the way
people experienced daily life, organismic theory emphasized interdependence
among parts of the human body, subordination of individual to communal
purposes in family, community, and state, and vital life permeating the cosmos
to the lowliest stone. (Merchant 1980: 1)
The fundamental social and intellectual problem for the seventeenth century was
the problem of order. The perception of disorder, so important to the Baconian
38 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

doctrine of domination over nature was also crucial to the rise of mechanism
as a rational antidote to the disintegration of the organic cosmos. The new
mechanical philosophy of the mid-seventeenth century achieved a reunification
of the cosmos, society and the self in terms of a new metaphor – the machine.
(Merchant 1980: 192)

For Merchant, both cultural metaphors are intimately intertwined and associated
with the notion of the female. For example, when nature is seen as an organic
entity possessing sacred female associations such as that of the mother it entails
constraints upon ecologically destructive actions. Conversely, nature as a
machine or an unruly woman implies the need to control, dominate and impose
order (Warren 1998: 186):
Whereas the nurturing earth image can be viewed as a cultural constraint
restricting the types of socially and morally sanctioned human actions allowable
with respect to the earth, the new images of mastery and domination functioned
as cultural sanctions for the denudation of nature. Society needed these new
images as it continued the processes of commercialism and industrialization,
which depended on activities directly altering the earth. (Merchant 1980: 2)

Thus, the creation of such a profound shift in our understanding of the natural
world, from that of a living, dynamic universe to that of a machine removed
nature from the realm of moral concern, thereby dismissing once and for all any
lingering concern about its domination and commodification (Best and Kahn
2011: xi). As Plumwood succinctly puts it:
Since nature itself is thought to be outside the ethical sphere and to impose
no moral limits on human action, we can deal with nature as an instrumental
sphere. Instrumental outlooks distort our sensitivity to and knowledge of nature,
blocking humility, wonder and openness in approaching the more-than-human,
and producing narrow modes of understanding and classification that reduce
nature to raw materials for human projects. (Plumwood 2002: 15)

What this reframing did was to discursively reconceptualize nature as a realm to

be plundered in two different but connected ways. First, Descartes’ philosophy
of mind–body dualism set in place a dichotomization of the human and non-
human animal that excluded the latter from the category of moral worth and
denied those outside the category of rational human (both human and non-
human) subject status. In separating humans and non-humans into two distinct
categories, Cartesian thought is implicated in entrenching the nature–culture
dichotomy and therefore setting out the conceptual ground for the non-human
 Cultural Narratives 39

natural world to be viewed as a mere resource, as stripped of their subjectivity

or sentience, the non-human can easily be objectified and constructed as mere
dead material awaiting human action and use. Indeed, for Val Plumwood (1993:
5) discussions about environmental and animal ethics are not possible in general
discourse as, even today, the enduring and dominant Cartesian world view
denies the non-human the cognitions, sentience and intentionality that ‘make
an ethical response to it possible’.
The second way in which a mechanistic view of nature leaves it vulnerable
to exploitation is through its appropriation into the human realm only in terms
of having human-related purpose as opposed to being recognized as having a
natural essence and with value or purpose that cannot be tangibly connected
to human utility. Machines, as instruments of design, are, after all, assigned
functions that directly relate to serving human needs; therefore, a machine that
is not being utilized for human benefit suggests an opportunity squandered.
By the same token, if understood in mechanistic terms, not as a life but as a
machine, non-human entities can easily be subsumed within the human sphere
and assigned human purposes. In his book, Nature as Subject, Eric Katz relates
this idea to the concept of entities being either natural or artefactual, where
artefactual means designed and built by humans (Katz 1997: 98–9). Katz argues
that artefacts have a function and a purpose by nature of their design and the
intentions behind this design. Katz points out that it would in fact be difficult to
think of a human artefact that did not have a human purpose. Natural objects
on the other hand are inherently without purpose (ibid.). Although they have
evolved to take particular roles in ecosystems, this is entirely different to the
notion of being designed and built to specifically perform particular, and in this
case, human functions (ibid.). A mechanistic understanding of the non-human
world therefore turns the natural into the artefactual, leaving it vulnerable to
being inscribed with human purposes and meanings.
Indeed, many theorists from the fields of ecofeminism, the environmental
humanities and ecopedagogy point out that the framing of nature in mechanical
terms has real implications for how we behave towards it. As Rebecca
Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson and John Lupinacci (2014) point out, when
the natural world is viewed through the lens of a mechanistic metaphor, we
are encouraged to view it in very specific ways often to the detriment of other
perspectives. For example, when farms are viewed as factories, we are distanced
from where our food comes from and the intimate materiality of our connections
with other animals. Likewise, when a farm is seen as a machine, the focus is
often on how the manipulation of nature will result in the greatest production of
40 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

food. This particular focus is likely to come at the expense of a holistic view of
nature in which both natural entities and their interrelationships are nurtured
(Martusewicz, Edmundson and Lupinacci 2014: 76). Thus, in seeing the natural
world as a series of mechanical parts rather than a system of interrelating
dependencies, those subscribing to a mechanistic perspective on nature tend to
focus on single features of nature, such as species, as isolated from the ecological
webs in which they are embedded and form crucial relationships with others
(Dryzek 2005: 143).
For Plumwood, viewing nature as mechanisms, machines or parts of
machines is another perspective that contributes to the objectification of
nature and a suppression of the notion that the natural world could have any
‘intentionality’ of its own. Plumwood (2002: 24–5) also sees the metaphor of
‘nature is a machine’ as one that blocks the possibility of seeing subjectivity in
the natural world. This results in a denial of ‘narrative subjecthood’ that might
be associated with places and nature more broadly and considerably constricts
the number of thinking, feeling, experiencing characters and participants that
imbue places with meaning and relational significance.
Thus, the combined effect of all the discursive strands that comprise
the mechanistic metaphor has shifted our orientation towards nature from
one of recognizing it as an organism with needs to that of dispassionate
instrumentalization, with all the implications that brings. Indeed, such
instrumental and mechanistic mappings blind us to the needs of nature as an
entity that requires certain conditions for its own survival (Plumwood 2014:
114). Such perspectives that dismiss and overlook the need to pay attention to
and look after ecological providers’ life requirements should not therefore be
understood as sustainable (ibid.).
The metaphor takes on ecological significance because it has infiltrated
everyday understandings of nature and represents a pervasive pattern of
thought in Western society (Plumwood 2002, 2014; Katz 1997; Merchant 1980;
Martusewicz et al. 2014; Bowers 2001a). For example, the famous evolutionary
biologist Richard Dawkins calls the body a ‘survival machine’ and writes
that ‘brains may be regarded as analogous in function to computers. They
are analogous in that both types of machines generate complex patterns of
output, after analysis of complex patterns of input, and after reference to stored
information’ (1976: 52). Indeed, in second language acquisition, the human
brain used to be likened to an ‘information-processing’ system that functioned
on the basis of input and output. This particular metaphorical construction was
brought to particular prominence in the field of second language pedagogy by
 Cultural Narratives 41

Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis and Schmidt’s output hypothesis. Further,

the metaphorical construction of ‘nature is a machine’ can also be seen in the
scientific discourse of Antonio R. Damasio (1994), Francis Crick (1994) and
E. O. Wilson (1998) among others (Bowers 2001a). This root metaphor is also
evident when talking about mitochondrion as the ‘powerhouse’ of the cell, or the
Golgi apparatus as the ‘storage plant’ and the lysosome as the ‘recycling centre’
(ibid.). Moreover, in everyday language we might refer to the heart as ‘a pump’ or
see an idea as ‘the engine of growth’ (Martusewicz et al. 2014: 76).
Ecolinguistic studies have also exposed the prevalence of this metaphor in
environmentally relevant texts and uses of language. A key area of importance
here is animal agriculture. For example, Stibbe (2015) carried out an analysis
of the language of the pork industry and found the overwhelming use of the
metaphorical reframing of pigs as machines. Interestingly, this representation
objectified them but did not totally represent them as passive entities, as they
were constructed as possessing agency through this metaphorical representation.
However, the pigs were therefore only portrayed as entities that have agency
through their ability to generate commodities in the form of their body parts
and offspring for human consumption, while any features they express that
might indicate shared qualities of sentience and experience with humans were
backgrounded. It is easy to see how such a representation facilitates a number of
rhetorical requirements, such as reducing empathy for individual animals and
viewing pigs in terms of their commercial value, which is dependent upon what
they can produce.

The Masculine Discourse of Environmental

Management versus an Ethics of Care

Mereläinen and Pesonen (1999) critique the masculine and mechanistic

perspectives advanced by many environmental management discourses. They
invoke the notion of a masculine (though not male) mindset underpinning
such discourses. Drawing on the Jungian notion and symbolic archetype of
the Tyrannical Father, a managerial view of the natural world based on control
and measurement stems from the dominating, punishing and autocratic
characteristics of this male archetype. Such a mindset according to Mereläinen
and Pesonen is likely to lead to a ‘perception of nature where there is no room
for tacit knowledge, emotions, and spirituality’ (1999: 8). Conversely, at the other
end of this spectrum, the positive mother archetype embodies the qualities of
42 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

nurturing, loving, protecting and transforming, suggesting a very different

orientation towards the natural world. The masculine mindset of environmental
sustainability and management can be thought of as a modernist expression of
Cartesian, Baconian and Newtonian attempts to separate mind from body, knower
from known and subject from object. Indeed, the masculine and managerial
environmental mindset is the antithesis of Donna Haraway’s theory of situated
knowledge (2003) as a different, more accurate and humble notion of objectivity
than the ubiquitous image of the detached, disinterested and disembodied male
practitioner associated with Haraway’s God trick (Haraway 1988: 191).
Neimanis et al. (2015) make the case that such control-oriented, technocentric,
science-based approaches to environmental problems are not sufficient to
garner the sort of affective orientation that is needed in this era of ecological
crisis. To this end, they suggest that human society needs imaginaries in order to
scaffold the possibilities for new egalitarian relationships with the rest of nature
and to engage individuals aesthetically, ethically and psychologically. Likewise,
DeLoughrey (2015: 353) highlights a growing scepticism towards the efficacy of
apocalyptic narratives for fostering ecological behaviours. Providing people with
facts about sustainable yields, ‘viable’ populations of wild animals or unpleasant
future scenarios based on scientific forecasts seems to have the opposite effect to
that which is intended. Such an approach does not appeal to our imaginations.
What, then, might a positive imaginary look like? One such positive vision for
the future might be found in the discourses of rewilding. According to Fowkes
et al. (2018: 390), the term ‘rewilding’ refers to ‘experimental programmes to
restart natural processes in the landscapes that have been denuded of biodiversity
as a result of anthropogenic degradation’, often involving the reintroduction
of keystone species to habitats where they have been made locally extinct.
Perspectives and themes found within this movement can be drawn on in the
ecolinguistics classroom by examining rewilding texts and perhaps comparing
them to the discourses of environmental and wildlife management. In fact,
rewilding might just represent one of the most salient, inspiring and realistic
ecological imaginaries that we currently have at our disposal. Rewilding projects
can spawn a whole host of imaginaries of tangible worlds of enchantment
and magical interactions with wild animals and can involve the return of wild
landscapes not seen for generations. Environmentalism is often characterized by
visions of the future that are negative at best and apocalyptic at worst. Rewilding,
on the other hand, is the environmental story that offers renewal rather than
decay, life rather than death, and abundance and diversity instead of defaunation
and extinction. Rewilding success stories and ecological imaginaries playing
 Cultural Narratives 43

out in texts and images can be used in ecolinguistics lessons as an example of

positive discourse analysis and can represent fruitful alternatives to the use of
texts that normalize or even promote ecologically destructive actions.

Teaching Activity 1
One possibility for such an approach can be achieved by using David
Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet. This documentary serves as the famous
naturalist’s ‘mission statement’ and vision for the future; in essence, an ecological
imaginary featuring rewilding as an essential element, brought to life through
language and images. This documentary can be used to good effect with lower-
level learners or student teachers, who might use it in their teaching in order to
develop the concept of ecological imaginary.
As an introduction, learners can be provided with a series of predictions about
possible negative future environmental scenarios together with some positive
ecological visions for the future. After reading through these, they can discuss
in groups or as an open class activity whether the negative future predictions or
the positive visions played more of a role in motivating them to act. Learners
can then watch the documentary and write down statements that they find
either profound or poetic and that support Attenborough’s overall ecological
imaginary. When they have done this, they can be encouraged to find the main
notion contained within each by highlighting the most important elements of
each statement. This might be, for example, a verb phrase containing a direct
object or just a noun phrase.
Each learner (or pair) can then be encouraged to compare and contrast
these ecological statements and propositions with other learners, discussing, for
example, the extent to which they resonate with them and/or they might help us
form a positive direction for our environmental and ecological future. Learners
can then be tasked with pooling their choices in order to present the five most
inspirational or useful phrases. They should be encouraged to make their own
choices, but as a guide, I provide some possible examples that can also be found in
Attenborough’s book that accompanies the documentary (Attenborough 2020).

● (All organisms) lead lives that interlock in such a way that they sustain each
other (ibid.: 6).
● We can yet make amends, manage our impact, change the direction of our
development and once again become a species in balance with nature (ibid.:
220).
44 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

● To restore stability to our planet, we must restore its biodiversity – the very
thing we’ve removed. (. . .) We must rewild the world (ibid.: 121, emphasis
added).
● We need to (. . .) move from being apart from nature to being a part of nature
once again (ibid.: 125, emphasis added)
● We’ve come as far as we have because we are the cleverest creatures to have
ever lived, but if we are to continue, we will require more than intelligence; we
will require wisdom (ibid.: 220, emphasis added).
● The next few decades represent a final opportunity to build a stable home for
ourselves, and restore the rich, healthy, and wonderful world that we inherited
(ibid.: 221, emphasis added).

As a follow-up activity, learners can distil the statements down to their

fundamental essence in order to create a series of tenets for what might be David
Attenborough’s ecological philosophy (ecosophy). For example, the sentence
‘[w]e need to re-discover how to move from being apart from nature to being a
part of nature once again’ can be reduced to the core concept of being a part of
nature instead of being apart from nature.
Again, possible examples are provided in the following:

1. Wisdom before intelligence.

2. Healthy ecosystems not just minimal, viable populations.
3. Environmental stability requires wild and diverse nature.
4. As a species we inherited a beautiful and stable planet under the
Holocene, which we are destroying.
5. Nature is not a mere resource but instead has its own requirements to thrive.
6. Fulfilling humanity’s journey is about recognizing connections,
interrelationships balance and living in tune with the rest of nature rather
than separateness and technological development.
7. We thrive when our Earth companions also thrive.
8. To be a part of nature instead of being apart from nature.
9. Thus, we need to recognize our impacts on others and live in sync with
the rest of nature.

Rewilding discourses often draw our attention to our denuded ecosystems and
the absence of biodiversity and the abundance of life that once existed on our
planet. In doing this, they can provoke a sense of loss while also encouraging a
perspective on our ecological predicament that relies on a broader view of time.
Both of these concepts can be explored in the following activity.
 Cultural Narratives 45

Teaching Activity 2
To introduce this activity, learners can, for example, be shown pictures of a
frog and a beaver and be asked about any possible connections between these
animals. In a 2015 study by Vehkaoja and Nummi, it was found that frogs were
much more likely to be found in ponds that had resident beavers. Beavers’ actions
create nurseries for tadpoles and expose more of their ponds to sunshine. They
also deepen them, which helps frogs hibernate (Vehkaoja and Nummi 2015).
This may generate some discussion about how we tend to view nature in
terms of what we can see in front of us in the moment rather than as systems
consisting of co-evolved species that form ecological relationships that dwarf
human lifespans. Next, learners can be given the following excerpt from a text
by the nature writer, Jim Crumley (Crumley 2019). A very similar version can be
found in his book, The Last Wolf (Crumley 2012: 114).
Learners can be tasked with reading the excerpt and answering questions
such as

● How does the writer want us to feel about wolves?

● What are the ways in which the writer uses language in order to encourage
these feelings in the reader?

A Land Fit for Wolves

Think of them as wolf trees; the ones that remember wolves, the ones that mourn
wolves, the ones that stir in me an awareness of the absence of wolves. Only
trees of all living things, hold the memory of wolves. The oldest Scots pines, the
300–400-year-olds, and the occasional truly ancient yew, know how the brush of
wolf fur feels, how the soft, deep slap of their footfall on the forest floor sounds.
And perhaps they hand down the sense of wolves to the wolfless generations of
young trees, so that these will be ready for the wolves’ return.

Possible Learner Reflections on the Text and Questions

In his use of language, Crumley evokes a sense of loss at the eradication and
absence of wolves in Scotland. He creates a tantalizing and enchanting glimpse
into a past that still manifests its essence in the present through the existence of
46 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Scots pines and yew trees that are old enough to have been visited by Scottish
wolves hundreds of years ago.
Crumley invites us to think of the trees as ‘wolf trees’. By representing them as
experiencers, he linguistically portrays them as ‘holding the memory of wolves’
while also ‘remembering’ and ‘mourning’ them. Thus, to this day, they ‘know
how the brush of wolf fur feels’ and ‘how the soft, deep slap of their footfall on
the forest floor sounds’. Here, Crumley brings the past into the present through
his evocative use of language. What the trees remember is not simply the wolves,
but how they feel and sound. Both ‘brush’ and ‘slap’ are nouns formed from verbs
that take an identical form. These verbs relate to very specific actions and conjure
up images of sensory interactions between physical entities. The nominalizations
that stem from them together with the use of descriptive adjectives provide an
almost tangible vision of long-extinct, Scottish wolves making their way through
an ancient Caledonian forest.
Here we see the trees positioned as subjects that exist over large stretches of
temporality and memory. Thus, they are linguistically constructed as being a
deep time consciousness whose memory of events and places spans timescales
that dwarf those of human lives. Such a perspective may engender a degree of
ecological humility that allows us to take a broader view and see the ecological
compositions and requirements of landscapes in terms of longer stretches of
time as opposed to understanding them on the basis of shifting baselines and
our relatively short lifespans.
This chapter has detailed the main cultural narratives identified by scholars
within fields such as ecocriticism, ecofeminism and the environmental
humanities as advancing unhelpful ecological perspectives. These cultural
narratives are rarely explicitly expressed. However, they can still manifest their
effects in people’s beliefs, perspectives and habits of mind, which are the silent
drivers of behaviour. They can also be seen as discursive traces in the use of
language. However, approaches to textual analysis such as ecolinguistics can
help tease out such hidden and normalized belief systems, diffract them through
alternative world views on nature and ecology and expose them to rigorous
critique. In each case, ecologically positive imaginaries that recognize nature’s
requirements to thrive and feature the human and non-human worlds existing
in healthy co-existence can be offered up in their place.
 3

Critical Approaches and Perspectives on

Language and the Natural World

Ecolinguistics is an approach to the analysis of texts and language in use that

investigates how the natural world and human–nature relations are represented
and constructed. It contains the DNA of a range of other approaches to textual
analysis and thus often draws on the conceptual tools, methods and approaches
of these fields. It is important therefore to contextualize what ecolinguistics can
be by first exploring not only other fields of text and language analysis but also
the theories of language and communication that they are predicated upon, as
well as the connections between these different forms of textual analysis.

Language, Literature and How We

Comprehend the World around Us

Even within early forms of literary critique, literary knowledge was believed to
wield the power to impact the minds of individuals (Klages 2017: 3). Therefore,
writers and literary scholars within the field established the need to interrogate
works in order to protect readers from malign influence (ibid.). The genre of
literary critique developed into a form of rhetoric that can be recognized in
terms of its adherence to a particular style and tone, according to the use of
specific vocabulary, and crucially through its suspicion and treatment of certain
tropes, narratives and metaphors employed by writers in order to influence their
readers’ opinions and perspectives (Anker and Felski 2017: 4). As a practitioner
of literary critique, the reader takes on an attitude of suspicion in the process
of reading and a rejection of whatever we are encouraged to view as given,
commonsensical or taken for granted (Culler 2011; in Anker and Felski 2017: 4).
Early forms of literary critique became so ubiquitous that it was assumed that the
fields of literary studies and literary critique were almost synonymous and that
48 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

the way of conducting literary analysis was to produce critique (Moi 2017: 31).
Taking on an overtly political stance and seemingly occupied with the apparent
performativity of literature and language use, as well as the production of a
particular type of literary knowledge based on critique, literary studies took the
need to analyse and critique the messages inherent within texts one step further,
bringing about a major shift in priorities. Not only was it considered important
to demystify texts and literature and uncover their hidden ideological messages
in order to protect the reader and their mental and psychological integrity, but
such analyses and resulting understandings of the workings of texts were also
seen as necessary for the purpose of enacting political and social change (ibid.).

Ecocriticism

Where literary theory and critique have taken on the task of analysing and
critiquing the relationship between writers and what they write about the world,
the ‘world’ in this case refers to human society or the human sphere. The branch
of literary critique referred to as ‘ecocriticism’, however, extends the borders of
the ‘world’ to include the entirety of the non-human as well as human worlds
(Glotfelty 1996: xviii). Fundamental to ecocriticism is the relationship between
nature and culture and specifically the interconnections between the human
cultural artefacts of language and literature and the non-human world (ibid.).
For example, of particular significance to ecocritics has been the influence of
and the passing down through language and literature (but also imagery and
symbolism) of certain metaphorical understandings of the natural world and
our species’ relationship with it (Clark 2019: 14). Ecocriticism has also sought
to disrupt the monopoly of the physical and natural sciences and their claims
on the discourse on nature and ecology. This shifts the conversation from
explanations of how nature functions towards literary discussions and studies
that focus on how we understand and make sense of our relationship with nature
and the ecological crisis (ibid.).
Coming as it does from literary critique, ecocriticism is often characterized
by the notion that the cultural assumptions and biases running through
texts represent a degree of agential force. Therefore, critique is necessary to
disrupt environmentally damaging narratives from becoming normalized
and naturalized. Thus, ecocritics often work as cultural critics, highlighting
particular messages and uses of language in literature and subjecting them to
critical analysis (Clark 2019: 5). For example, in a Sense of Place, a Sense of
 Critical Approaches 49

Planet, Ursula Heise discusses the symbolism, literary works, media advances
and differences in cultural narratives that have contributed to shifting notions
of our ecological predicament on planet Earth (Heise 2008). For Heise, the
history of nature writing in twentieth-century United States has entrenched
a form of pastoral localism to the American environmental psyche that has
proved surprisingly resilient to the transformative effects of symbolism and
narratives that have sought to promote the notion of the global nature of
our climate and ecological crises. Heise highlights and critiques this form
of localism for its inability to develop the sense of interconnectedness that
is necessary for life on a finite planet on which the living world does not
recognize borders.
Another cultural issue influencing environmental and ecological thought
that has garnered much attention from ecocritics is that of anthropocentrism;
that is, the perspective that seeks to assign value to nature only on the basis
of its utility to humans (Heise 2008). For many, anthropocentrism is a
culturally inherited narrative that places the human within the position of sole
subject on this Earth and in contrast constructs non-human animals and the
rest of nature as nothing more than an inanimate resource for our species.
Anthropocentrism strips subjectivity, culture and meaning from nature,
viewing it as a conceptual blank slate upon which human wants and meanings
can be written (see Chapter 2).
The field of ecocriticism seeks to counter the narratives inherent within
anthropocentrism by making nature a concern of the humanities. In subsuming
ecological concerns within the field of language and literature, issues such as
ethics, subjectivity, relationality and ontology can be attached to the natural
world. Moreover, the conceptual elements comprising anthropocentrism that
construct the living world as both non-sentient and representing nothing more
than a passive, inanimate resource can be questioned. Indeed, Ursula Heise
(2008) details how literary works and theories have challenged and impacted
our view of our species and its relationship with the rest of life on this planet. For
example, Heise suggests that James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock 1988)
encouraged us to make the shift from viewing our planet as inanimate material
to understanding it as a global system of interacting and interconnected systems
and organisms that all function to maintain an overall functioning homeostasis.
Similarly, in her ground-breaking book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson ([1962]
2020) exposed the devastating effects of the spraying of DDT on wildlife and
ecological webs in the United States, leading to an increased awareness of their
destructive effects. However, Silent Spring also brought about a major shift in the
50 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

public understanding of our embeddedness within a larger ecological system as

well as the intimate relationships and flows of matter within it.
As well as expanding the political to include the rest of the biosphere and
the non-human, and questioning categorizations of the human and animal,
ecocritics also maintain a keen interest in the human and social–political sphere.
In doing so, they aim to view threats to both environmental and ecological justice
as products of oppressive forms of social systems and hierarchies (Anker and
Felski 2017: 6). One feature of general literary critique is to approach texts from
an allegorical perspective, that is, one that seeks to uncover language and literary
structures that support and represent larger sociopolitical structures (ibid.).
When applied to ecocriticism, the analyst might, for example, uncover linguistic
or literary structures that normalize, naturalize and echo anthropocentric
societal norms that cast the non-human as a mere pest, problem or resource.
They may also seek to highlight those that prioritize the most trivial of human
wants over the lives of non-human animals and the natural functioning of
ecosystems.
However, the field of ecocriticism also offers a more profound connection
between language and the natural world. How this is seen to play out has
particular ontological implications that distinguish ecocriticism from literary
critique and set out the foundations for the field of material ecocriticism. For
example, Glotfelty (1996: xix) makes the case that the eco in ecocriticism does
not merely refer to the target of literary ecocriticism, that is, ecology, but that it
also denotes an ecological perspective that dismisses the idea that literature and
language use exist within an immaterial realm separate from nature. Instead,
texts are seen to form part of a network of agential and interacting elements,
including ‘energy, matter, and ideas’ (ibid.). Material ecocritics see forms of
discursivity such as language as a way of participating in a world in which
symbolism, energy and matter become entangled in the production of myriad
discursively produced meanings and significations (Iovino and Oppermann
2014: 2). The natural, material world is investigated both ‘in texts and as a text’
with practitioners attempting to illuminate the way material nature and symbolic
forms of discursivity ‘express their interaction whether in representations or in
their concrete reality’ (2014: 2).
This way of seeing intimate connections between the natural and the
symbolic echoes Gregory Bateson’s theory of an Ecology of Mind. At the heart
of Bateson’s theory is the idea that the natural world is comprised of individual
but interconnected minds of varying size and complexity (Bateson 2000).
Crucial to this position is a very specific conceptualization of the concept of
 Critical Approaches 51

what a mind is or can be. Bateson saw minds as any structure in nature that
can send, receive and recognize messages. Here, Bateson is not referring to the
notion of a conscious mind that we might associate with sentient beings. Rather,
a ‘mind’ for Bateson is that which can be conceived in terms of functioning at
a level that we might understand as pre or subconscious – and as a structure
that can identify difference. Bateson uses the concept of difference to denote the
information, or specific units of information that are picked up and identified
by separate processing minds (ibid.). In Steps to an Ecology of Mind (2000: 459)
Bateson famously states that it is such information that amounts to ‘a difference
that makes a difference’. Difference, in this sense, refers to any change of state
that is interpreted by a mind. Differences are mental simulations of a material
reality. While physical reality influences differences that are communicated, such
differences produce a feedback loop by influencing and bringing about differences
in the material world. Though we might view the messages communicated by
organisms of varying complexity as very different, for Bateson, they all amount
to an interpretation of the material world as information (or difference) and the
sending of this information to a structure that can decipher it and perhaps act
upon it. For example, the brightly coloured underbelly of the rough-skinned
newt (Taricha granulosa) communicates to predators that it is highly poisonous
and therefore should not be eaten. If a predator processes this information and
avoids preying upon a particular rough-skinned newt, the information will have
amounted to ‘a difference that makes a difference’ in the material world. Likewise,
if an email informing a job applicant that their application has been successful
results in them moving to a new part of the country, again, a difference has made
a difference. Thus, from synapses to flowers to newts to written communication,
Bateson identifies a common process whereby representations of the material
world are communicated as information, which, in turn, then influences the
material world (Bateson 2000). A key feature of Bateson’s overall theory is that
separate minds or perceiving structures form larger, interacting mental systems
(ibid.). Thus, for example, plants form mental systems with other biological
entities with which they interact and are co-evolved. On a larger scale, we might
consider a government’s policy on wildlife management and conservation
together with its followers, opponents and actors to represent a larger mental
system. Also to be included are the wild animals that perceive and are directly
affected by these policies and which react to changes in the ways in which they
are treated. Within such a mental system, some of the differences that make a
difference are the discourses of wildlife management that represent wildlife and
normative concepts regarding our relationship with it.
52 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

The ideas within the field of material ecocriticism and Bateson’s Steps to an
Ecology of Mind entail both seeing intimate connections between language,
discourses and the natural world and an understanding that the production
of language or critique in relation to nature is also a form of participation in
the natural world. Critique for the ecocritic (and the ecolinguist), therefore,
is performed as ecological action that also exposes and critiques potentially
destructive cultural ideas and uses of language (Glotfelty 1996: xix).

Discourse and Language Studies

Ideas about the power of language and literature to influence our thoughts
have existed since Antiquity. This acknowledgement of the power of language
went through several evolutions, culminating in the field of literary critique.
However, within the field of linguistics, the idea of applying a critical stance
towards language, of course, emerged much more recently and can be traced
to critical theory and the influence of the Frankfurt School (Wodak and Meyer
2015: 6). Critical theory aimed to shift the priorities of social theory towards
that of the need to critique society and its social structures as a necessary
step towards the ultimate goal of changing it. This was in stark contrast to the
previous position, which merely saw the role of social theory as understanding
and explaining the ways in which society functions (ibid.). Within linguistics
and the study of language more broadly, the notion of criticality was connected
to an approach to analysing language use that was termed ‘Critical Linguistics’
(Fowler et al. 1979; Kress and Hodge 1979). While literary critique focused
on the overall representations, tropes and metaphors that play out in literary
texts, the area of critical linguistics sought to understand how ideologies
and particular portrayals of aspects of the world manifest through choices of
vocabulary, grammatical structure or rhetorical strategies and devices. However,
a key area of commonality between the two fields is the notion of taking a critical
stance towards forms of language use. Moreover, in both fields, both language
and the use of language are important components of studying texts as artefacts
or products that reflect the human condition.
A critical perspective can be seen as necessary for two major reasons. First,
it can be due to the nature of language itself and questions about the degree to
which language can accurately communicate that to which it refers. Second, a
critical perspective is needed because language is often used for rhetorical and
persuasive effect. Indeed, a major area of importance for the field in general
 Critical Approaches 53

has been the concept of power. Van Dijk (2015: 63) argues that practitioners
of critical linguistics and discourse studies are socially and politically oriented
towards researching how both power and challenges to that power play out
in language use. The concepts of power and acts of resistance to power being
leveraged through uses of language are also of key importance to the field of
ecolinguistics because the non-human living world cannot engage in logocentric
or other human forms of meaning-making in order to secure its needs and
desires. It is therefore considered to have no voice and by implication to have no
interests to uphold. Moreover, it is unable to challenge or resist the ways in which
it is ideologically constructed in human uses of language and semiosis (Stibbe:
2015). Thus, ecolinguists act on behalf of the non-human natural world, either
exposing language use and discourses that portray and construct nature in ways
that encourage its destruction or highlighting forms of language or stories that
are likely to lead to its care and protection (ibid.).

The Philosophy of Language and Its

Relationship with the World

The connection between language and power and therefore the impact that
language can have on the natural world relates both to the effectiveness with
which it can either represent it or stand in for it in ways that can influence the way
we see it. In an attempt to understand the role that language plays in shaping our
understandings of the world (and therefore also the natural world), Potter (1996:
97) invokes the two metaphors of understanding language as either a mirror
to the world or a constructor of conceptual worlds. The representationalism
inherent within the mirror metaphor sees language as merely reflecting or
providing a linguistic image of reality that can often stand in for reality itself.
Implicit within this view is the Aristotelian assertion that for language to mirror
reality what is required is the prior existence of an object to be subsequently
named in language. According to this account, language is also given only a
passive role, with no power to impact meaning. It is only a source of labels (ibid.).
Barad (2003) questions the view inherent within the concept of
representationalism that matter is a mere passive substrate waiting to be
ascribed meaning and reflected elsewhere through the use of linguistic symbols.
For Barad, representationalism sees entities in the world as lacking meaning
until they are endowed with significance by being brought into a system of
symbolism. Conversely, the metaphor of language as a constructor sees reality
54 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

as built up through particular language choices (Potter 1996: 98). The critical
discourse analyst Norman Fairclough acknowledges these two functions of
language in use, highlighting both how it represents what exists and its ability
to simultaneously signify ‘the world, constituting and constructing the world in
meaning’ (Fairclough 1992: 64). Thus, when this concept is applied to the non-
human natural world, it suggests that we can both represent meanings inherent
within nature or we can treat it like a blank canvas and use a signifying system
such as language in order to imbue it with particular cultural meanings and
significance. Whereas representationalism or the mirror metaphor positions
language as merely following a pre-existing reality, the constructivist position sees
understanding and knowledge of the world as stemming from the acquisition of
new language. For example, as we encounter new discourses or learn new words,
we are exposed to new concepts. Aligned to this position was the philosopher
of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously proposed that one can only
conceptualize that for which one possesses language (Wittgenstein 1922). Sapir
and Whorf are associated with a similar position that came to be known as
linguistic determinism due to its assertion that, such is the power of language,
speakers of different languages perceive the world in different ways. Barad (ibid.:
802), however, sees both the representationalism of the mirror metaphor and
constructivism as sharing the same ontological root by making the case that ‘the
representationalist belief in the power of words to mirror pre-existing phenomena
is the metaphysical substrate that supports social constructivist perspectives’.
Despite the important difference between representationalism and construction
through language, the same ‘metaphysical substrate’ that Barad refers to relates
to the view that language and semiosis are, within these perspectives, assumed to
be the sole generators of either signalling or producing meanings as phenomena
that are completely separate from the entities that they either describe or
construct. Barad here refers to the idea that representationalism denotes the
notion of a ‘true’ representation, whereas a construction is still a portrayal that
does not necessarily map exactly onto a material reality, while at the same time
being contingent upon a number of linguistic acts that construct a certain view
of reality in the minds of language users.
Barad’s perspective is essentially a critique of the Saussurean concept of the
sign, as a symbolic and mental object that can stand in place of and project
the meaning of aspects of reality. For example, Ferdinand Saussure analysed
systems of signification, that is, elements, units and rules that exist within an
overall system and which result in a method for communicating meaning
and experience (Klages 2017: 10). Applying a structuralist perspective to
 Critical Approaches 55

language, Saussure suggested that communication is possible because systems

of signification are formed of linguistic signs, that is, individual elements of
communication from the overall system and that which they refer to, their
referent; in other words, signifiers and signifieds (ibid.). Signifiers are either
actual sound elements or the mental understanding and reproduction of that
sound in the mind when the signifier is read (ibid.). For Saussure, this coming
together or association between a signifier and signified or referent (in order
create a sign) was the first of two ways by which signifying systems create and
convey meaning. The second, which Saussure termed ‘value’, relates to how
signifiers gain the power to conjure up the mental images of their signifieds.
For Saussure, each signifier is only able to stand out from others as having its
own individuality and ability to invoke particular concepts by its relationship of
difference to other signifiers within the system (ibid.). However, key to Barad’s
argument is that apart from cases of onomatopoeia, for Saussure, the assigning
of one element within a system of signification to a particular referent is arbitrary
(ibid.). For Barad, the formal system of language as a signifying system is to be
treated with considerable suspicion in terms of its ability to accurately stand in
for reality.
Moreover, Barad (2003) criticizes our apparent unwavering belief in and
dependence upon intermediate mediating linguistic references to external
reality rather than our direct experience of that material reality. Language use
involves abstraction and mediating symbols of reality that actually distance
us from the material reality which we want to perceive or understand (ibid.).
As Ernest Becker writes, humans learned to cope with the real physical
world and all of the sensations that it brings about through being able to
establish and build an interiority and by creating an internal symbolic self
(Becker 2020). This interiority distanced us from the direct experience
of reality and materiality. Similarly, Barad (ibid.) highlights the tripartite
system of knower, representation and known, pointing out that according to
this account, the ‘ontological gap’ between the knower and the known and
the mediating semiotic system calls into doubt the accuracy of language to
either mirror or construct its referent in the world. This position is not new
and has been highlighted by many within language philosophy and fields
of text analysis. For example, Alfred Korzybski wrote that ‘a map is not the
territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory,
which accounts for its usefulness’ (Korzybski 1933: 58). Social constructivist,
structuralist and linguistic determinist accounts of language all support the
notion that language represents a discriminating grid set down upon reality
56 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

that arbitrarily categorizes and delineates entities that may exist on a spectrum
of degree rather than being separate in kind. As Potter states:

The strongest version of the (construction yard) metaphor would have the world
literally springing up into existence as it is talked or written about. Ridiculous,
surely? Perhaps, but I want to opt for something nearly as strong. Reality enters
into human practices by way of the categories and descriptions that are part of
those (linguistic) practices. The world is not ready categorized by God or nature
in ways that we are all forced to accept. It is constituted in one way or another as
people talk it, write it and argue it. (1996: 98)

This position is also in line with the fields of critical discourse analysis and
ecolinguistics. In fact, CDA analysts often set out to examine particular
representations of the world which vary in the degree to which they accurately
map onto a material or social reality and which may serve the interests of power
(Fairclough 2003a). Likewise, many ecolinguists hold as a key philosophical
underpinning the notion that language and language use often fail to
accurately represent the true nature of the living world or accurately represent
our entangled and contiguous relationship with it. Indeed, the influence of
critical theory within these fields and approaches as well as a questioning of
the accuracy of language to convey the true reality of the living world and
our relationship with it fall very much in line with Barad’s concerns about the
representation and construction of reality through language. In agreement are
Martusewicz, Edmundson and Lupinacci (2014), who argue that the narratives
constructed about the world should be seen for what they are, that is, not
truths but social constructions and ‘linguistically constructed ideas’. In this
sense, language takes on a greater power than that of merely describing or
representing the world as it is. Reality is constructed in and through discourse
– through acts and practices of speaking and writing (Cameron 2001: 123).
Language use does not merely represent reality but also shapes how we view
and understand it (Fairclough 2003a), naturalizing and normalizing certain
perceptions of reality (Cameron 2001). Therefore, some of the foundational
assumptions underpinning critical linguistics and the need to analyse language
in use from a critical perspective are based on the idea that people do not
always use language in transparent, unmotivated ways and that there exists a
degree of slippage between the signifier in language and the entity or concept
being referred to. Thus, environmentally motivated analyses of language can
aim to investigate ways in which textual representations of nature deviate from
reality in order to serve vested interests.
 Critical Approaches 57

Critical Discourse Studies

Heavily influenced by critical theory and critical linguistics, critical discourse

studies (CDS) often incorporate the use of linguistically oriented analyses of
texts in order to investigate forms of representation and how these enact power
relations (Fairclough 1992). Typically, these employ detailed grammatical and
semantic analyses of ‘the more subtle workings of texts’ (Jäger and Maier 2016:
120) and relate these to the different discourse features that language users
choose in order to encode various meanings (Fairclough 2003a). Ecolinguistics
carried out as a form of ecocritical discourse analysis often draws on CDS for
the rich range of analytical tools and understandings about how language can be
used in order to create particular meanings or affordances developed since the
emergence of critical linguistics. Here, we will investigate just a few of the many
concepts and conceptual tools that ecocritical discourse analysts can apply to
texts and language in use in order to make sense of what is being said, identify
discourses and expose ideologies.

Presuppositions
Presuppositions are what language users assume to be true about the world before
formulating themselves in language (Yule and Widdowson1996: 25). In this respect,
Yule and Widdowson suggest that it is people who have presuppositions, not
sentences. It is by using particular formulations, or ‘triggers’, (van Dijk 2014: 288)
that the speaker commits herself to the truth value of particular representations of
the world (Yule and Widdowson: 1996). Linguistically signalled presuppositions
are visible to the analyst as speakers’ assumptions about common ground or
shared knowledge between the speaker and the receiver (van Dijk 2014). They are
embedded within larger sentences as the given content of an utterance rather than
new information that might be questioned. However, when taking a critical view
of language, we might also conceptualize presuppositions as attempts by language
users to establish certain views of the world as general, uncontested truths, when
in fact they may advance representations of the world that falsely disadvantage
some to the advantage of others. In effect, presuppositions can be thought of as
acts performed through language. Therefore, what the analyst can look for and
identify is the linguistic evidence or traces of the presuppositions that language
users bring to their uses of language. Yule and Widdowson (1996) identify a range
of different ways in which people manifest their presuppositions in language use.
Examples of these are existential, factive and lexical presuppositions.
58 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Existential Presupposition
Existential presuppositions are formed through the use of noun phrases featuring
the definite article and/or possessive structures (Yule and Widdowson 1996:
27). These noun phrases take various sentence functions in clauses but do not
represent the focus of the main communicative thrust of the sentences in which
they are embedded. The following examples were taken from my ecolinguistic
study of wildlife management discourse (Bellewes 2023). In each example,
the notion that wild animals can be sustainably used as a resource is treated
as uncontroversial information and as part of the belief system of the reader.
It is assumed or presupposed that wild animal populations can be maintained
in viable population numbers while at the same time being instrumentalized
and objectified for human societies consisting of many millions of individuals.
It is also presupposed that the normalization and naturalization of the killing
of wild animals for food will foster sustainable patterns of thinking about and
orienting towards wildlife and the functioning of ecosystems. It could also be
argued that it is presupposed that the reader agrees with these two notions and
shares them as common ground with the writer, which may not be the case. The
presupposed notion is expressed within a noun phrase using the definite article
(the), while the main focus of the sentences is the need to ‘develop’ and ‘promote’
the presupposed concept:

1. [W]e need to further develop the sustainable use of wildlife.

2. ([W]e intend to/should) PROMOTE THE SUSTAINABLE USE OF
WILDLIFE (Naturvårdsverket 2018, emphasis added by author).

Factive Presupposition
This form of presupposition is displayed through the use of factive verbs such as
‘know’, ‘regret’ or phrases such as ‘be aware’ plus a subordinate ‘that’ complement
clause (Yule and Widdowson 1996). Van Dijk offers the example sentence, ‘Tony
Blair regretted that the French did not support his plan to go to war against Iraq’
(2014: 285). Although the structure of the overall sentence and the grammatical
feature that contains the presupposed concept are very different to that seen in
existential presupposition, both forms share the notion that the presupposed
element is embedded within a structure and is not the main focus of the sentence.
In the case of factive presupposition, the idea that the French did not support
Tony Blair’s plan to go to war is presupposed, while the idea that Blair regretted
something is established as the main thrust of the sentence. We are encouraged
 Critical Approaches 59

to treat the presupposed information as fact while being directed to pay more
attention to Tony Blair’s feelings of regret.

Lexical Presupposition
Yule and Widdowson (ibid.: 28) demonstrate how single items of vocabulary
can also indicate certain presupposed notions possibly held by users of language
(1996: 28). They suggest that the use of certain items of lexis have ‘asserted’
meanings and ‘non-asserted’ interpretations (ibid.). Thus, the word ‘managed’
can be understood as carrying the asserted meaning of ‘succeeded’ while
simultaneously communicating the idea that the achievement was not easy and
that they had to ‘try’. We might also consider the use of deontic modal verbs
as linguistically manifested indicators of lexical presupposition. Deontic modal
verbs are those that assert normative statements about what must, should or
needs to be done or happen. Drawing again on my study of wildlife management
discourse (Bellewes 2023), the following sentences are representative of a
common and recurring rhetorical pattern found in the Swedish Environmental
Protection Agency’s 2018 Wildlife Management Strategy report. The use of the
modal verb ‘should’ is used in order to make normative statements asserting
the importance of people being able to utilize wild animals in a variety of ways.
The repeated use of this modal verb together with the use of the noun phrase
‘unjustified obstacles’ in relation to the above assertion might be taken as
presupposing that the Swedish Environmental Agency does not believe that the
current regulations make it easy enough to instrumentalize and use wild animals
in a wide range of ways. Thus, this opinion is indicated in the text in an implicit
rather than explicit way:
It should be easy for different interest groups to take part in different forms of
sustainable use of wildlife, and for hunters to be given the opportunity to hunt.
Hunting, wildlife tourism, and other types of sustainable use of wildlife should
not be limited by unjustified obstacles. (Naturvårdsverket 2018)

Value Assumption
For Fairclough (2003a), words and phrases can become imbued with the
associations that are connected to other words and phrases when they are placed
together. Value assumptions can be considered textual examples of implicit and
assumed evaluations of phenomena and situations that exist in the minds of
communicators and which are revealed through noting what follows certain
60 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

evaluative uses of language. For example, Fairclough (2003a: 56) observes how
the verb ‘help’ in the sentence ‘a good training programme can help develop
good flexibility’ can indicate the assumption that flexibility is a good thing to
have. In my teaching, I have provided learners with excerpts from the Swedish
Environmental Protection Agency’s 2018 wildlife strategy and tasked them with
identifying how the hunting of wildlife (sometimes in national parks and nature
reserves) is evaluated by the authors of the report. Learners can notice how these
authors avoid having to explicitly promote recreational hunting in statement
sentences by instead achieving this implicitly by placing words to denote hunting
after the nouns ‘opportunities’ and ‘possibilities’. The educational use of such
texts, where ecologically dubious practices or attitudes are appraised positively
through value assumptions and other forms of implicit strategies (see lexical
relations below), can attune learners’ awareness to subtle forms of evaluation by
language users.
Example excerpts:
(a)
From 2016, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency will clarify
opportunities for hunting in protected areas

(b)
(The) agency has investigated the possibilities of permitting public hunting of
small game on land owned by the state, (emphasis added by author)

Agency
Van Leeuwen (2008) has advanced his social actor and action networks to
investigate the degree to which social actors (humans) and their actions are
either activated or passivated. Van Leeuwen asserts that representing people as
social actors, that is, as dynamic and making an impact in the world is associated
positively. When it comes to the non-human natural world, it can be argued that
linguistic activation can emphasize organisms as agential entities that perform
ecologically significant roles in ecosystems, thus challenging their portrayal as
a passive resource for human projects. In addition, representing non-sentient
aspects of nature as dynamic can arguably help challenge human hubris and the
perception that humanity is in full control of the natural world.
Van Leeuwen shows how a range of grammatical structures including clauses
and nominalizations linguistically signal entities’ varying degrees of agency or
lack thereof. For example, according to van Leeuwen’s framework, entities’ agency
is emphasized through representing them in clauses in which they are both the
 Critical Approaches 61

subjects of the clause and the agents carrying out actions signalled by transitive verbs
impacting direct objects as semantic goals. Conversely, entities are constructed as
passive by representing them as the goal participant of transitive clauses.
Entities can also be represented as either activated or passivated by how their
actions are represented. Thus, entities’ agency is associated with the extent to
which their actions are seen as producing effects and having an impact. Again, an
action that is represented transitively and as acting on a direct object in a clause
is emphasized to the greatest degree possible. At the other end of the spectrum,
actions can be very much de-emphasized through the process of representing
them as permanent features of entities, a form of representation that van Leeuwen
calls descriptivization. An example of this can be seen in the example below:

Identify values of ecosystem services provided by wildlife. This includes, for example,
wildlife and hunting experiences, and wildlife’s structuring effects on ecosystems that
benefit humans. (Naturvårdsverket 2018, emphasis added by author)

Here, the present participle verb ‘structuring’ acts as a modifier of the noun
‘effects’, thus suggesting that their effect on ecosystems is a feature of wildlife
rather than representing it as an activity.

Metaphor
The fields of framing theory and metaphors have provided both critical discourse
studies and ecolinguistics scholars considerable fertile ground for the analysis of
representations in texts and language. A leading light in the field is George Lakoff,
who invites us to try to understand the linguistic and representational mechanics
of how metaphors do the work of portraying entities in particular ways (Lakoff
1999: 4). To this end, Lakoff introduces the notions of target and source domain.
The area of life that is being conceptualized and spoken about is the target domain.
In other words, this is the entity or situation in real life that we want to refer to.
The source domain, on the other hand, contains concepts, ideas, reasonings and
images from another area of life, which are then mapped onto the target domain
in order to represent and understand it in particular ways. The source domain is
referenced through the use of trigger words and phrases (ibid.).
Lakoff explains how each source domain contains its own, sometimes
numerous, elements, all unified under an overall conceptual theme. The conceptual
metaphor consists of mapping these separate elements onto the target domain.
A key factor in how these metaphors function is that inferences about states of
affairs and relations are made within particular source domains. Thus, when I
62 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

used the phrase ‘fertile ground’ above, I was employing the source domain of soil
that is particularly rich in nutrients and applying it to the target domain of the
linguistic area of metaphors. The inference within this particular source domain
is that plants that are planted in this soil will grow well and that this therefore
represents a good opportunity for the production and growth of crops. This
inference is ‘mapped onto’ (ibid.) the target domain. Therefore, the target domain
of the study of metaphors is represented as an area that has enriched the fields
of CDS and ecolinguistics and which has aided scholars’ academic productivity.
Inferences and meanings that are transferred onto the target domain can function
as a suggestion of action based on this inference. In this case, if an area of academia
is framed as ‘fertile ground’ for another, as opportunities are seen as wasted if not
taken, the use of the metaphor can be said to have a normative element.
It is important to note that there are many possible inferences that can
be attributed to each source domain. Therefore, each of these can also be
applied to the target domain. As mentioned above, inferences are made within
particular source domains and are then related to a target domain. Once they
have been applied to the target domain, they are referred to as an ‘entailment’
that we draw from the overall metaphor. Where conceptual metaphors are
of particular importance to critical discourse analysts and ecolinguists is
when their entailments suggest action or particular stances. One such case of
this comes through the xenophobic use of the ‘WAVE’ metaphor applied to
immigration (van Dijk 2015: 75). The ‘WAVE’ metaphor, as the name suggests,
relates the idea of being inundated with a large amount of water to the concept
of large numbers of migrants moving into a new area (ibid.). We can break
down the source domain, target domain and the inferences within each as
follows:

Source domain: Water, waves, large, uncontrolled inundations, or influxes of

large amounts of water.
Inferences within the source domain:
● An influx of a large amount of uncontrolled water can overwhelm people and
communities so that they cannot function properly.
● You cannot breathe under water.
● You can be swept away and displaced by floods.
Target domain: Migrants fleeing difficult or dangerous conditions.
Inferences applied to the target domain:
Many migrants will:
 Critical Approaches 63

● Overwhelm people and communities so that they cannot function properly.

● Overwhelm public services so that they cannot cope.
● Displace the established communities

This metaphor also creates entailments for action or a particular stance to be

taken through the mapping of inferences from the source domain to the target
domain. If large numbers of people migrating to the country in which you are
living will overwhelm people and public services and displace you and your
family and friends, the entailment is that you ‘should’ resist migrants rather than
welcoming them or showing them compassion.
However, in addition to the entailments that are transferred from the source
domain to the target domain, there are other ways in which metaphors impact the
understandings we obtain about metaphorically represented phenomena. Lakoff
(ibid.: 11) points out that the use of conceptual metaphors such as these often results
in certain entities and elements being hidden. We can, for example, understand
that the WAVE metaphor omits any notion of migrants as being individuals who
have been through hard times and who are in an unenviable position, or indeed
that they have hopes and dreams just like anyone else. These notions disappear
through the objectification that occurs when relating migrants to large volumes of
uncontrolled water. Van Dijk (ibid.) points out that this metaphor has the effect of
embodying and concretizing the rather abstract concept of mass migration as the
fear that one might feel when overwhelmed by water.
When working with metaphors in educational contexts that aim at the
development of a critical awareness of language, learners can, of course, be given
whole texts and be tasked with finding conceptual metaphorical representations.
They can then be asked to determine the source and target domains as well as what
the inferences and entailments for action might be. However, in the early stages,
it can facilitate learners’ ability to work with and grasp the concept of metaphors
by condensing the context in which the trigger elements are found. For example,
in the activity below, I have found trigger phrases for the WAVE metaphor in
seven sentences or headlines from the Daily Mail newspaper and present them to
learners in a more immediately accessible way. Teachers can either highlight the
trigger phrases for the metaphor or leave them unhighlighted depending on the
level of competence of the learners. The fact that this is an activity that focuses on
metaphors can be mentioned in the rubric or left open so that learners identify the
discourse strategy used for representation. As an extra layer of analysis, learners
can be prompted to think about other aspects of representation that we can connect
to this metaphor, such as the omissions and embodiment mentioned above.
64 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Teaching Activity 3: Metaphor

Here we have a series of sentences taken from news articles from the Daily Mail
newspaper in the UK. With a partner, analyze the choices of language (signifiers
– word choice, grammatical structure, linguistic strategies etc.). Remember that
language can have power because language items are chosen in order to perform
particular communicative jobs. What can you say about the language choices
and the power they might have?

1. Forget the Greek crisis or Britain’s referendum, this tidal wave of migrants
could be the biggest threat to Europe since the war, writes MICHAEL
BURLEIGH.
(Burleigh 2015)
2. Britain is experiencing the ‘largest ever single wave of immigration’ in its
history two years after ministers opened the door to millions of eastern
European, leading academics have claimed.
(Hickley 2006)
3. Trump slams Biden for ‘spiraling tsunami’ of migrants and border agents
reveal they detained nearly 100,000 in February.
(Mulraney 2021)
4. Belarus dictator Lukashenko threatens to flood Europe with ‘migrants and
drugs’ in retaliation for sanctions imposed for Ryanair hijacking.
(Pleasance 2021)
5. Millions of climate change refugees will flood into Europe as they flee
extreme weather and food shortages, UN scientists warn.
(Spencer 2014)
6. Western nations could be swamped as refugees flee floods and drought.
(Spencer 2014)
7. Britain and other Western nations could face a tide of refugees as the
Earth warms.
(Spencer 2014)

Collocation

Collocation refers to the situation whereby an item of vocabulary is used with

other lexical elements ‘with greater than random probability in its (textual)
context’ (Hoey 1991: 6–7). Put differently, words form partnerships with other
words. For example, one is more likely to ‘take’ rather than ‘do’ a risk or be
 Critical Approaches 65

‘blissfully’ rather than ‘happily’ ignorant. These proximity associations between

lexical items can also affect the meanings we get from sentences because there
will often be a semantic relationship between a lexical item and its neighbours
(Stubbs 2002: 225). This semantic relationship is referred to as semantic prosody,
‘a form of meaning which is established through the proximity of a consistent
series of collocates’ (Louw 2000: 57). Thus, as collocations can ‘convey messages
implicitly and even be at odds with an overt statement’ (Hunston 2002: 109),
they carry significant potential for influencing how we understand aspects of the
world (Baker 2006). For example, the word ‘rife’, which includes the meaning of
‘common’, has a negative semantic prosody or association as it is often used with
negative words such as crime or forms of anti-social behaviour. On the other
hand, the word ‘lack’ has positive semantic prosody because it is often collocated
with qualities or entities that are desirable, such as experience or knowledge.

Overlexicalization

Machin and Mayer (2012: 37) point out that certain patterns of vocabulary usage
can suggest a desire in the writer to persuade the reader about an idea or concept
that is considered problematic or ideological. One way that this is performed is
through ‘overlexicalization’, which refers to the overuse of particular items of lexis
when referring to particular areas of life. In the sentences below, we return again
to the use of the collocation ‘the sustainable use of wildlife’ from the Swedish
Environmental Protection Agency’s 2018 wildlife strategy. We can see here the
use of overlexicalization performed through the formation of ‘the sustainable use
of wildlife’ as a local collocation. The concept of utilization is not usually applied
to wild animals. However, the combination of ‘use’ plus ‘wildlife’ is found together
frequently in this wildlife strategy report. Van Leeuwen (2015: 148) introduces
the concept of instrumental and interactive verbs in material processes. Whereas
interactive verbs are those that we associate as being appropriate for talking about
interactions with people, instrumental verbs are those that we might use to refer
to what we do with things or objects. Thus, if we want to show respect to people
as feeling, thinking beings, we will not treat or write about them as if they are
objects. Thus, the verb ‘to use’ applied to people in a material process is considered
instrumental rather than interactive. However, one might also argue that we do
not often associate the concept with wild animals either. This then presents as a
marked form; it stands out as unusual and might be considered controversial in
many modern societies where healthy ecosystems and their protection are often a
66 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

priority. This is where we see possible linguistic work done in order to overcome
this tension. Here, this comes through the placement of the adjective ‘sustainable’
before the noun ‘use’, as what is sustainable is associated with being uncontroversially
positive. The adjective ‘sustainable’ is arguably used in general English to describe
concepts or practices that do not involve the killing of wildlife. However, here it
becomes associated with ‘the use of wildlife’ through its role in constructing this
phrase. However, ‘sustainability’ is an overwhelmingly positive concept. Being
sustainable means living within one’s means, and global sustainability refers to
acts that do not transgress the planet’s ecological limits. Therefore, the use of this
adjective here imbues the rest of the phrase ‘the use of wildlife’ with a veneer of
ecological responsibility. Thus, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
would appear to be trying to establish the concept of using wildlife instrumentally
as being responsible and benign through establishing the phrase as a collocation.

1. SUSTAINABLE USE (of wildlife).

2. We need to further develop the sustainable use of wildlife.
3. ([W]e intend to/should) PROMOTE THE SUSTAINABLE USE OF
WILDLIFE.
4. It should be easy for different interest groups to take part in different
forms of sustainable use of wildlife.
5. Sustainable use (of wild animals) should be promoted.
6. Hunting, wildlife tourism and other types of sustainable use of wildlife
should not be limited by unjustified obstacles.
7. And other types of sustainable use of wildlife should not be limited by
unjustified obstacles.
8. PROMOTE THE SUSTAINABLE USE OF WILDLIFE AS A RESOURCE
(Naturvårdsverket 2018).

Discourses

Critical discourse studies can also draw on the important concept of discourses.
Discourses can be understood as recurring patterns of language and symbolism
or semiotic choices that construct particular stories and representations of life
(Fairclough 2003a; Machin and Mayr 2012; Sunderland 2004). A discourse is,
therefore, a larger, narrative structure that is comprised of the use of particular
grammatical structures, discursive features and choices of vocabulary in order
to structure a particular conceptual version of the world. A discourse exists
within but also beyond individual texts and uses of language. It can manifest its
 Critical Approaches 67

recurring themes, symbols and ways of representing and constructing life across
different forms of language in use (Jäger and Maier 2016: 118).
This is a perspective that views these ways of construing material and social
worlds as also representing the linguistic construction of streams of knowledge
over time (Jäger and Maier 2016). Fairclough (2003a: 26) provides the example of
political discourses that exist and perform their representational and performative
effects across multiple texts. These discourses are both reproduced and drawn on
by users of language in order to represent the world in particular ways (ibid.).
Thus, linguistic investigations of texts can incorporate an interdiscursive analysis
in order to identify the different discourses and representations of life that both
comprise and characterize them (ibid.).
There are, however, different conceptualizations of what a discourse is. We
can identify a spectrum of positions on the exact nature of discourses. On the
one hand, there is the recognition that discourses are patterns and choices of
language items that are employed in order to structure certain areas of life
and produce linguistically constructed knowledge worlds that act as social
constructs that are layered upon a physical substrata of reality. On the other
hand, at the more relativistic end of the spectrum, language acts represent a
form of performativity that can bring into existence that to which they refer
(Butler 1988 ) and which represent their own form of materiality, rather than
being ‘passive media into which reality is imprinted’ (Jäger and Maier 2016:
112). Whether or not we settle upon a ‘weak’ or more relativistic definition and
conceptualization of discourses, their ability to influence both thought and one’s
perceptions of oneself is well documented. For example, Sunderland (2004: 4)
refers to the constitutive power of discourses to work for ‘the construction and
performance of gender’.
Discourses, as linguistic systems of meaning-making, can also construct
our relationship with non-human nature (Dryzek 2012; Stibbe 2015). More
specifically, environmental discourses mediate our very notion of what nature
is and whether it can or should exist as self-willed and existing for its own ends
or, alternatively, whether it should be conceptually tethered to the concept of
representing utility for humankind.
For Jäger and Maier, discourses wield power over individuals because they
regulate how we think and therefore talk and act (2016: 117). Some theorists
highlight the ability of discourses to inhibit certain ways of seeing and thinking
about the world. For example, Cammack and Philips (2002: 126) see the
regulatory force of discourses coming through their ability to constrain certain
aspects of thought by discouraging the construction of ‘meaning outside the set
68 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

of definitions given’. Likewise, for others, discourses regulate thought because

they establish knowledge worlds that can be said, made and seen, and in doing
so simultaneously inhibit other ways of conceptualizing the world by leaving out
of the discourse other possible realities, thus rendering them unable to be said,
made and seen (Link and Link-Heer 1990).

Discourse Identification

One aspect of critical discourse studies is the identification and subsequent

analysis of discourses. Fairclough suggests that such an approach to discourse
analysis can aim at the following two tasks:

1. To identify the main parts of the world and social life that are represented
in the discourse. Identifying the main themes of the discourse.
2. To identify the particular perspective or angle or point of view from
which they are represented (2003a: 129).

Sunderland (2004) demonstrates how discourses can be identified through the

choices of vocabulary, grammatical structure and forms of symbolism made by
language users. It is these ‘linguistic traces’ that function as the evidence of the
presence of particular discourses in texts and uses of language (ibid.: 7). For example,
discourses can be identified by the metaphors that they typically employ (Fairclough
2003a: 129). This applies to both lexical and grammatical metaphors. We can see
below how wildlife management discourses based on a particularly anthropocentric
version of sustainable development can employ the use of grammatical metaphors
that use verbs such as ‘provide’, and ‘contribute’ in order to represent wild animals
as consciously offering up their bodies in order to benefit human society. Halliday
(2013) refers to such uses of language as grammatical metaphors due to the
incongruence existing between their structure and the meaning created. In each
case, one would expect an entity placed as either the subject of a verb in a finite or
non-finite clause to be an agent, the entity that carries out actions. However, in these
cases, due to the meanings of the verbs, the entities taking the subject role are the
semantic goals, in other words, the affected entities of the clause.

1. They provide us with opportunities for nature experiences, hunting and

access to game meat.
2. (wildlife) . . . considerable potential to contribute to both quality of life
for many people and to regional development (Naturvårdsverket 2018,
emphasis added by author).
 Critical Approaches 69

Functions of Language

The identification of discourses or ‘Interpretative Repertoires’ (Wetherell and

Potter 1988) can also be related to a functional view of communication, whereby
uses of language are seen as acts that perform particular communicative
functions (ibid.). For instance, the use of a particular language feature to create
a specific representation or the presence of extended sections of discourse
that draw on certain metaphors, tropes or portrayals can create constructions
of the living world that can be used to perform communicative functions by
achieving particular rhetorical effects. These constructions or representations
can, for example, serve the function of portraying nature in ways that justify
its exploitation or destruction. For example, language can be used to represent
animals as objects (objectification) or as a threat (problematization) in order
to perform the functions of, for instance, legitimizing the destruction of their
habitat or normalizing their extermination. Similarly, language can function so
as to situate problems as being associated solely with the Other (ibid.: 179). For
example, statistics and particular linguistic features can be used to portray wild
animals as ‘causing’ traffic accidents while at the same time omitting human-
related factors. This can perform the function of absolving motorists of any
responsibility or the need to drive more slowly and with extra care on roads
likely to be crossed by wild animals. Likewise, environmental campaigners or
people advocating plant-based diets are sometimes criticized as ‘fanatical’ or as
‘extremists’. This can perform the function of constructing an ad hominem attack,
thus delegitimizing them so that their environmental message is disregarded.
Discourses can, therefore, be understood to be characterized by particular
communicative functions. The creation of hypotheses about the identification
of such functions of discourse is one of the primary goals of discourse analysis
(ibid.: 177) and can help us in the task of identifying discourses.

Lexical Relations

Fairclough (2003a: 130) makes the case that another way that discourses can
be identified and distinguished from each other is in the ways in which items
of vocabulary in texts are used to establish relationships with other lexical
features. Here in my own use of language, an example of what Fairclough is
talking about can be seen in the previous sentence to this one. By referring
to words or ‘items of vocabulary’ a second time as ‘other lexical features’ I am
70 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

establishing a relationship between the concepts denoted by those phrases. By

using the adjective ‘other’, I construct a relationship of equivalence, or meaning
inclusion, between the two, which is called synonymy. Other relationships
might include antonymy, meaning exclusion and hyponymy, which refers to
the notion of being a type of something. For example, a dachshund is a type of
dog: therefore, a dachshund is a hyponym of dog. The larger category of dog is
referred to as the superordinate category. Fairclough makes the point that such
lexical associations in texts not only structure our understandings of the nature
of particular phenomena but can also be used to establish taken-for-granted
associations between different entities and concepts (ibid.).
We saw how overlexicalization can be seen as a sign that the language user
is having to work harder in order to argue for concepts or situations that are
associated with controversial notions (Machin and Mayr 2012: 37). We can
also conceptualize how the implicit signalling of particular relations and
associations through texts can be used to avoid the need to formulate them
explicitly, which would highlight potentially contestable assertions. We can see
an example of this from my study on wildlife management discourse (Bellewes
2023). In the section that I use as an example here, the producer of the text, the
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket 2018) seeks to
relate the concept of recreational hunting to wildlife management by referring
to the former, then indexing it again by using the latter phrase. It is difficult
to know if the intention is that of synonymy, in other words that licenced
recreational hunting is wildlife management or hyponymy, that hunting is a
type of wildlife management. However, in a way, this is not so important, as
the writer clearly wants to advance the idea that recreational hunting is a way
to achieve the management and control of wildlife. Wildlife management as a
noun phrase is uncontroversial. It is generally accepted that wild animals can
clash with human interests and that it can sometimes be necessary to control
them and to mitigate these interactions. However, it is not necessarily the
case that wildlife management is generally understood as being synonymous
with hunting or that recreational hunting rather than official culling is always
seen as a hyponym of wildlife management. What we can see in this text is
the texturing of lexical relations so that the two concepts are seen as closely
connected and either in a relationship of synonymy or hyponymy. The
closeness of this lexical relationship is treated as a given, and the use of either
lexical relation avoids the need for the writer to establish the relationship
between the two concepts explicitly in a series of statement sentences. This
becomes even more important in the second example as the ‘hunting’ refers
 Critical Approaches 71

to the killing of wolverines, which are a protected species in Sweden. Thus,

the hunting of wolverines is a potentially controversial subject and requires
some justification. This justification can be seen here in the creation of the
relationship of synonymy or hyponymy between ‘hunting’ indicated as
‘hunting seasons’ and ‘wildlife management’. After all, if the establishment of
recreational hunting seasons for a rare and protected species can be framed
as wildlife management it can be made to appear less controversial and even
acceptable, as the management of wild animals is associated with mostly
positive associations such as organization, planning and the mitigation of
human–wild animal clashes.

Example 1:

HUNTING SEASONS
As a part of the regionalization, the Swedish Environmental Protection
Agency proposes that decisions about the general hunting seasons should be
reassigned from the Government to the Swedish Environmental Protection
Agency or, in some cases, to the County Administrative Boards. Such an
arrangement increases the possibility to adapt wildlife management to
regional and local conditions (emphasis added by author).

Example 2:

In 2020, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has implemented

an extended regionalization of the wildlife management so that decisions are
taken closer to those affected. In 2017, the Swedish Environmental Protection
Agency has decided on regulations for the County Administrative Boards’
decisions about licensed wolverine hunting (emphasis added by author).

Interactions between Discourses

Texts are not comprised of single discourses, however. Multiple discourses or

subthemes that make up overall discourses co-exist within texts and can interact
to produce particular discursive effects (Jäger and Maier 2016: 121–2). There
can be points in texts where discourses intersect and merge, often incorporating
the other discourse’s ways of representing and constructing the world in order
to produce a discourse that is qualitatively different (Fairclough 2003a: 128).
The interactions between discourses can imbue certain entities or concepts
with particular associations that can be used for particular ideological effects
72 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

(Jäger and Maier 2016: 122). Likewise, the combination of key conceptual elements
from different discourses can be used for rhetorical effect in order to further
problematize situations, concepts, people and so on that are already portrayed
negatively in one discourse. Jäger and Maier (ibid.) offer a good example of how
this can occur in the statement ‘integrating immigrants into our society costs a
lot of money’. Here, the discourse of ‘immigration is a problem’ is entangled with
the discourse of ‘the economy is not doing well’. Thus, through the combination
of their main conceptual themes, the notion that immigrants are a problem is
intensified. Therefore, identifying entangled and intersecting discourses is one
way that discourse analyses can be carried out and can provide important insights
into how discourses exert their discursive effects in representing areas of life in
particular ways. An example of the ways in which discourses and the discourse
strands that comprise them can interact and produce different discursive effects
can be seen in my study (Bellewes 2023). This analysis uncovered a constellation
of discursive themes used by the Swedish EPA:

Discursive theme 1: Wild animals are both ecologically passive and the necessarily
passivated entities of human actions.
Discursive theme 2: Wild animals are damaging to human enterprises.
Discursive theme 3: Wild animal numbers need to be reduced through hunting.
Discursive theme 4: Wild animals are a commodity and a resource for society.
Discursive theme 5: The utilization of wild animals is an important aspect of a
sustainable society.

Such discursive phenomena have been referred to as ‘discursive knots’ by Crist

(2019). This particular constellation or ‘knot’ represents wild animals as the
passive and necessarily utilized entity of human exploitation and entertainment
as a form of sustainability. At the same time, the constellation of discursive
themes portrays wildlife as embodying the sort of agency that is solely associated
with causing damage to human affairs and being a potential threat to people.
The overall discursive position constructed by the constellation of discursive
themes is that wild animals are to be seen as a problem. The solution is their
resourcification through hunting, which simultaneously reduces the number
of herbivores and predators while also providing both exploitative and non-
exploitative entertainment as well as ‘sustainable’ meat and animal products for
society. In addition to the main discourse themes found, the report also contains
suggestions for the further development of wild animal and nature tourism. This
might be considered to be a very different form of utilization to that of hunting.
However, when exposed to an ecocritical lens, these themes can be seen to be
 Critical Approaches 73

generated from the same anthropocentric assumptions as the more exploitative

forms of resourcification as, according to this world view, nature cannot exist or
be tolerated on the basis of either inherent worth or its ecological roles within
ecosystems. Its existence is seen and linguistically constructed as being totally
contingent upon the granting of human-related meaning and utility.
As we have seen so far in this chapter, an interesting area of critical discourse
studies and ecocritical discourse analysis is the extra rhetorical and persuasive
work that is done on a linguistic level in order to reframe controversial concepts
as accepted givens. In this example, this is achieved within the constellation of
discourses by each discursive theme establishing the ideational foundations for
the next.
The first discursive theme represents wild animals as passive in terms of having
no or limited positive, ecological significance or impact in ecosystems. They are
also represented as being the passive affected entity of human actions, which are
themselves either portrayed as positive or neutral. The second discursive theme
emphasizes wild animal agency in causing damage and negatively impacting
human affairs, ignoring certain benefits that, for example, predatory animals in
a more balanced ecological system might bring to society. Thus, by portraying
wild animals as entities that have no inherent or ecological value and which
are portrayed as only causing problems for society, the following discursive
theme, which calls for their elimination in large numbers from the countryside
as ‘wildlife management’ not only appears less controversial but can also be
portrayed as common sense. The next discursive theme establishes the strongly
anthropocentric notion that wild animals must be understood in terms of their
value as resources or commodities. With ecological and inherent worth either
devalued or not considered, the only value wild animals can be associated with
is that which must serve humans in direct and tangible ways. This theme helps
to create the notion that a perceived problem must be turned into a benefit.
This is discursively achieved by depicting wild animals as a resource. This theme
is supported by the first, which overwhelmingly constructs wildlife as passive
in terms of being the affected entities of human actions. In turn, the ‘wildlife
are a resource’ discursive theme supports the notion that wild animals should
be eliminated through recreational hunting, as in this way, their bodies can be
utilized by society as meat and other animal products. Moreover, the notion
of resource comes with the associative meaning that it should be used for the
benefit of humans, as a resource that is not utilized is a resource wasted. The
‘resource’ theme then perfectly sets up the final theme and desire to frame the
resourcification of wild animals as an aspect of a sustainable society. When
74 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

framed in this way, not only is the hunting of herbivorous and rare predatory
animals such as wolverines, brown bears, wolves and Eurasian Lynx seen as less
controversial, but it can also be portrayed as a nation taking important measures
in order to achieve its sustainability goals. Interestingly, this is a notion of
sustainability that does not seem to incorporate or acknowledge the ecological
importance of healthy populations of predatory animals in ecosystems.
When viewed in a larger societal and cultural context, the particular
constructions of wild animals that are produced within the constellation of
themes serve hunting organizations who see large predatory animals as both
competition and a hindrance to the use of dogs when hunting. Indeed, from this
perspective, it becomes expedient to portray hunting and the resourcification of
wild animals as the ultimate solution to the perceived problems created by both
herbivores and predators instead of promoting an ecological balance in nature
that would allow the latter to naturally control the numbers of the former.
We have seen in this chapter how theorists and philosophers through the ages
have attempted to address the nature of language and its relationship with the
mind and the material world. It has been seen as imitating, representing and even
constructing conceptual and mental worlds that may or may not correspond
accurately to the material, social and cultural worlds we inhabit. The natural
world is a crucial element of this material world, and our relationship with that
natural world is an important part of our cultural lives. Thus, the question of how
we express these concepts in symbolic systems has been tackled within both the
literary and linguistic academic spheres. Likewise, both areas have formulated
their own perspectives on the notion of criticality in relation to language. Within
critical linguistics and the later field of critical discourse analysis, criticality has
stemmed from critical theory and the notion that language analysts should
not merely describe the world but attempt to change it. The extent to which
this goal has been achieved is beyond the scope of this book; however, the field
has generated a range of perspectives and conceptual tools for shining a light
on otherwise unseen and therefore unanalysed ways in which language users
situate themselves and advance particular ideologies. These tools have been
commandeered to great effect by scholars who have applied them to texts and
other forms of semiosis that relate to the natural world and our relationship with
it in approaches that we might call ecocritical discourse analysis.
 4

Ecolinguistics

In 1972, Einar Haugen put forward the novel idea that language and language use
could form intricate relationships with the natural world. This new area of study
could be used in order to investigate the interactions between languages and
the natural environment in which they are spoken (Haugen 1972: 225). Thus,
ecolinguistics in its first incarnation sought to understand how the material
world, with an emphasis on the natural world, produces effects in symbolic
systems while also investigating how the use of language can result in changes to
the natural environment.
When looking at these interactions, a fruitful place to start is at the onset of
writing as a form of communication. Writing is one of the first forms of media
technology created by humankind. Alphabetic writing represents and creates
in material form the phonemic meaning relations that exist in spoken language
(Yule 2016: 253). As with speech, writing has a symbolic relationship with its
referent, as the forms of these symbols bear no relation to the characteristics
of their referents (Jarlbrink et al. 2019: 28). In contrast to oral language, these
symbols can be distributed and read by people in different contexts of time
and space. The technology of writing, therefore, allowed people to extend their
language use in ways that had never been previously possible and to vastly extend
memory beyond representations that can be held in the mind (ibid.). Jarlbrink
et al. (2019: 27–8) outline how the development of the medium of writing and
the change from oral to written culture involved shifts in how language is used
as well as the relationships that people have with their local environments and
other people. For example, the use of language in oral cultures is characterized by
a repetition of relatively simple and formulaic phrases. The use of writing, on the
other hand, liberated language from the memory capabilities of its users and in
doing so facilitated linguistic creativity and complexity (ibid.). Oral cultures’ use
of language is also closely connected to and dependent upon the ability to refer to
aspects of the speakers’ local surroundings – a context that included a community
76 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

of human and non-human entities. Jarlbrink et al. (2019) suggest that the change
to using the medial technology of writing to some extent disconnected users
of language and the language itself from their natural environments. The shift
from a primarily oral culture to that which used writing to communicate resulted
in a rupture in interactions between symbolic representation and the natural
world (ibid.). Through the development of an increasingly mediated system
of communication that encouraged more abstract thought and the ability to
hypothesize about situations that were not within the lived reality of its speakers,
the members of what had been oral cultures were now themselves becoming
abstracted away from the natural world and their local surroundings – a shift
that may have resulted in a reduced sensitivity to the land and to the other earthly
inhabitants of one’s ecological community. We can, therefore, think of writing as
an early form of technology that acts as a powerful mediator between us and
the natural world and which brought with it consequences for our immediate
connections and relationships with the non-human world.

Michael Halliday

Michael Halliday was arguably the first linguist to write at length about ways
in which our natural environments impacted the development of features of
languages. Halliday details how it was the major upheavals in human history and
ways of living that resulted in significant changes in ways of making meaning
with language. For example, the shift from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle
to that based on settlement and the development of agriculture brought with it
an accompanying shift in emphasis from oral language to the use of writing. For
Halliday ([1990] 2003: 147), of particular importance was not only the change to
the media technology of writing but also the grammatical changes that came with
it. The new pastoral way of life brought with it the need to represent the products
of its processes as commodities that could be assigned value and then listed and
conceptually organized. This semiotic work was performed by the grammatical
category of nouns, which also allowed ‘things’ to be categorized into groupings
and sub-groupings and relationships between people to be conceptualized as
institutions. This therefore also involved the linguistic abstraction of that which
had previously been represented as more specific and relational. However, Halliday
points out that the main contribution to this shift towards greater abstraction seems
to have come from a move away from interpersonal to ideational meaning, which
involved a shift from the language of social relations and the social obligations
 Ecolinguistics 77

connected to those relationships to that of generalized concepts and ideas. Within

this overall inclination towards ideational meaning, there was an accompanying
move towards the representation of processes as things. Although happening at
the level of the grammar, the overall change from a spoken to written mode also
resulted in the turning of actions and processes into concepts.
According to his concept of functional grammar, Halliday argues that there
have been several major shifts in the nature of languages through the years of
human development and that these linguistic turns have occurred through the
need for language to change its form in order to adapt to the different functions
that it needed to perform (Halliday [1990] 2003). One of the most significant
of these was the shift from hunter-gatherer to farming societies, a change that
would bring about a major difference in how humans viewed the natural world
(Mason 1997). The animistic languages of so-called primitive peoples tended
to avoid the essentializing use of nouns and the verb ‘to be’ and instead are
often characterized by linguistic strategies for representing the world as being
in a dynamic state, rather than fixed and unchanging (Abram 1996). Animals,
for example, were referred to as a way of moving or appearing as opposed to
representing fixed, static categories (ibid.). However, with the shift away from a
hunter-gatherer lifestyle, animals would no longer bewitch, beguile or impress
us. Instead, we started to view them as pests and commodities (Mason 2005:
146) within a new market system of exchange.
With this shift to a new way of life, our languages went through a change
from representing nature as actions to a ‘thingifying’ process as society moved
to a reliance on agriculture and therefore the control, mastery and subsequent
commodification and external valuation of nature. Thus, new linguistic forms
were needed for relating to the fact that the non-human world was now being
quantified and traded (Halliday 2003).
However, Halliday (ibid.) does not see the interaction here between the
linguistic particularities of the mode of writing and ways of conceptualizing the
material world as having a causal relationship. Instead, the grammar of languages
changes through its use by users who experience new ways of understanding
behaviours and aspects of the world that have come about through societal
and cultural shifts. In this case, it is a change which is characterized by viewing
actions primarily in terms of the products they produce and by the ‘space–time
flux of experience’ which is ‘overlaid by constructions of objects having fixed
location in space’ (ibid.: 148).
Halliday ([1990] 2003) suggests that on the Eurasian continent, this linguistic
trend was consolidated and expanded at the onset of the Iron Age. Areas of
78 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

life that had previously been interpreted as processes were now constructed
as objects in languages. This change was compounded by the use of nouns
denoting technologies for concepts that up to that point had been conceived of
as techniques. For example, the grammatical systems of ancient Greek, Chinese
and Sanskrit also started to employ nouns such as movement, force and change to
represent what had previously been construed as processes. These interactions
between language and the natural and artefactual worlds come about due to
ways in which language users’ interpretations of societal changes result in subtle
but cumulative changes to how experience is configured using the grammatical
resources conferred by one’s particular language. However, Halliday suggests
that the mediating relationship also goes the other way, with the grammatical
representation of reality resulting in ‘semantic effects’ which are able to impact
language users’ understandings. This occurs not through the exposure to and
use of single items of grammar but instead by the effect of ‘syndromes’ of
grammatical features, that is, groupings of structural aspects of a language that
‘co-occur’ and constitute ‘a whole meaning style’ (ibid.: 150).
For Halliday, these ‘syndromes of grammatical features’ that produce a
cumulative effect on how we perceive reality can function in ways that no longer
serve us as species ([1990] 2003: 164–5). For example, the concept of ‘growthism’
is built into the English language at a deep grammatical level, whereby the
notions of a fall rather than a rise conceptually map onto negative personal
experiences of falling. Similarly, for Halliday, size and quality ‘line up together’
in the grammar of English, thus conflating ‘big’ with ‘good’ (ibid.: 160–70).
Where this falls into the remit of linguists, according to Halliday, is our ability
to ‘draw attention to it; to show how the grammar promotes the ideology of
growth, or growthism’ (ibid.: 167). Within a pedagogical context, learners can
analyse examples of discrete items of language from discourses that advance
the ideology of growthism and ever-expanding growth on a finite planet. They
can be encouraged to identify the markers or ‘traces’ (Sunderland 2004) of the
discourses of growthism. For example, economic growth might ‘fall sharply’ or
‘stall for another quarter’. Economic prospects can ‘slide’, economies can ‘shrink’
and business climates can ‘improve’.
Halliday ([1990] 2003) suggests that it is our repeated encounters with patterns
of language and the representations they create rather than engagements with
single examples of a language feature that can influence our understandings of
the world. Language can then be understood as a foundational form of media.
As such, it comes between us and the world. It affects how we experience and
interact with the world and the forms of knowledge that we obtain through
 Ecolinguistics 79

those interactions. Language itself is also, as we have seen, impacted through the
process of mediation. However, an important issue is the nature of the mediating
effect that language has on our understandings of the world. At the extreme end
of the spectrum is the concept of linguistic determinism. This concept refers to
the idea that the way and extent to which different languages encode the material
and social worlds control our understandings of the world and therefore dictate
our view of reality.

Linguistic Determinism

The most extreme form of linguistic determinism is attributed to Benjamin

Whorf. Whorf studied native North American languages and reported that
they are constructed in ways that are dissimilar to what he called, Standard
Average European Languages (SAE) (Whorf 2012). Whorf also observed that
reality is carved up differently into the linguistic systems of different languages,
that is, they can incorporate or omit entities and concepts by either including
or excluding them from their linguistic systems of classification and naming
(ibid.). Thus, Whorf advanced the notion that what individual languages include
determines what we can think about and that which can come into our realm of
cognitive awareness (ibid.). Therefore, for Whorf, language represents the limits
of our conceptual world. We might conceptualize then that aspects of the natural
world can enter our sphere of awareness via two paths: direct experience or in
mediated form, such as through language. If it fails to appear through either
of these mechanisms, it remains beyond our attention and therefore in a sense
does not exist to us. A key aspect of Whorf ’s observations and perspective is
that they relate to how individual languages structure reality differently and how
this therefore might also impact our thoughts, cognitions and beliefs. Thus, in
terms of our sensitivity to aspects of the natural world, this position suggests
that certain languages linguistically feature aspects of the natural world and
therefore bring them into the minds of their users, while, on the other hand,
other languages might lack these linguistic signifiers, thus rendering these
natural features invisible. However, this point brings up the important issue that
all languages might gradually lose words and phrases that represent and index
features of the natural world. These concepts would also therefore disappear
from one’s sphere of awareness.
For his book, Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane (2016) scoured the British Isles
for such words – words that have fallen by the wayside and were almost lost to
80 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

time. The result is a fascinating, delightful, but also, on reflection, melancholy

journey on which we encounter those lost signifiers, whose very existence was
the result of a lived, situated and therefore intimate connection to the land and to
natural features. In this sense, language was written into the landscape, while at
the same time, the natural world helped to craft language. These signifiers were
important to those who employed them in language, for example, to distinguish
between a gap in a bush or one that was made through the habitual movement of
an animal that considered that place its home and which was a part of the cast of
characters that made up the ecological community of the user of the word. Each
word that falls into obscurity represents another lost window into the natural
world and another contribution to the dulling of our connections to a living
planet that we are retreating from. With the disappearance of each of these ways
of comprehending the non-human world and bringing it into our mental worlds
we suffer a dulling of our experience of nature by being left with a series of
generic terms all relating to the natural world with greater levels of abstraction
and generality. However, this is also a process that can occur by design. A rather
worrying example of this has already occurred with Oxford University Press’
decision to remove around fifty words referring to aspects of nature from the
Oxford Junior Dictionary. The removal of these nature words coincided with the
addition of new words about technology and computing, such as ‘cut and paste’,
‘broadband’ and ‘analogue’ (Ffrench, 14 January 2015).
As we have seen, the proposition most associated with the Whorfian
hypothesis, however, is that, by representing reality differently, different languages
control how we experience and view the world. This strongly deterministic
position suggests a dominant role for language and other forms of mediated
contact with the world in terms of how we understand aspects of reality that we
do not directly experience. However, from fields as diverse as literacy criticism
to critical discourse studies, we can see the development of the more nuanced
view that language as a broader concept (rather than separate languages and
what makes them distinct) mediates and shapes our contact with and therefore
our understanding of the world, rather than controlling and determining our
thoughts (see Anker and Felski 2017; van Dijk 2014; van Leeuwen 2008). Many
critical discourse studies and ecolinguistics scholars would now align themselves
with this more modest understanding of the effect that language can have on
perception, understanding and thought.
Since Haugen’s initial description, ecolinguistics is now defined by the
International Ecolinguistics Association (International Ecolinguistics
Association, n.d.) as a field that ‘explores the role of language in the life-sustaining
 Ecolinguistics 81

interactions of humans, other species and the physical environment’. Thus,

language and the natural world are seen as existing in a two-way relationship in
which each plays a role in influencing the other.

Stibbe’s Contributions to the Field of Ecolinguistics

Arran Stibbe can be credited with bringing ecolinguistics to a much wider

audience as well as leading the field in new directions with his first two books,
Animals Erased (2012) and Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We
Live By (2015). Stibbe advances a form of ecolinguistics that functions as a form
of qualitative text analysis that is used to expose latent, ecologically damaging
messages within texts so that they can be exposed and brought out into the
open for scrutiny. Such ecolinguistic analyses involve the close scrutiny of
discursive features and rhetorical strategies such as pronoun use, grammatical
structures, presuppositions and so on. These can form constellations of features
that produce particular portrayals of the natural world or our relationship with
it. In turn, these representations can be connected to discourses or stories-we-
live-by (Stibbe 2015). These discourses can, themselves, be exposed in terms
of the ideological positions and assumptions concerning the natural world
from which they draw. However, as well as being an approach for ‘exploring
the more general patterns of language that influence how people think about
and treat the world’ and ‘critiquing forms of language that contribute to
ecological destruction’, Stibbe (2015: 2) also advances ecolinguistics as a field
that can help ‘in the search for new forms of language that inspire people to
protect the natural world’. Thus, this approach to ecolinguistics incorporates
a speculative component, relating uses of language to possible forms of
ecologically destructive behaviours as well as treating language use as evidence
of forms of thinking or attitudes that relate to the natural world. Ecolinguistics
so conceived can be considered a form of ecocritical discourse analysis, as
language that is deemed to be associated with ecologically destructive patterns
of behaviour is exposed to critique. This, therefore, shifts environmental and
ecological problems from being purely scientific in nature to existing within
the cultural, psychological, affective and linguistic realms, but also crucially,
issues of ontology. For Stibbe (2015), texts pertaining to the natural world
can be conceptualized as being either destructive or benevolent in terms of
whether they encourage or discourage environmentally destructive forms of
behaviour. However, Stibbe acknowledges that definite and objective notions
82 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

of what is ultimately good or bad for the natural world are hard to come by.
For Fairclough (2003a: 15) within such critical approaches to text analysis,
messages advanced through language and language use can be judged against
a set of perspectives or ‘elaborated general theories’ that the analyst brings to
the analysis. In other words, the lack of an objective good or bad evaluation
of the ideational and ethical content of language requires the analyst to fall
back on a set of declared normative notions against which the text is analysed.
For the application of an ecolinguistics approach to text analysis, these
perspectives or theories need to relate to a set of principles about our species
and its place in the world (Stibbe 2015). Thus, Stibbe (ibid.) draws on Arne
Naess’ Deep Ecology philosophy and advances the notion of an ecological
philosophy or ecosophy, consisting of a set of normative statements that
pertain to the analyst’s own ethical stance or perspectives regarding nature.
It is against this ecosophy that texts are judged. In essence, then, ecolinguistic
analyses of language and language use can be carried out according to a set of
perspectives drawn from the areas of environmental ethics and environmental
philosophy, fields that place at their core questions of ontology and what are
or are not ethical stances towards the natural world. However, it could also
quite conceivably be comprised of a list of normative statements chosen by
the analyst from a particular environmental discourse or perspective. The
language analysed, therefore, will either align with or contradict the normative
thrust of the ecosophy.
The possibility of the former facilitates a different direction for ecolinguistics
by allowing for the analysis of texts in order to find forms and uses of language
that inspire people to care for nature. This approach applies the concept of
positive discourse analysis (Martin 1999), to ecolinguistics. James Martin, who
introduced the concept of positive discourse analysis, has criticized the lack of
social gains that have come as a result of carrying out critical discourse analyses.
For Martin (ibid.), approaches that only critique and that do not highlight
positive discursive changes in society leave out important understandings of
how, for example, the oppressed overcame their oppression or the colonized
attempted to take control of their own destinies:

The lack of positive discourse analysis [. . .] cripples our understanding of how

change happens, for the better, across a range of sites – how feminists re-make
gender relations in our world, how indigenous people overcome their colonial
heritage, how migrants renovate their new environs and so on. And this hampers
design and perhaps even discourages it since analysts would rather tell us how
the struggle was undone than how freedom was won. (Martin 2004: 184)
 Ecolinguistics 83

If discourse analysts are serious about wanting to use their work to enact social
change, then they will have to broaden their coverage to include . . . discourse
that inspires, encourages, heartens; discourse we like, that cheers us along.
(Martin 1999: 51–2; cited in Stibbe 2017: 165).
Likewise, Stibbe (2012) makes the case that it is not the examples of potentially
ecologically damaging forms of language that ecolinguists expose and critique
that will help us in our endeavour to guide the world towards environmentally
beneficial or benevolent forms of behaviour (Stibbe 2017). Instead, Stibbe
suggests the use of positive ecological discourse analysis in order to identify
useful discourses and forms of language that could encourage a mindset that
is more conducive to ecological protection rather than one of destruction and
consumption (ibid.). Thus, Stibbe’s version of ecolinguistics has, in the main,
centred around a form of qualitative discourse analysis that seeks to both expose
language use and discourses that construct the non-human world negatively
as well as shining a light on discourses or ‘stories-we-live-by’ that encourage a
nurturing attitude towards nature (Stibbe 2015).
Qualitative and interpretive ecolinguistic studies carried out in this vein can
investigate the use of language in an almost infinite number of areas where it has
been used to represent or construct the natural world or our relationship with it.
One area that offers fertile ground for ecolinguistic studies is the representation of
non-human animals. Ecolinguistic studies have investigated the representation
of both domestic and wild animals. Goatly (2006: 34) investigated the extent
to which animal metaphors used to refer to human referents are positive or
negative. He found that ‘the most common animal metaphors for humans are
pejorative, suggesting that it is desirable to distance ourselves from animals,
both conceptually and emotionally’. These findings would appear to suggest an
anthropocentric origin to these metaphorical representations. However, many
ecolinguistic studies have shown that the ways in which we use language to portray
non-human animals often represent the relationship that the speaker has with
the animals concerned. For example, in Stibbe’s 2012 study on the representation
of fish in the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report, he found that
they are rarely shown as agential entities in clauses, or as organisms living their
lives towards the satisfaction of their own ends. Instead, they are represented as
resources and economic commodities through being grammatically positioned
as embedded within noun phrases as pre- or post-modifiers to head nouns.
Conversely, some studies have found positive representations of animals and
have identified the particular linguistic features that can produce them. Sealey
and Oakley studied how wildlife documentary commentary employs language in
84 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

order to describe wild animal behaviour. These researchers found the use of the
subordinating conjunction ‘so’ and the infinitive marker of purpose ‘to’ in order
to ascribe a degree of intentionality and planning to wild animals’ behaviours
(Sealey and Oakely 2013: 415). The researchers concluded that the actions that
these grammatical items were being used to describe in this way were most likely
carried out on the basis of instinct rather than active thinking processes (ibid.).
The viewers of wildlife documentaries are likely to be interested in wild animals
in terms of not only their range of behaviours but also the possibility that they, like
us, have rich inner lives and that individuals can display different personalities.
If the conclusions of Sealey and Oakely are accurate, it is conceivable that within
this genre, these expectations influence the language choices made in order to
portray wild animals.
In a similar context, Douglas Ponton came to a rather different conclusion in
his recent study on the use of language to portray wild birds and other wildlife
in the BBC’s radio programme, The Countryside Hour (Ponton 2022). The study
focused on the language used by naturalist and farmer Chris Skinner as he was
interviewed while taking listeners around his farm. Ponton found that Skinner also
used language that suggests cognition and intentionality to animal behaviours.
For example, Skinner represents wild birds as ‘doing’, ‘bringing’, ‘inspecting’,
‘thinking’ and ‘coming and investigating’ (ibid.: A43). Thus, wild birds are
portrayed as having agency in material and mental processes. There is after all
no reason to suspect that birds do not think, inspect or investigate in their own
ways. However, Skinner occasionally strays into more overtly anthropomorphic
representations of birds and animals by metaphorically associating them with
features commonly associated with humans. For example, birds are represented
as exclaiming: ‘Oh dear, somebody else’s already inhabiting that’ and foxes have
‘their favorite café’. For Ponton, Skinner’s occasional use of anthropomorphic
language may prevent the listener from understanding his underlying message,
which he states is to emphasize what humans and other animals have in
common. Ponton suggests here that Skinner’s anthropomorphism should be
seen as a conscious attempt at employing a form of ‘critical anthropomorphism’
(Garrard 2011; Morton et al. 1990) that can be employed in order to highlight
areas of continuity between the human and non-human in order to rectify more
anthropocentric ways of conceptualizing other animals.
In these ecolinguistic studies, attempts have been made to relate the activation
and passivation of animals to particular relationships, attitudes and agendas
that the users of language have in relation to the animals being represented. For
example, there are advantages to be had for the fishing industry and indeed the
 Ecolinguistics 85

animal agriculture industry in portraying animals as objects before they have

died. Likewise, it can only enhance a wildlife documentary if its main characters
are portrayed as lively, conscious beings who think about their actions. And the
activation of wild birds as well as the attribution of human thought patterns to
birds and foxes is understandable from a naturalist who feels that what we share
with other animals is greater than what separates us. However, the motivations
for activating, passivating and perspectivizing animals are not always so clear.
For example, Gupta (2006) investigated the use of relative pronouns when
referring to foxes in foxhunting discourse. Interestingly, Gupta found that those
in favour of foxhunting were more likely to use the relative pronoun ‘who’ than
‘which’ or ‘that’ for anaphoric reference to foxes than those against foxhunting.
Gupta suggests that people who support foxhunting prefer to construct the fox
according to an adversarial framing; that is, the fox is construed as being an active
participant in the hunt rather than the passive and affected entity of being hunted.

Ecolinguistic Analysis of Nature and Agency

Goatly (2017) carried out an interesting qualitative study that investigated

patterns of language that might encourage a nurturing attitude towards the
natural world or at the very least an awareness of its agential and dynamic
nature. Although not framed as positive ecological discourse analysis, with its
identification of a range of grammatical patterns and discursive features that
represent the human–nature relationship in ecologically positive ways, much of
the study very much aligns with this field. This important ecolinguistic study
represents an extremely thorough application of Hallidayan Transitivity Theory
and understandings of how non-human agency is linguistically represented. For
this reason, it is worth spending some time looking not only at its main findings
but also how Hallidayan Transitivity Theory can be used in order to analyse
two different datasets in order to provide insights into the different ecological
perspectives found within them.
In this study, Goatly investigated the ways in which the language used in
environmental management discourse compares to that of poetic works, when it
comes to the representations of nature that they draw on. The texts that Goatly
analysed were taken from Wordworth’s The Prelude, Edward Thomas’ Collected
Poems and Alice Oswald’s Woods. These were compared with the patterns of
language found in The State of the World Report 2012 (SOTW) by the Worldwatch
Institute.
86 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Goatly found that the poetic texts utilized grammatical patterns that were very
much more in line with an ecological world view than those in the modern pro-
environmental text. In the SOTW Report, natural entities were often represented
as the affected entities of the actions of human agents, thus portraying the natural
world as passive and normalizing its use as a resource. On the other hand, in the
poetic works, a variety of grammatical structures imbue the natural world with
agency and life, potentially encouraging the reader to view nature as a lively,
agential world sharing features and characteristics with humans.

Personification

Goatly (2017) presents personification as the representation of features of

the natural world as engaging in human-like activities and displaying human
characteristics. Similar to the more familiar notion of anthropomorphism,
personification applies human-like features to nature more broadly, including
entities and processes that are not generally considered sentient. To this end,
personification uses ‘metaphorical vocabulary in the dictionary of English which
blurs the distinction between humans and the landscape’ (ibid.: 53):
Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear. (ibid.)

In this example, aspen trees are positioned as the subject agents in a transactive
material process clause, and as such, they have agency in being able to shake
their leaves. Trees in this case are personified through granting them the sorts of
agency that we associate with sentient beings. In initiating action in the world,
aspens are seen to impact not only their leaves, as the grammatically signalled
affected entity, but also men, who are represented as the experiencers of a mental
process clause. Thus, entities that are not normally considered to be sentient or
have much agency at all, are represented here as engaging in actions that might
otherwise be attributed to humans or other animals while also impacting the
consciousness of humans (Goatly 2017).

Animation

Goatly (2017) found markedly different representations of nature and human–

nature relationships between the SOTW report and the poetic works. While
the environmental text predominantly portrayed nature as the affected entity
of human actions, the poetic works featured a wide variety of grammatical
 Ecolinguistics 87

patterns that constructed the natural world as not only agential but also capable
of generating its own force.
Goatly details how representations of human agents carrying out actions on
an affected natural entity fail to portray the complex multidirectional nature of
agency and the myriad causal effects that occur as a result of exercising agency
and therefore oversimplify the complex nature of agency. Goatly also makes the
case that such representations tend to show nature as being bereft of its own
agency, a perspective that is incompatible with modern scientific theories of
ecology and thermodynamics. Interestingly, it is the grammatical constructions
that make up the poetic works of the 1800s and 1900s rather than the modern
SOTW pro-environmental text that animate nature, constructing it as agential
and as self-generating rather than passive and inert. In the SOTW report, aspects
of the non-human natural world were often passivated through the use of linear
representations of humans as the agent and nature as the affected entity. In fact,
48 per cent of the clausal representations of nature featured it as impacted by
human actions. Only 13.5 per cent of clauses featured natural entities as being
agents of transitive verbs. However, this percentage falls even lower when it
is understood that some of these representations feature incongruent uses of
transitive verbs in material processes. Fairclough (2003a: 143–4) relates to
Halliday’s notion of grammatical metaphor in terms of incongruent uses of
process types to construct events in particular ways. A good example of this
from the SOTW report is the sentence below (ibid.: 54). If we understand a
forest to be not only the trees but also the full range of organisms that call it
home, the transitive verb ‘to provide’ together with ‘the forest’ as a subject agent,
construct the forest as voluntarily offering up elements of itself for consumption:

the forest now provides the village with food

Here, the forest is signalled as the agent of ‘providing’ food for people. In
reality, however, the forest is the affected entity. It is exploited by the village for
the resources that it generates. One might argue, therefore, that as a result of
grammatical metaphor (ibid.), the material process actually features the forest as
the agent rather than the affected entity. A more congruent construction might be
that the forest produces food that the village eats. In my ecolinguistic study on the
2018 Wildlife Strategy report by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
(Bellewes 2023), I also found examples of this discursive strategy. In the examples
below, wild animals are constructed as ‘providing’ ‘values’ in terms of the recreation
that their deaths provide to hunters. They are also represented as ‘contributing’ to
‘quality of life’ and ‘regional development’. Again, in both cases, transitive verbs and
88 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

transactive material processes are used incongruently as examples of grammatical

metaphor, whereby animals are seen as voluntarily offering up their lives and
bodies for consumption, entertainment and economic development:

Identify values of ecosystem services provided by wildlife. This includes, for

example, wildlife and hunting experiences, and wildlife’s structuring effects on
ecosystems that benefit humans.

Our wildlife populations are a renewable natural resource with considerable

potential to contribute to both quality of life for many people and to regional
development (emphasis by author).

Interestingly, in Goatly’s study, the clausal representation of features of nature as

the affected entity of human actions is repeated in terms of how they are featured
within noun phrases. The use of nominalizations or noun phrases to represent
agential situations that could otherwise be constructed using clauses has been
associated with the deactivation of both the agents and the overall sense of
agency. One of the reasons for this is that through the process of nominalizing
clausal processes, (a) agents can be omitted or (b) agency and actions can be
portrayed as reciprocal, equal in terms of power relations, and equal in terms of
relations of cause and effect.

● ‘Deforestation’ for ‘Forestry companies cut down forests.’

● ‘Firefight’ for ‘The soldiers fired at the villagers, and they then returned fire.’

Goatly shows how entities can be activated or deactivated to varying degrees

within nominalizations. Though normally used to categorize clauses, Goatly
applies Hallidayan Transitivity Theory to nominalizations found in the SOTW
report. Goatly shows how the same relationships between entities and ways of
representing differing degrees of agency can be displayed within noun phrases.
Within the nominalizations, natural entities were overwhelmingly represented
as affected entities of human actions (78.5 per cent). Van Leeuwen (2008) shows
how entities can be represented as the goal (the affected entity) of agency and
actions through placing them within prepositional phrase post-modifiers to
head nouns created from transitive verbs:

goal
the degradation of our shared environment;

goal
control of our atmosphere land, forests, mountains and waterways;
 Ecolinguistics 89

Entities can also be passivated by featuring them as the noun pre-modifier

within compound nouns:

goal
forest management

Agent (intransitive)
However, according to Goatly’s framework, entities can also be activated and
represented as intransitive agents within nominalizations. Paradoxically, this
can also be done by positioning entities as the head nouns of noun phrases post-
modified by prepositional phrases and as the noun pre-modifier of compound
nouns. Goatly gives the following examples:
agent
flows of minerals

agent
saltwater intrusion

agent
land subsidence

Similarly, entities can be represented as transitive agents through the use of

nominalizations of transitive verbs in larger noun phrases together with agent
participants. This can either be done by placing the agent participant before
a nominalization of a transitive verb (climate shocks) or by placing the agent
within a prepositional phrase post-modifier to a nominalized transitive verb
(impacts of GM soy):
agent
climate shocks

agent
drought strikes

agent
impacts of GM soy

Experience
In mental process clauses, entities are represented as the experience participant
when they are perceived or thought about. In other words, they are positioned
90 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

as direct objects of verbs of perception or cognition. Goatly shows how the same
effect can be achieved within noun phrases by positioning a noun denoting the
perceived entity within a prepositional phrase post-modifier to a head noun
relating to mental activity or the senses:

experience
attention to the environment
experience
knowledge and information about weather

The Medium and Instigator Participants

Interestingly, Goatly also relates the concept of ergativity and the two formulations
possible for representing it to nominalizations. The concept of ergativity is of
most interest to ecolinguists due to the way ergative verbs can represent non-
sentient entities as agential in terms of generating their own agency for the
events that impact them. For instance, in the following examples, the subject
linguistically appears to be an agent producing an action, while the interpretation
that we get from each is that the participant that appears to be the subject is
the entity impacted by the same action. Indeed, this entity does not generate its
own agency. In fact, we have a hidden agent, which takes the participant role
of ‘instigator’ of the action. The entity that takes the subject sentence function
in the following examples, is called the medium. This configuration of ergative
verbs is called intransitive or middle ergative.

medium process
The door suddenly opened.
subject verb

medium process circumstance (location)

My hair dried in the sun.
subject verb adverbial

This form of ergativity is therefore useful for portraying rocks, mountains, trees
and other non-sentient entities as dynamic. By comparison, standard intransitive
verbs are usually associated with living or sentient entities and are the agents of
the action of the verb that follows them:

agent
The plant had grown through a crack in the brickwork.
subject
 Ecolinguistics 91

Another difference is that ergative verbs can be used with two participants in
the clause, which, by definition, is not the case with intransitive verbs. Therefore,
ergative verbs can be used with or without a direct object. Intransitive verbs
cannot take a direct object. This configuration is called the transitive or effective
ergative:

instigator process medium

I opened the door.
subject verb direct object

instigator process medium

I dried my hair.
subject verb direct object

As noun phrases, ‘climate stabilization’ and ‘soil erosion’ construct a middle

ergative relationship between an entity and an action. In middle ergatives, only
one participant is present and even though in reality an action or process impacts
them, grammatically they appear to generate their own agency in creating
the action. Despite seemingly instigating action, this clause participant is not
referred to as an actor. It is instead classified as a medium in order to distinguish
this role from agents or actors of standard transitive or intransitive verbs.
For example, ‘the climate’ can ‘stabilize’, as a middle ergative construction
suggests that the climate takes part in its own stabilization. The same relationship
is constructed in the nominalized form. Likewise, the proposition that ‘soil’ can
‘erode’ would be structured as a middle ergative. Therefore, the noun phrase
‘soil erosion’ constructs the same representation of a self-generating process,
suggesting that planetary systems are dynamic and not always within human
control:

climate stabilization
soil erosion

As we have seen, Goatly found a stark difference between the ways in which
nature and the human–nature relationship are portrayed in the two genres
investigated. In the poetic works, Goatly identifies a wide range of grammatical
features that are more congruent with the fields of thermodynamics and ecology
in linguistically constructing the natural world as being an agential force and
by avoiding simple linear representations of cause and effect. I will detail some
of the most interesting grammatical features here. The first of these can be
performed through a process that Goatly terms the ‘activation of experiences’.
92 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Activation of Experiences

‘Experiences’ here for Goatly refers to the semantic or participant role of

‘experience’ in mental process clauses. As we have seen, according to the
Hallidayan perspective on transitivity, the experience participant role (also
referred to as phenomenon) refers to the entity that is perceived in some way.
It takes the same position in mental process clauses as that taken by an affected
entity or goal in material processes, which represent actions. Rather than
being that which is affected or impacted by an action verb, it is an entity that is
perceived by a verb of perception or cognition:
experiencer process experience circumstance (temporal)
He observed the beavers for an hour.
subject verb direct object adverbial

‘Activation’, as we have seen from van Leeuwen’s social actor and action network,
denotes the use of linguistic resources in order to emphasize an entity’s ability
to act and impact the world. Goatly makes the case that entities represented
as experiences in mental processes can be activated through reformulating the
grammatical structure of a clause and choosing an appropriate verb so that they
become the actors or agents of material processes.

Mental Process Clause

experiencer process experience
I noticed the movement in the water.
subject verb direct object
p r e d i c a t e

‘The movement in the water’, which is an experience in the above mental process,
can be reworked into the role of agent in a material process clause.

Material Process Clause

agent process goal
The movement in the water attracted my attention
subject verb direct object
predicate

Below we can see two examples from Goatly’s study. In each case, Goatly shows
in brackets how the situation might otherwise be represented as a mental process
(ibid.: 61):
 Ecolinguistics 93

Till the whole cave, so late a senseless mass,

Busies the eye with images and forms
Boldly assembled
(cf. I saw the whole cave . . .)

. . . my favourite grove,
Tossing in sunshine its dark boughs aloft,
As if to make the strong wind visible,
Wakes in me agitations like its own
(cf. I fear my favourite grove/my favourite grove worries me) (ibid.)

Activation of Carriers and Existents

There are two types of relationships conveyed by relational process clauses:
equivalence and the attribution of characteristics. In terms of the former, the
clause participant of ‘token’ in the subject position is related to the participant
of ‘value’ in the subject complement position (a noun phrase or other nominal
structure) in a relationship of equivalence. For example, in the sentence ‘wild
animals are a resource’, the phrase ‘wild animals’ is the token and ‘a resource’
is the value. However, when the subject takes the ‘carrier’ participant role it is
attributed with particular characteristics or as existing at a particular location by
the ‘attribute’ participant role.

carrier attribute
The farm is in the valley.
subject subject complement
predicate

However, both the carrier and existent participant roles can be represented as
agents.
Goatly provides the following example from his dataset (61):

................................. The garden lay

Upon a slope surmounted by a plain
Of a small bowling-green; beneath us *stood
A grove (ibid.)

In the first main clause, the garden, which would more usually be represented
as a carrier subject within a relational process, is constructed as ‘lying upon a
slope’. This situation would, perhaps, less poetically be represented in a relational
94 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

process by indicating that the garden ‘is upon/on a slope’. However, here, the
garden, which would be represented as a carrier in a relational process, is
activated by positioning it in the role of agent performing the action of ‘lying’. In
the same way, Goatly (ibid.) points out that the plain ‘surmounts’ or overlooks
the slope rather than simply being represented as being above it.
Goatly also shows how entities represented in existential processes as simply
existing (taking the existent role) can also be activated. In the following example
from his study, ‘paths’ and ‘tracks’, which might otherwise be represented
as existents are activated by turning them into the subject agents of material
processes:

existent
And now there is a farm-track (from a gate).

agent process goal

And now a farm-track takes you from a gate. (ibid.: 61)

Therefore, carrier and existent participants in clauses are activated by turning

them into agents. In this way, nature is portrayed as a doer of actions rather than
something that simply exists.

Location Circumstance to Agent

Goatly demonstrates how a particularly fascinating feature that animates natural
entities in language is the conversion of natural entities that were otherwise
backgrounded in location circumstance participants to the status of agents
or sayers. In each case, through the use of intransitive verbs, aspects of the
landscape are elevated to entities that have agency, sometimes replacing other,
more intuitively agential features of nature, such as animals.

agent
. . . and all the pastures dance with lambs
agent
. . . the broad world rang with the maiden’s name
agent
The land all swarmed with passion. . . .

Goatly points out how the more common and congruent representation of aspects
of the landscape as location circumstance participants would have portrayed
them as passive, inert and the stable background against which events take place.
 Ecolinguistics 95

Lambs dance in all the pastures.

The maiden’s name rang through the broad world
Passion swarmed over the land

Landscape Agents in Intransitive Clause

Non-transactive Material Processes

In addition to the above, the poetic works featured a wide range of grammatical
features that animate an almost equally wide range of natural features.

● Natural agents engaging in intransitive actions.

● Ergative verbs representing natural entities as agential.
● Mountains and weather featured as transitive actor.
● Nature portrayed as the sayer participant.
● Ergative verbs are employed in order to represent natural features as
generating their own energy.
● The experiencer participants are activated by turning them into actors of
transitive clauses.
● Nature is often represented as the sayer or experience participant, impacting
and affecting human consciousness.

Goatly’s study is both interesting and useful for the field of ecolinguistics.
He demonstrates that the English language already possesses myriad
grammatical forms that breathe life into the natural world and represent
it as a dynamic and agential force, in contrast with language features that
background it or objectify it as a resource. He also shows how the English
grammatical system can produce alternative representations of the natural
world to those that see agency applied by agents to affected entities in a
linear fashion. What is also particularly interesting is that these resources
exist in English within genres that are considered to be quaint and outdated
rather than revolutionary.
These ways of viewing nature more broadly as energetic and lively align with
new materialist perspectives and can be found in examples of modern-day
nature writing. By investigating the use of language within this genre, learners
can be introduced to stylistic choices that are appealing in terms of language’s
aesthetic function while also challenging our view of nature as being a passive
backdrop against which we play out our lives.
96 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

In the following activity, learners are provided with two short texts. Text A is
an excerpt from the book, Feral by George Monbiot (2014a: 189), while text B
was written by me.

Teaching Activity 4

Initial Skimming Activity for Orientation.

● Read the two texts A and B. Which text do you prefer and why?
● Which one is more engaging and why?

Scanning and Reading for Detail.

● To what extent is the natural world brought to life in the two texts?
● Is there a text where this is more pronounced?
● Is there anything particularly interesting about the representations of nature
in either or both of the texts?
● Which linguistic strategies does the author use to bring nature to life for the
reader in this text?

Text A
Though it could not be so, it looked as if no human had ever trodden there. On the
upstream end of the spit, the smell of peppermint was so strong that I fancied I could
almost see the trails of scent hanging above the bushes. It formed a hedge, waist
high, that released a cloud of insects as I brushed through it. (. . .) Warblers flitted
among the branches. I struggled across to the far side, where woody nightshade
hung over a derelict mill stream. Yellow stamens protruded from the dark flowers
like stings. In the stream, brown trout with red and black stipples rose to kiss the
surface. I watched them for a while then pushed back through the withies to the
other side of the bar, where we stared at the water sliding slickly over the lip of the
rocks before exploding into feathers of spray.

Text B
I made my way through the long grass and reeds to the water’s edge. After the rain,
the smell of petrichor was everywhere and loosestrife could be seen all along the
riverbank. Each plant had purple flowers in the form of long spikes at the tip of
each branch. Above each branch was a swarm of insects. In the water, there were
 Ecolinguistics 97

bunches of starwort, like hundreds of miniature, four-leaf clovers, and occasionally,

trout would breach the surface. I lost myself in the movement of the water as it
flowed quickly past, falling over the rocks with a splash.

Possible Learner Reflections on the Texts

Representing Non-Sentient Agency

1.

(a) The smell of peppermint was so strong that I fancied I could almost see
the trails of scent hanging above the bushes.
(b) After the rain, the smell of petrichor was everywhere.

In example (b) for text (b), the smell of petrichor is deactivated and represented as
being static by relating to it in terms of its position through the use of a relational
process and the adverb ‘everywhere’. However, in text (a) Monbiot materializes
‘the smell of peppermint’ into ‘trails of scent’ so that it becomes an entity that can
be somewhat agentialized through the use of the verb ‘to hang’ in the form of the
present participle clause ‘hanging above the bushes’. This verb and representation
are also used by Monbiot when describing the ‘woody nightshade’ in relation to
the stream. By contrast, in text (b), the purple loosestrife plants are portrayed as
passivated through representing them as the experience clause participant of a
mental process attributed to the narrator. In other words, they are merely entities
that are seen by others.
2.

(a) woody nightshade hung over a derelict mill stream.

(b) loosestrife could be seen all along the riverbank.

In addition, the insects are portrayed as relatively inert entities by representing

them through the use of a preposition and an existential process, in which the
insects are positioned as the existent clause participant and therefore related
to as simply existing in a particular position rather than in terms of dynamic
actions or processes. By contrast, Monbiot represents the relationship between
the bush/hedge and the insects as one of agency through using a material
process in order to represent the former as an agent ‘releasing a cloud of
insects’. This creates vivid imagery and presents the bush as being dynamic and
agential and able to impact other entities.
98 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

3.

(a) a hedge, waist high, that released a cloud of insects as I brushed through it.
(b) Above each branch was a swarm of insects.

In addition, any possibility of viewing the flowers or the purple loosestrife plants
as dynamic is prevented through the use of a relational process (had purple
flowers) to indicate the relationship between the plants and the flowers. Thus,
the flowers are closely associated with the structure of the plants. In contrast,
Monbiot agentializes stamens through the use of a material process that positions
them as the agents of the action of protruding from the flowers.
4.

(a) Yellow stamens protruded from the dark flowers like stings.
(b) Each had purple flowers in the form of long spikes at the tip of each
branch.

Similarly, in text (b), despite its detailed description, the starwort plant is
portrayed as static and inert through using an existential process to represent it
as merely existing in the water. Alternatively, it might be indicated as ‘growing’
or as fronds that ‘swayed in the flow’.
However, it is important to recognize that there are many other ways that
language can be used in order to emphasize movement and agency in natural
entities. For example, while text (b) represents the trout as relatively agential and
dynamic through the use of the verbal construction and transactive material
process, ‘breach the surface’, in text (a), Monbiot goes further in emphasizing
the actions of the trout by using a complex of verbs comprised of ‘rose’ and ‘kiss’,
with the latter making up a clause of purpose, indicating intentionality. The trout
is, therefore, represented as ‘rising’ for the purpose of ‘kissing’ the surface of the
water. The latter verb employs a metaphor that uses the source domain of a kiss
in order to represent the target domain of snatching insects from the surface of
the water in a more vivid manner.
5.

(a) brown trout with red and black stipples rose to kiss the surface.
(b) trout would occasionally breach the surface of the water.

While in text (b) we have the use of a relatively unspecific verb (flowed) to
express the movement of the water, in Monbiot’s writing, it could be said that his
choice of the verb ‘to slide’ in conjunction with the use of the expressive adverb
of manner ‘slickly’ highlights the dynamic nature of water.
 Ecolinguistics 99

6.

(a) we stared at the water sliding slickly over the lip of the rocks.
(b) I lost myself in the movement of the water as it flowed quickly past.

Learners might notice that while both texts put people in the driving seat of
‘staring’ and ‘losing themselves’, the texts could have instead represented the
movement of the water as having agential power over human consciousness by
indicating it as captivating, enchanting, or beguiling the narrator.
In text (b), the clause that follows passivates water to some degree by
representing it as ‘falling’, and thus simply being subject to the external force
of gravity. In contrast, in Monbiot’s writing, the following dependent clause
features the use of two metaphors that emphasize the movement and lively nature
of the water. First, the splashing of the water is represented as an explosion,
suggesting the release of energy previously locked up within water itself. The
second metaphor uses the source domain of the feathers of a bird to portray the
target domain of splashing water. This metaphorical representation is present
within an adverbial structure, which adds to the description of the movement
of the water. A similar adverbial (with a splash) is used in text (b). However,
the metaphorical representation in text (a), it could be argued, more vividly
foregrounds the energetic movement of the water by concretizing the linguistic
representation of the shapes formed by the ‘exploding’ water.
7.

(a) before exploding into feathers of spray.

(b) before falling into the river with a splash.

One goal for this activity is to make accessible to learners the new materialist
concepts highlighted in Goatly’s 2017 study. Goatly carried out his analysis on
the basis that new theories in modern science see bounded entities as unbounded
processes and thermodynamic objects as entities that cannot be controlled
(Prigogine and Stengers 1985: 120; in Goatly, ibid.). In addition to modern
understandings of ecology, these new scientific perspectives on thermodynamics
reject previously accepted Newtonian understandings of the unidirectional
application of force between entities (ibid.: 50–1). These ideas formed the basis
upon which Goatly’s two data sets were analysed and interpreted. The language
was analysed not in a conceptual vacuum but instead according to particular
perspectives pertaining to how we might or even should understand and describe
the natural world and the sorts of representations that are likely to foster more
benevolent attitudes towards it. As we have seen, following Stibbe (2015), such
100 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

orienting principles are often formulated as ecological philosophies (ecosophies)

in ecolinguistic studies.

The Theoretical Basis of Ecological Philosophies

The philosopher and environmentalist Arne Naess problematized the concept

of straightforward and uncontested notions of environmentalism. For Naess
(1995), it is impossible to think in terms of simply being ‘green’ as there are
different schools of thought that all claim the right to define practices and
perspectives that lead to the best outcomes for the natural world. In an attempt to
simplify these positions, Naess imposes his own framework, which categorizes
perspectives in terms of being deep or shallow. A shallow position, which Naess
terms Shallow Environmentalism stays true to its name in that it avoids the need
to take the sort of deeper perspective that might be achieved by problematizing
underlying cultural perspectives on nature and the environment. It eschews a
focus on the broader, structural factors that lead to ecological problems, instead
prioritizing piecemeal, behavioural changes or a reliance on technology. Thus,
ecologically problematic ways of thinking that are reproduced across society
are ignored. For example, we see shallow environmentalism when someone
chooses to use a paper straw while taking a transatlantic flight. We see it in the
use of one’s own plastic container when purchasing shrimps that were caught in
the billions through the use of environmentally destructive fishing techniques.
We see it in the consumption of ‘ecological’ meat while turning a blind eye to
the animal fodder that had to be transported halfway around the world to feed
the farm animals over the winter, or the land that was needed to rear them, or
indeed the wild animals that were hunted due to the apparent threat they posed.
Human-centred perspectives and policies are often seen in examples of shallow
environmental positions. Naess makes the case that such anthropocentrism can
manifest in two different ways. The first is that which views and treats nature as
nothing more than a resource for humankind. The natural world is understood
as having value and meaning when these are related to human wants or desires.
In the absence of these, nature is seen as unimportant or a threat. Shallow
perspectives cannot see the natural world as having its own inherent worth and
reasons for existing. It must be subsumed within the human cultural sphere
in order to be inscribed in meaning and purpose. The second way in which
anthropocentrism can be seen within shallow environmental policies is when
protecting nature and the planet is framed in terms of ultimately serving humans
 Ecolinguistics 101

in some way. For example, referring to ‘our life support system’ or ‘ecosystem
services’ still instrumentalizes and subordinates the natural world to a position
of existing in order to facilitate human existence. Thus, while wild animal
extinctions are seen as a problem, the global trends of defaunation and falling
population sizes often due to human impacts are viewed as less important than
the need to maintain a minimal number of each species in order to guarantee
their survival.
On the other hand, a deep approach to environmentalism, according to Naess,
is concerned with the establishment of the fundamental conditions for life for all
organisms not just humans. Animals and the natural world more broadly are not
seen as serving human interests. Rather, they are conceptualized as possessing
intrinsic value. A deep position is largely informed by Naess’ notion of Self-
Realization. Naess relates this concept to a broadening of one’s understandings
of self so that we see others in ourselves and they see themselves in us. It is an
acknowledgement of our shared plight and an awareness that what hurts the
other will likely impact us too. For Naess, when we see ourselves in others, we
see the protection of the fundamental conditions for their survival as being that
which we too depend upon. Thus, the individual lives of other animals are seen
as important in and of themselves and not simply in terms of how they might be
connected to the preservation of a species.
Aligning oneself with a Deep Ecology approach means engaging in asking
questions about underlying structural, social and cultural factors in ecological
problems. It involves examining and critiquing the human-centred assumptions
behind a whole range of environmental policies. For example, attempts to
avoid buying plastic shopping bags cannot be viewed as unconnected to or take
precedence over the consumerist mentality that drives the purchase that requires
the bag in the first place.
Of course, Naess is not presenting the shallow and deep dichotomy in neutral
terms. There is very much a normative and didactive slant at work here, which
can be understood from the use of the pejorative adjective ‘shallow’. Deep
Ecology is presented as inherently superior due to its ability to go deeper and
avoid superficial appraisals of environmental issues. Thus, the deep/shallow
dichotomy is advanced as the beginnings of a larger framework through which
ecological problems and environmental decision-making can be viewed and
understood. Environmental issues are therefore not apprehended in a conceptual
or ideational vacuum. Instead, they are mapped and made sense of by passing
them through a theoretical framework. This is facilitated through the use of
the Deep Ecology platform; a list of eight statements that represent a central
102 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

component of a larger analytical framework and lay out the overall position
advanced within Naess’ Deep Ecology:

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth

have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent worth).
These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world
for human purposes.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these
values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to
satisfy vital needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a
substantially smaller human population. The flourishing of non-human
life requires a smaller human population.
5. Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and
the situation is rapidly worsening.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect the basic
economic, technological, and ideological structures.
7. The ideological change will be mainly that of appreciating life quality
(dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an
increasingly higher standard of living.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or
indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes (Naess 1995: 68).

For Naess, each statement within the Deep Ecology platform only makes sense
when its central concepts can be traced back to a more expansive theoretical
theory or ethical framework. Naess refers to these as ecosophies, philosophical
orientations to the world that have real ecological implications. Naess’ own
ecosophy is based on the concept of Self-Realization and a reverence for life
found within Buddhism. Thus, for Naess, in our attempts to make sense of
environmental issues and policies we can apply an overall analytical framework
that stems from a set of overarching ecosophies. Stibbe (2015) draws on Naess’
concept of ecosophy as a lens through which the messages encoded within
texts and forms of semiosis can be judged. Stibbe (ibid.: 11) points out that
all critical language analysts carry out their investigations of language in use
according to particular notions of how the world should be. The degree to
which these normative stances are made explicit differs greatly (ibid.). Stibbe
refers to Gavriely-Nuri (2012: 83), who states her orienting framework explicitly
in her work and calls for critical discourse analysts to orientate their work to
 Ecolinguistics 103

‘values, attitudes and behaviours based on the principles of freedom, justice

and democracy, all human rights, tolerance and solidarity’. Thus, texts and
other forms of language use are analysed and judged in terms of the extent to
which they contravene these normative principles. However, while many might
agree that freedom, justice, democracy and human rights are ostensibly positive
concepts to strive towards, as we have seen, what is considered ecologically
beneficial is a bitterly contested area that is impacted by a multitude of factors
such as academic field, cultural narratives, vested interests and local contexts.
Stibbe (ibid.) suggests that within an ecolinguistic context, the individual analyst
will often want to create their own theoretical framework or ecosophy, pointing
out that there are many philosophical positions from which an ecosophy can be
created and that they are usually drawn from three spectra:

The first spectrum is from anthropocentric (human centred) to ecocentric

(centred on all life including humans). The second spectrum is from neoliberal at
one end to either socialist, localist, or anarchist at the other. The third spectrum
is from optimistic to pessimistic. Interestingly, the three spectra broadly align
with each other, so conservative neoliberal frameworks tend to be optimistic and
anthropocentric, while politically radical approaches tend towards pessimism
and ecocentrism. (Stibbe 2015: 12)

It is possible to use pre-existing systems that apply to ecological issues, such as

Plumwood’s ecofeminist framework or Arne Naess’ Deep Ecology platform.
Ecofeminist perspectives such as those of Merchant and Plumwood can be
particularly applicable when investigating the discourse of environmental and
wildlife management, which tend to play down wild animal agency in regulating
ecosystems and either construct the natural world in mechanistic terms or as
a passive resource and therefore something that should be strictly managed
rather than allowed to find its own balance. Of course, the use of pre-existing
frameworks requires that the central tenets of each framework align with the ethics
and opinions of the analyst. Students may find that they agree with some points
but not others. In such cases, it is possible to create an ecosophy that is centred
around and derived from more than one philosophical area. For example, one
might want to draw on ecofeminists such as Carolyn Merchant or Val Plumwood
but also include and emphasize a feminist ethics of care. One might morally and
ethically feel great affinity with Deep Ecology but see the notion of Self-Realization
as problematic. This might lead one to seek out other ecocentric philosophers
such as Eric Katz (1997) or Ronald Purser, Changkil Park and Alfonso Montuori
(1995) for their critiques of anthropocentric approaches to environmentalism.
104 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Alternatively, one might want to analyse language used to construct domestic

or wild animals in particular ways. If it aligned with the student’s own ethical
stance, it might in this case be particularly useful to draw on critical animal
studies, a field that critiques the Cartesian representations of other animals as
mechanistic objects that lack inner lives. One might prefer to take a step outside
of the academic distinctions of anthropocentrism and eco or biocentrism and
instead base their ecosophy on the beliefs and teachings of a particular writer or
theorist. For example, Wendell Berry chooses not to align his philosophy with
ecocentrism, preferring instead to focus on notions of connection and belonging
to particular places and the many organisms that make up such communities
(Martusewicz 2018). Such a position suggests the need to care for and nurture
our communities of living beings so that all can thrive and prosper.
The use of an ecosophy will result in particular ethical or normative positions
being imposed upon texts. Working with an explicitly stated ecosophy can
be particularly useful when applying ecolinguistics to educational contexts.
Learners will not have necessarily all arrived at this subject out of their own free
will or curiosity and therefore do not all come with a set of their own explicitly
held belief systems on nature and the environmental crises. Providing and
motivating an ecosophy that comprises a series of normative statements against
which the messages found in language use can be judged gives learners a clear
framework for working ecolinguistically with texts.
Teachers might sometimes feel uncomfortable imposing a one-size-fits-
all ecosophy on learners because they set out a series of ethical positions on
environmental issues that the learners might not agree with. It can, therefore,
be useful to proceed by first providing an example ecosophy, which can be
used as a basis for discussions regarding the extent to which learners’ personal
attitudes and perspectives regarding human/nature relationships and the
environmental crises align with its different points. However, it is important
that teachers set out the bases of their ecosophy so that learners can see that
they are rooted in either ecological thought or environmental philosophical
principles. Alternatively, teachers can allow learners to form their own, personal
ecosophies, instead of taking on the ecosophy that the teacher has presented,
or they might select elements from it while adding some of their own personal
beliefs on environmental and ecological issues after classroom discussion and
reflection. While it should always be stressed that these should be in line with
the fundamental idea of protecting nature, when learners contribute to the
creation of their own ecosophies, it can allow them to take ownership of the very
frameworks and ethical positions that they are applying to their analyses.
 Ecolinguistics 105

However, you may wish instead to offer your students an alternative. For
example, an exploratory approach can be taken whereby the analyst is simply
interested in language patterns and forms of signification that are present while
also acknowledging and stating their own ethical stance. Such investigations can
be carried out without bringing a set of theoretical or normative principles to
the analysis. Along these lines then, learners might look to identify and label
discourses or discursive themes that relate to nature or ecological issues.
106
 Part II

Pedagogical Concerns

Ecolinguistic studies are, in the main, carried out according to normative

pedagogical and philosophical perspectives about our relationship with the rest
of nature and the living world. One factor that can distinguish one ecolinguistic
study from another is the relative position that that normative position occupies
on the spectrum of explicitness. However, many studies, if even in an implicit
way, are carried out according to the notion that language that encourages the
destruction of nature is to be identified, challenged and discussed in relation to
how it represents and constructs both the natural world and our relationship
with it. Likewise, uses of language that support ways of living that support and
nurture the life support systems of the Earth are to be highlighted and celebrated
(Stibbe 2015). Despite this pedagogical thrust, ecolinguistics as a field did not
specifically emerge in order to be an educational or a pedagogical approach to
be used in classrooms, notwithstanding its obvious potential as a vehicle for
unsettling culturally propagated ideas and its potential for misrepresenting
nature and numbing us to its destruction. What is needed, then, is to align and
situate the field of ecolinguistics and what ecolinguistics is capable of being
within a larger pedagogical landscape. Such a move will allow us to make
our goals with ecolinguistics in educational settings more explicit and also
synchronize its educational potential with current pedagogical approaches and
theories. This will hopefully contribute to the field becoming a recognized area
of education with real potential for both shining a light on and also critiquing
semiotic representations and constructions of the natural world but also ways of
thinking and acting in the world in relation to the non-human.
108
 5

Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy

Public Pedagogy and the Political Aspects of Education

As we have seen, there are strong reasons to believe that the messages we are
exposed to impact and shape the way we think about nature and our relationship
with it. At the same time, how we orient towards the natural world cannot be
boiled down to mere matters of fact on what does or does not amount to best
practice and a set of scientifically sanctioned orientations and practices or
techniques that have either positive or negative ecological outcomes. Rather, it
is the overarching cultural narratives and ideologies regarding nature’s status
and our relationship with it that play a prominent role in how we conceptualize
the non-human natural world and therefore how we act towards it. Indeed,
culture itself can be viewed as a pedagogical force. For Henry Giroux (2011:
138), culture plays a key role in the production of ‘narratives, metaphors, images,
and desiring maps that exercise a powerful pedagogical force over how people
think about themselves and their relations to others’ and therefore ‘functions as
a contested sphere over the production, distribution, and regulation of power,
and how and where it operates both symbolically and institutionally as an
educational, political, and economic force’ (ibid.). Power in this sense can be
thought of as the educational force enacted by the wider culture, which carries
the power to impact people’s perspectives on life and the identities they take on
(ibid.: 7). Therefore, for Giroux, we must broaden our notion of education to
include the concept of public pedagogy. The way in which culture enacts its effect
is to a large extent the result of the increasing presence in our lives of a range of
different media, from traditional forms such as television, film and the printed
word to digital media (ibid.: 7). Thus, media, as a manifestation of culture, can
and indeed should be viewed and treated seriously as a form of public pedagogy.
By means of an example, Giroux charts the way in which public culture has
been hijacked by neoliberal forces that have employed a complex of ‘ideological
110 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

and institutional forces’ in order to produce a pedagogical force that encourages

people to take on hyperindividualized, competitive and self-interested identities
(ibid.). Such identities can be associated with ways of being in the world that
prioritize the advancement of the self to the detriment of the wider human and
non-human community. Public pedagogy often presents such perspectives and
ideals as implicit value systems, as just the way things are or as common sense
(ibid.). As a counter to such a position, Giroux suggests critical pedagogy for
the development of critical thinking in order to allow students to relate situated
and individual concerns to wider sociological and cultural issues. Critical
pedagogy exposes the politics and power underpinning the establishment of
commonsense assertions about states of affairs. For Giroux (ibid.: 6) education
is essentially a political process as it is ‘productive and directive’ rather than
‘neutral and objective’. Thus, seeing pedagogy as essentially a political process
does not come about due to the desire to impose ideology upon students (ibid.).
Indeed, politics as a concept can be understood as representing an essential part
of any pedagogy that seeks to develop a critical stance regarding how different
forms of knowledge are assessed as valid in today’s society. Likewise, a political
perspective can bring about understandings of the forms of knowledge that
influence how we relate to others as part of the process of producing citizens
able to function and contribute to democratic decision-making.

Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy

Any investigation and discussion of critical pedagogy would be incomplete

without discussing the work of Paulo Freire. One of the founding theorists in
critical pedagogy, Paulo Freire brought the field to a wide audience as well as
establishing a successful literacy programme in Brazil before the junta in 1964.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), which is generally considered to be Freire’s
most influential work, sets out a radical pedagogical and philosophical vision
that aims to identify the sources of oppression, provide the foundations for an
emancipatory pedagogy and show how such liberatory educational principles
can manifest in learning environments. Indeed, Freire’s own brand of critical
pedagogy and empowerment literacy represented a major shift in how education
is conceptualized (Misiaszek 2021: 1).

Paulo Freire’s literacy pedagogy was a paradigm shift in education – students and
teachers learning together to read the world by dialectically problematizing how
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 111

we are taught what the world ‘is’, what are the politics constructing the world,
how the world ‘should be’, and what actions are necessary to end oppressions.
(Misiaszek 2021: 1)

Thus, Freire saw a political stance and knowing how to read the politics of the
world as an essential element to any liberatory educational approach. Freire’s
particular conceptualization of critical pedagogy made waves in the world of
education, not only due to the passionately argued themes themselves but also as
a result of its portrayal of educational praxis that is advanced as a coherent vision
of intimate and compelling connections between an overall theoretical basis for
emancipatory education and classroom practice and routines.

Relevant Theoretical Underpinnings

from Pedagogy of the Oppressed

A key theoretical aspect and mechanism for liberation within Freirean pedagogy
is the development in the oppressed of a form of critical thinking applied to
the systematic conditions of their oppression and subjugation (Freire [1968]
2017: 21). Thus, important within Freirean critical pedagogy is the agency
of the oppressed in liberating themselves through taking on a perspective of
criticality on their own predicament while also acknowledging the role of the
teacher in setting the ground for pedagogical opportunities for these emerging
perspectives and abilities. This suggests the importance in pedagogical work of
encouraging learners to critically evaluate the leveraging of power that functions
within systems of oppression, as well as seeing how these systems of oppression
and agencies are intimately tied to them and who they impact and how. It is an
awareness of these modes of power and oppression that Freire sees as leading
to practical actions (praxis) in order to make real systematic changes in the
physical and social worlds of the oppressed. Through the development of a
critical perspective applied to the world, the oppressed are encouraged to read
texts in order to be able to understand the world fully towards the goal of being
able to clearly articulate the structures within which they are being oppressed as
well as the particular agencies at play within those structures.
Oppression here for Freire enacts its power through societal structures
maintained by the oppressors. These structures keep in place the oppressors’
dominance and privilege. As it is therefore not in the interests of the oppressors
to threaten the structures that maintain their own power, any attempts at the
112 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

alleviation of the conditions of the oppressed that come from those in power and
in control of the structures that maintain certain power dynamics represent what
Freire calls, ‘false generosity’ (Freire [1968] 2017: 18). Therefore, it is important
to recognize attempts by those in power to alleviate the conditions of those
oppressed as potentially ‘false’ if they result in a prolonging of the very conditions
of oppression. Such moves do nothing to threaten the very structures that make
such ‘false generosity’ possible in the first place. Therefore, they not only fail to
challenge or dismantle these structures but also work on the basis that they must
be maintained. As Freire puts it, ‘[a]n unjust social order is the permanent fount
of this “generosity”’ (ibid.: 18). Forms of care built on notions of control carried
out for the apparent benefit of those who are oppressed amount to a patronizing
form of domination that maintains the status quo ultimately for the benefit
of those who uphold and profit from the structures of control. Pedagogy that
begins with the egoistic interests of the oppressors, and makes of the oppressed
the objects of its humanitarianism, actually maintains and embodies the very
oppression it can aim to reject. This is why a pedagogy of the oppressed cannot
be developed or practised by those with power. It would be a contradiction in
terms if those in control not only defined but actually implemented a liberating
education (Freire [1968] 2017: 28).
Ecolinguistic analyses can reveal this dynamic within the discourse of
sustainable development. Sustainable development as formulated by the 1987
Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our
Common Future, commonly known as the Brundtland Report, is to be applied to
the protection of the natural world in addition to economic and social concerns.
Such seemingly benign environmentalist themes are definitely present within
the discourse as a whole but also specifically within the Brundtland Report itself,
as can be seen in the following:

Nature is bountiful, but it is also fragile and finely balanced. There are thresholds
that cannot be crossed without endangering the basic integrity of the system.
Today we are close to many of these thresholds; we must be ever mindful of
the risk of endangering the survival of life on Earth. (United Nations, World
Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) 1987)

We can see here an acknowledgement of the fragility of the natural world and
the need to maintain systems that are finely balanced. In relation to this, we
see mention of thresholds that cannot be transgressed without threatening ‘the
survival of life on earth’. However, closer scrutiny reveals another discourse
carrying another agenda:
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 113

Economy is not just about the production of wealth, and ecology is not just
about the protection of nature; they are both equally relevant for improving the
lot of humankind. (United Nations, World Commission on Environment and
Development (WCED) 1987)

In this rather striking statement, nature is likened to wealth and is placed in

the subordinate position of existing in order to ‘improve the lot of humankind’.
Indeed, sustainable development is defined by the 1987 Brundtland Report
as ‘[d]evelopment that meets the needs of the present generation without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (ibid.).
Thus, the protection of nature and the natural world more broadly is advanced
as important for its ability to function as a resource for the improvement and
enhancement of human lives and the maintenance of a sustainable planet that
can support human lives indefinitely. Within this world view, the development
element of sustainable development is seen in terms of specifically improving
‘the quality of human life’ while increasing the chances of being able to
live ‘within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems’ (Munro and
Holdgate 1991; in Kahn 2008: 2). This strongly anthropocentric foundation
to sustainable development discourses has been highlighted and criticized in
many fields that see such a separation of the needs of humans and the rest of
nature as short-sighted but also ontologically false. For example, from the field
of new materialism, Stacy Alaimo (2012) critiques the strongly human-centric
vision projected by sustainable development discourses and points out that
‘generations’ here relate exclusively to human populations. Thus, for Alaimo,
sustainability discourses construct a strange form of environmental imaginary
that includes no actual environment but instead envisions a lively world of
dynamic beings reduced to mere materials to satisfy our ‘needs’ (ibid.).
Alaimo therefore suggests that it is left to humanities scholars to ask important
questions such as ‘what it is that sustainability seeks to sustain and for whom?’
(ibid.: 562). As we have seen with shallow environmentalist positions, in
sustainable development discourse, we can see examples of Freire’s notions of
paternalistic care and false generosity in the protection of nature, whereby the
positions of those in power are neither compromised nor jeopardized, while
at the same time, a minimal degree of care is given to the needs of nature,
and only in terms of maintaining enough of it for the short-term needs of
humankind.
Some critical pedagogues associate Freire solely with the concept of human
emancipation. Indeed, in a Pedagogy of the Oppressed he makes clear distinctions
between humans and other animals, and most of these represent the latter in
114 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

a less-than-flattering light. However, it is also significant that the focus of the

book that Freire was working on before he died in 1997 was the application of
Freirean critical literacy to the plight of the natural world (Gadotti and Torres
2009; Misiaszek and Torres 2019; in Misiaszek 2021: 2):

I want to be remembered as somebody who loved the men, the women, the
plants, the animals, the Earth. (Interview at the Paulo Freire Institute Sao Paulo
(Gadotti and Torres 2009: 1261–2))

There are striking conceptual similarities between how Freire relates the concept
of the oppression of humans in society and framings and representations that
have frequently been applied to nature, as well as the ways these framings and
representations have been understood as destructive forms of control and
domination and therefore have been resisted in fields such as ecofeminism,
ecocriticism and critical animal studies . Moreover, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
Freire talks about how the identity of the oppressor class is built and is dependent
on a particular construction of the oppressed Other. In order to fully define
the oppressor within their place in the dominant position, those they seek to
control and dominate must be understood and represented as less than human.
‘For the oppressors. “human beings” refers only to themselves; other people are
“things”’ (Freire [1968] 2017: 31). The basic survival needs of the oppressed
class are begrudgingly conceded, suggests Freire, but only in relation to those
aspects which are recognized as those upon which the oppressor class depends
(ibid.).
This structural representation of the oppressed class mirrors that laid out by
ecofeminist theorist Val Plumwood (1993). As we have seen, for Plumwood,
androcentric and patriarchal culture has since the time of the ancient Greeks
constructed female humans, people of colour and nature as the inferior other in
order to conceptually position white men in a position of power and superiority.
To this end, linguistic resources are recruited in order to construct the following
dichotomizing representations of nature and women:

Backgrounding: Relegating the other to the margins of representation.

Downplaying them in terms of the degree to which they appear important,
agential, or necessary .

Homogenization: Generalizing and stereotyping the characteristics of the other

so that they are understood as indistinguishable and homogenized – all the
same, according to the traits of the category.
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 115

Instrumentalization: Viewing the other in terms of resource value only and

therefore overlooking their individual characteristics and needs.

Assimilation: The identity and worth of the lower class is defined in relation to
how it lacks the desired characteristics of the privileged class.

Denial: Downgrading, downplaying or simply denying the contributions of the

other for the maintenance of the privileged class.

Thus, we have in the categories of homogenization, instrumentalization and

denial a dismissal of the other’s special characteristics, particularities and specific
needs. They are characterized in terms of the tangible, instrumental uses that the
privileged category can extract from them but crucially not the contributions they
make to fundamental conditions that support the existence of those in power.
This mindset can be seen in talk of sustainable populations of wild animals and
sustainable yields of hunted animals whereby wild animals are tolerated only
when maintained at the lowest possible ‘sustainable’ number. Crucially, these
low population numbers are tolerated rather than respected or treated with an
ethic of care. Such notions not only ignore the needs of individual animals but
deny and dismiss the requirements of populations and species of wild animals
in terms of providing them with optimal conditions for thriving. This dismissal
of the needs of other species comes as an inevitable consequence of the human
hubris of assuming that we have enough information to know how the artificial
maintenance of particular population sizes impacts ecosystems and their myriad
interconnections, interactions and dependencies, or indeed how it affects the
long-term genetic viability of species. We are only now starting to understand
the extent to which small populations of wild animals lose genetic diversity from
generation to generation (Diefenbach et al. 2015). Wild animals in such contexts
are assigned worth primarily to the extent that they can continue to serve the
needs of human societies. It is only important, therefore, that their populations do
not fall below the number needed to maintain a viable and ‘sustainable’ resource.

The Applicability of Freire’s Pedagogy of

the Oppressed to Ecolinguistics

Freire draws heavily on Erich Fromm in his understanding of the perspectives

of the oppressor class. Freire makes the case that the dominating orientation of
the oppressor exists through the establishment of a ‘lower’ order, a foil against
116 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

which the privileged class can understand itself and maintain contact with the
world. This lower order is objectified and converted to ‘inanimate things’ (Freire
[1968] 2017: 33). Freire refers to this perspective as stemming from a ‘possessive
consciousness’ (ibid.: 32) that manifests in a need to possess the world in order
to experience it. Without this objectification and resourcification of the world, the
oppressor class would lose both its sense of itself and sense of being in the world
(Fromm 1966; in Freire [1968] 2017: 32):

The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate
creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating
the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform a man into
a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and
absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life – freedom. (Fromm
1966: 32, in Freire [1968] 2017: 33)

However, crucial to the compatibility of Freirean critical pedagogy to the use

of ecolinguistics in education is the idea that individuals can become aware
of their position within the oppressor class and ‘join the oppressed in their
struggle for liberation’ (Freire [1968] 2017: 34). Also important here is Freire’s
notion that in addition to being ‘exploiters’, members of the oppressor class
can also take the role of ‘indifferent spectators’ or the ‘heirs of exploitation’,
suggesting that one can simply be unaware of one’s position of advantage within
hierarchical structures of power. Likewise, it is therefore possible to benefit
from the exploitation of others without seeing or understanding the material
contributions that one derives from their bodies and work. There are very clear
connections here to our existence within structures of power and the associated
domination, exploitation and destruction of the natural world. Most are unaware
of how dominant and pervasive anthropocentric cultural narratives orientate us
towards particular ways of relating to the non-human world or how they can act
as conceptual and linguistic blueprints for material and structural frameworks
of environmental and ecological degradation. Likewise, many are unaware of
how they impact the natural world negatively through their place within such
systems that normalize and naturalize actions that are ecologically destructive.
Of critical importance to the central thrust of this book is, therefore, the notion
of how individuals can move away from being a member of the oppressor class
and the recipient of a destructive relationship with the oppressed class (here we
understand it to be nature). This can occur through individuals acknowledging
their roles as either ‘exploiters’ or ‘indifferent spectators’, or as those who were
simply unaware of their complicity in aspects of ecological degradation and
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 117

destruction. This may lead them to want to reject the exploitative aspects of
the cultural frameworks within which they have been so comfortable in their
ignorant bliss.
Rebecca Martusewicz (2018) has advanced a form of ecological justice
education based on the writings of the American poet, philosopher, and nature
writer Wendell Berry. A prominent concept within a Pedagogy of Responsibility is
that of our participation in the distribution and perpetuation of discourses on the
environment. Drawing on Michel Foucault, Martusewicz argues that discourses
form structural systems of knowledge construction and dissemination that define
the possible and impossible as well as constraining certain ways of thinking and
therefore acting. They can guide our understandings and orientations towards
the natural world and how we should act towards it. As we have seen, discourses
represent powerful forms of meaning-making which can construct the world in
different ways, assigning to entities the position of subject or object. However, as
well as being the subjects of discourses, we are also the agents of their construction,
modification and communication. These discourses are related to the societal
structures that exploit and degrade nature. Thus, we are actors within linguistic
and material frameworks of ecological destruction. For Martusewicz (2018),
within environmental education, this entails the important goal of developing
a heightened awareness of our participation within discourses that construct
the natural world in different ways. In the context of Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
when it comes to the destruction of the natural world, most people do not intend
to cause harm to animals or nature. However, as members of the privileged class,
we often inadvertently and complicitly participate in practices, processes and
societal systems and patterns of behaviour (living extravagantly, engaging in
unnecessary consumption, eating food that has a high carbon footprint, flying
etc.) which result in the degradation of nature. Thus, the average person is more
analogous to Freire’s ‘indifferent spectators’ or ‘heirs of exploitation’ than the
direct and intentional ‘exploiters’ of nature. It is these people, however, argues
Freire, who are so important in the struggle against oppression, and as we have
seen, as nature has no voice of its own, it is imperative that as many as possible
are encouraged to join the ranks to fight for the natural world.
Therefore, an interesting area of incompatibility between a Freirean
critical pedagogy and its application to the environmental crises is how Freire
conceptualizes a clear dichotomy between the categories of oppressor and
oppressed. Indeed, a clear binary relationship between the two breaks down
when viewed from an ecopedagogical perspective, as, within an anthropocentric
society, all humans are (to varying degrees one must admit) both oppressors
118 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

and oppressed. Moreover, through merely existing within an anthropocentric

system, with all its taken-for-granted mediating infrastructures, discourses and
facilitated modes of existence that normalize and naturalize the oppression of
the non-human world, it is virtually impossible to avoid negatively impacting
non-human entities. However, despite our agency in negatively impacting the
natural world, we are clearly not the sort of ‘oppressors’ that Freire had in mind
when writing his pedagogy for fighting class oppression. Nonetheless, our
destructive impacts on the living world are very real. From the food that we eat
and the myriad ways in which such choices keep in place destructive forms of
land use, the ways we transport ourselves around, our levels of consumption,
to the chemicals and particles we release into the atmosphere, hydrosphere
and biosphere to name but a few of the ways in which we negatively impact
the natural world, we are ecological agents with very real and rarely benign
impacts on the rest of nature. Thus, an important strand in a critical pedagogy
that is based around language, symbolism and media is the development of
both our responsibilities towards Earth others as well as the aforementioned
critical focus on the agencies of ecological destruction and how these play out
in systems of representation and symbolism, be they language, or other forms
of media.
Freire suggests here that there is a danger that one internalizes the values of
the oppressors’ system, through forms of what we might understand as public
pedagogy. These values come to be our own values; therefore, going against them
becomes an act of going against oneself, even if one is neither the oppressed nor
the oppressor. In fact, as we have seen, we are simultaneously both oppressor
and oppressed. We take on the role of the oppressed through being subject to a
system of discursivity and public pedagogy, which, according to Foucault, not
only constrains and determines what is said but also how it is said. We take on
the role of oppressor through our production of and participation in discourses
that help to maintain the blueprint for the material subjugation of nature. We are
oppressors through our agency and complicity in the milling mass of discourses
that exert their discursive effects on the world. We have a dialogic relationship
with both the world and these discourses in that we are both influenced by them
and are agents in shaping them (Martusewicz 2018).
Ecolinguistics has a potentially huge role here through facilitating awareness-
raising of how these symbolic systems of cultural oppression towards the non-
human natural world manifest through language and other forms of semiosis.
The reading of texts from an ecolinguistics lens can also produce much-needed
problematization of certain cultural perspectives and actions regarding the
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 119

natural world that would otherwise exist as unchallenged assumptions and

presuppositions.
Important as they are to our understandings of the natural world and our
own subject positions in the world and within oppressive discourse, carrying
out ecolinguistic analyses in educational settings allows for the detailed and fine-
grained investigation of the atoms of a discourse, the regularity of particular
discursive features and the constellations of syndromes of grammar (Halliday
([1990] 2003). Ecolinguistic analyses allow for the analysis of what a text means
or what it says about our relationship towards the rest of nature but also how
it comes to mean and how these representations are constructed linguistically
and, more broadly, semiotically through the selection of particular meaning-
making resources. Therefore, through employing ecolinguistics in educational
settings, crucial connections between form and meaning are identified and
highlighted. This attention paid to semiotic resources highlights particular
ecological concepts which manifest through particular words, expressions
and grammatical patterns. Thus, through learning about language, one learns
content too (Halliday 1993). In addition, attention paid to fine-grained analyses
of specific discursive features, patterns of language and particular pictorial ways
of representing allow learners to understand how individual semiotic resources
bring affordances for the construction of meaning, and in this case, meaning
that relates to our ecological life support system and its nurture or destruction.
Studying these individual forms of meaning-making can set the foundations for
an appreciation for how the discourses or ‘stories-we-live-by’ (Stibbe 2015) that
we engage in and contribute to are built from the bottom up.
When trying to apply Freire’s concept of oppressor and oppressed to
environmental destruction in ecolinguistic analyses of texts and language in
use, the notion that we participate in and may or may not contribute to the
production of ecologically damaging discourses becomes a relevant issue to take
into consideration and discuss in educational settings. Another interesting and
highly relevant issue in this regard is that of agency: specifically, the question
of who has agency in causing ecological damage. The cultural systems with
which we engage are often also the very infrastructures within which we live
our lives and crucially which led us to greater or lesser extents to impact the
natural world. Applied to the ecological crises, we must therefore re-evaluate
notions of mediated agency in ecological destruction and therefore whom we
see as agents of harm. Perhaps, therefore, it is too simple in today’s age to think
about a simple binary of oppressor and oppressed; maybe we must also factor in
those who are forced into being part of an oppressive agency through the system
120 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

that they are forced into through the absence of alternative systems. Examples
of such areas of life might be transport and heating. How much freedom do
we really have in choosing forms of transport if our funds and access to public
transport are limited? We are often economically pushed into buying vehicles
that run on fossil fuels because they are cheaper to run on a limited budget or the
local municipality neither subsidizes electric cars nor installs charging points in
municipality housing. The simple act of heating our homes often forces us to use
either gas or electricity that has been generated from coal burning power plants.
One might ask: To what extent are we all free to choose renewable sources of
energy to heat our houses? We all therefore either willingly or unwillingly
become oppressors of the natural world to one degree or another through our
existence within systems that we had no hand in producing and which we have
little individual power to change. An awareness of this system, and the agencies
and political structures and processes that are at play in terms of building them
and keeping them in place, can help us into the praxis of working towards the
reduction of harm to nature and natural systems.
In line with one of the main tenets of critical pedagogy, environmental
education in this vein becomes deeply political as it raises important discussions
in the classroom about issues of agency in ecological destruction and where
we need to look for change. Thus, while we cannot simply uncritically apply
the political and theoretical basis for Freire’s ideas to forms of environmental
education, his overall vision for a critical pedagogy represents a fruitful
foundation from which environmental educators can draw. As we have seen so
far, the foundations of Freire’s vision for critical pedagogy are theoretical and
political. They set out certain perspectives on the causes of human oppression
and how these can be tackled. Freire also relates an aspect of his theoretical
perspective on oppression and where it stems from to the habits of mind, beliefs
and ethics of the oppressor:

The pedagogy of the first stage must deal with the problem of the oppressed
consciousness and the oppressor consciousness, the problem of men and
women who oppress and men and women who suffer oppression. It must take
into account their behaviour, their view of the world and their ethics. (Freire
[1968] 2017: 29)

For Freire, accounting for oppression and understanding its sources requires
us to try to gain access to the cognitive objects that form the mental
foundations on which people act in the world. As a form of critical ecological
pedagogy, this would mean taking into consideration grand narratives
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 121

that relate to how our species should orientate towards the natural world.
Therefore, yet again, we see the importance of addressing the background
cultural metanarratives and habits of mind that guide much of human society
as well as the discourses and uses of semiosis that contain and manifest them
in material ways.
However, coming to a state of awareness about one’s agency and therefore
impact on others is insufficient for one to achieve true solidarity with the
oppressed. As we have seen, the field of transformative learning questions the
information gap perspective of social change, which posits that the reason
why people fail to shift to more ecologically sustainable patterns of behaviour
is that they are simply lacking information. As mentioned previously, with
more education, or more science, it was claimed, people would see the light
and make the necessary changes. Conversely, within transformative learning,
it is specifically the cognitive objects and frameworks that are so deeply
entrenched that they manifest as habits of mind and perspectives on life that
influence and shape our behaviour. These mental models contain an ethical
element and function as orientations to the world that carry a normative thrust.
Freire metaphorically refers to the need for profound shifts in perspective as a
form of being reborn. Conversion for the people requires a profound rebirth.
Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer
remain as they were. Only through comradeship with the oppressed can the
converts understand their characteristic ways of living and behaving, which in
diverse moments reflect the structure of the domination (Freire [1968] 2017:
35). For Freire then, a large part of this change comes from reaching solidarity
with the oppressed through seeing situations from their perspective. This
position of empathy and comradeship will, suggests Freire, bring about a shift
of consciousness in the oppressor, or as we have previously seen, challenges to
individuals’ habits of mind.
Again, we can recognize a significant role for ecolinguistics here. First,
ecocritical discourse analysis can be used in order to highlight both human
agency in ecological destruction and where it is being obfuscated and abstracted.
A position of solidarity with nature can be taken through identifying threats and
sources of destruction that are glossed over, backgrounded or simply omitted.
Likewise, where human agents are hidden, they can be exposed. Nominalizations
can be written out as full clauses so that they clearly display the agents and goals
(affected entities) of ecological damage. Through the use of positive discourse
analysis, discourses that actively counter the Cartesian tendency to highlight
and construct differences between humans and other animals can be analysed
122 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

and celebrated. Their individual discourse strategies can be identified and set to
work in students’ nature writing assignments.

Freire’s View of Teaching and Learning in the Classroom

Thus, we can start to see how Freirean critical pedagogy can translate into
classroom practices. Although by no means set out as a pedagogy in terms of a
set of prescribed methods, techniques or classroom techniques, in a Pedagogy of
the Oppressed, Freire attempts to show how educators should enact a liberatory
pedagogy through their ways of orienting to both students and the relationship
between teacher, student and taught content. As a fully integrated educational
vision for emancipation and the development of full subjects who can function as
critical agents within a democratic society, a Pedagogy of the Oppressed integrates
compelling connections between the theoretical and political foundations and
how the work of education and learning should proceed.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed as Educational Dialogism

In this section, I will present Per Linell’s theory of contextual social construction
and explore its relevance to Freirean critical pedagogy as well as the application
of ecolinguistics to educational settings. For Linell (2009) contextual social
construction refers to the generation of meanings that emerge out of our
attempts at meaning-making through our communicative interactions with
people, artefacts and environments. Linell situates this perspective on language,
interaction and meaning within the larger theoretical sphere of dialogism.
Dialogism represents a significant departure from our more established
understandings and perspectives on language and cognition and has huge
potential for influencing how we understand learning and teaching. Here I
will explore dialogism as a theory and relate its underlying principles to Paulo
Freire’s vision of how teachers should enact critical pedagogy through orienting
in specific ways to cognizable objects, concepts as forms of media, themselves
as teachers and, of course, to learners. In doing this, I will argue that Freire’s
educational theories in Pedagogy of the Oppressed represent a form of dialogism
applied to education.
Linell makes the case that in order to understand complex concepts such
as dialogism it is important to first know what it is not, or in other words, to
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 123

know its theoretical opposite. This opposing concept, monologism (Wold

1992), is the traditional perspective taken on language, interaction and thought.
Linell (2009: 36) discusses several overall theories of language that underpin
monologism: the information processing model of cognition, the transfer model
of communication, the code model of language, perception and cognition, and
theories of context and language use.

Theories of Context and Language Use

Within the theory of monologism, the contexts within which language use takes
place are seen as inessential to how we come to understand the language system
or the cognitions of others that have been formulated in language or other forms
of semiosis. Such a view also sees the material and social backgrounds against
which communication takes place as stable environments that exist prior to and
independent of action and use of language. For Linell (2009), this is in stark contrast
to the theory of dialogism, which sees contexts as forms of media which can be
interacted with in order to both produce new meanings and to provide a form of
scaffolding for the interpretation of forms of semiosis used in communication.
Thus, they are used in the processes of thinking. These contextual resources
come in many kinds and can include the social context, shared knowledge and
the physical environment (ibid.: 37). We have seen ecolinguistics defined as ‘the
study of interactions between any given language and its environment’ (Haugen
1972: 225). Thus, from an ecolinguistics perspective, our interactions with the
natural world have the potential to generate meanings in addition to those
linguistically encoded meanings that exist prior to being written or uttered.
Thus, our discursive interactions with people, places, discourses, artefacts and
so on can be considered sites of meaning-making and cognition.
In contrast, from a cognitive perspective, in monologism, cognition is seen
as the precondition for communication rather than something that arises out of
engaging with the world in the process of generating meanings. Without prior
thinking processes to generate the thoughts to be directed out into the world,
there can be no communication according to this view:

(In the theory of monologism) Cognition precedes communication, and

ideas (‘thoughts’) (and possibly emotions) are represented and transmitted in
communication. Thus, utterances and texts are nothing but a conduit between
individual minds. (Linell 2009: 37)
124 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Thus, within monologism, language and words are seen as mere labels which
contribute nothing to meaning.

The Transfer Model of Communication and Monologism

A similar theoretical element within monologism is the transfer model of

communication, which posits that language is a code and that words and phrases
are transparent, lack ambiguity and relate to stable meaning relationships with
their referents in the world (ibid.: 39). Inherent within this perspective, words
are viewed as neutral containers or vehicles to be filled with the meaning
generated by our thinking minds. This highlights a crucial area of difference
between monologism and dialogism in terms of the roles attributed to language
and semiosis. Within the former, semiosis is seen as relating purely to the
act of communication. However, within the theory of dialogism, language
and semiosis are seen as relating to cognition itself. According to this view,
meanings are generated through our interactions with communicative others,
social contexts, artefacts and environments as opposed to merely arising in
our minds prior to being directed outwards in language use. According to
the concept of dialogism, languaging, that is, the use of semiotic resources,
contexts and environments often in conjunction with others in order to create
meanings, is itself an act of cognition. A dialogic relationship exists between
language and other forms of semiosis and the contexts with which we interact.
Both are shaped by the process of engaging in languaging to generate meanings
(ibid.: 38). In other words, as the interactive use of language and semiosis can be
thought of as a form of thinking itself, both our constructions of the world and
the meanings that we attach to language items are changed through the process.
Linell (2009: 38) is keen to stress, however, that the theory of dialogism does
not preclude the notion that language can sometimes communicate thoughts and
emotions that have been generated prior to that communication. In addition,
in dialogism, language items are seen as representing meaning affordances or
‘potentials’ (ibid.: 40) rather than fixed connections between a signifier and
signified. In addition, language users do not always plan either their thoughts
in communication or what they communicate (ibid.). Moreover, meanings
are often specified, clarified and modified through the process of interacting.
Thus, viewed as cognition itself, languaging can be understood as a form of
dual or distributed thinking that results in the co-construction of meanings and
knowledge.
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 125

Theories of Language

Within the theory of dialogism, both language and language use are seen to
contribute to meaning-making rather than determine meaning. For example,
dialogism acknowledges that signifiers do not always have a concrete and
direct relationship with a signified or referent. Therefore, it is through situated
language use in the act of communicating that extra meanings emerge and
both complement and add to meaning. However, crucially, within the theory
of dialogism, items of semiosis bring something to the process of making
meanings. Rather than being seen as mere labels or vessels for the transportation
of meanings from one person to another, dialogism recognizes language items
(words, phrases etc.) as being imbued with associated meanings through their
contact with and use in society. Thus, they bring something to our construction
of meanings and understandings of the world and in so doing represent
aspects of the world that are used in our partial conceptual constructions of
reality. Similarly, the physical world, and therefore the natural world, is seen
as providing a conceptual substrate from which we derive our mental models.
Thus, according to dialogism, the physical world as well as language items used
in the process of languaging both provide conceptual material for our partial
constructions of reality (Linell 2009).
A major concept raised in Pedagogy of the Oppressed is that of banking
education. For Freire, banking education relates to a form of education akin
to the transmission model of communication, by which learners engage with
educational content by means of merely learning or memorizing a series of ‘facts’.
Thus, the carefully chosen metaphor highlights for Freire the main assumptions
within this traditional view of learning and teaching that apolitical, unanalysed
information can be ‘deposited’ within the minds of learners and then retrieved
at will at a later point in time. This is a view of the learning process that positions
the learner as a passive receptacle for ‘neutral’ educational content. Such a view
of the learning process goes contrary to another important theme running
through Freirean critical pedagogy, that of learners developing the ability to
develop critical consciousness and to take a critical stance on what is learned
and on the learning process in general. These goals are seen as facilitative of the
broader goal of self-emancipation, for in order ‘[t]o surmount the situation of
oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes’ (Freire [1968] 2017:
21). Not only is a banking view of education the antithesis of a critical perspective
on teaching and learning, but, for Freire, it also represents the educational
incarnation of the very same oppressive forces that critical literacy was developed
126 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

to counter. Expecting learners to take a passive orientation to education and

taught information represents for Freire a position of subservience whereby in
the classroom, students literally become the recipients of unquestioned ‘facts’
but in a broader sense therefore become the passive recipients of particular ways
of viewing the world. This feature of the banking education model is paralleled
in the view of language and cognition according to monologism whereby the
receivers of information from others are placed within the role of interpreter
of messages rather than the co-constructor of meanings in interaction with
communicative others and features of the environment. Within this role,
learners can be understood as engaging with educational content in a relatively
superficial manner. On the other hand, when placed within the position of active
co-author of meanings and therefore knowledge, learners engage with material
and concepts in cognitively deeper ways.
As we have seen, this is a situation that also plays out in society at large,
whereby people are subject to the educational force of public pedagogy (Giroux
2011); within which ‘[w]ays of viewing the world are “naturalized” in every day
discourse, as opposed to critical discussions of it, [. . .] , and reality is presented
not as the outcome of social practices that might be questioned or challenged, but
as simply “the way things are”’ (Cameron 2001: 123). For example, information
on environmental issues is often not presented as that which rests upon a certain
set of assumptions, metanarratives or orientations of mind but instead as the
result of a neutral quest for information, as unquestioned fact or examples of best
practice. Thus, we are set up to uncritically consume environmental information
that has been both produced and presented on the basis of a very specific set of
perspectives on an ‘ideal’ relationship with the natural world rather than being
presented with the complexity of conflicting positions and ethics regarding our
interactions and responsibilities towards nature. Similarly, environmental and
ecological problems are often presented as requiring technical solutions when
in reality what is needed is change on a more systemic level. The notion that
environmental problems will be solved when someone else either applies current
technologies or invents them allows us to mentally dismiss problems as beyond
our control.
We are, therefore, not only not required to think but are actively discouraged
from thinking about how we orientate and act towards the natural world.
Whether this occurs in the classroom as environmental education, or via public
pedagogy, this is analogous to a monologic perspective on language and cognition
whereby cognition precedes language use, communication is disconnected from
cognition and individuals are treated as the passive receptacles of someone else’s
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 127

knowledge or forms of representation and normative perspectives. According to

Freire, the banking perspective also cuts learners off from the world rather than
encouraging them to develop genuine connections to that which is apperceived:

Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between

human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world
or with others; the individual is spectator not re-creator. In this view, the person
is not a conscious being (corpo consciente); he or she is rather the possessor of
a consciousness: an empty ‘mind’ passively open to the reception of deposits of
reality from the world outside. (Freire [1968] 2017: 48)

Thus, within the context of environmental education, the banking view of

teaching separates us from any sort of mental or spiritual engagement with the
natural world or ecological problems. We are not encouraged to act and speak as
participants within nature. We are not treated as entities that engage with nature
in ways that might develop particular orientations towards it and therefore the
development of meaningful connections. Instead, outside of our first-hand
experiences, our engagements with nature via forms of education and knowledge
development involve the distancing practice of learning reified facts about the
world (Freire [1968] 2017). For Freire, such a view of learning fails to make the
crucial distinction between accessing or perceiving the world and the formation
of meaningful connections to aspects of the world so that they become part of
the mental infrastructure that forms your consciousness (ibid.: 49).
Deposits of information, for Freire, are accessible to us but still outside us;
they do not become the mental objects that comprise the orienting principles
upon which we live our lives. From a dialogism theory perspective, it is the active
languaging that occurs between people in conjunction with forms of semiosis
and a context that generates cognition and that affords the raw material for the
social and mental construction of new meanings. Thus, by engaging in joint
and distributed thinking processes with the natural world and communicative
others, the perceived natural and environmental problems become a part of our
consciousness rather than something outside of us that we can merely perceive
but are disconnected and estranged from.

Problem-Posing as Dialogism and Distributed Cognition

Thinking together about educational content is therefore key to Freire’s vision
of a critical pedagogy, as ‘liberating education consists in acts of cognition,
not transfers of information’ ([1968] 2017: 52). However, in banking or
128 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

transmission forms of education individuals do not engage in cognition as

they are merely required to memorize and retrieve pre-packaged information
that is the property of the teacher (ibid.: 53). Instead, suggests Freire, teachers
should dispense with attempts at transmitting or depositing generic items
of information and instead reformulate their educational endeavours as the
setting of problems to be attended to and solved (ibid.: 52). ‘Problem-posing
education’, for Freire, aligns the educational process with consciousness and
communication. Through dialogue and interaction, the category of teacher and
student collapses as both engage in the open pursuit of knowledge, a process
through which both parties achieve growth. Both teacher and learner are
engaged in cognizing in conjunction with actions and processes through which
they ‘teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognisable objects which
in banking education are “owned” by the teacher’ (Freire [1968] 2017: 53). Thus,
by engaging in dialogue ‘the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-
teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with student-
teachers’ (ibid.).
What Freire is describing here is a form of pedagogy that is based around
confronting learners with problems to solve rather than facts to learn. Learners
are provided with scenarios that are incomplete; something needs to be found,
uncovered, explained and explicated. This contrasts starkly with the presentation
of information to be learned, which suggests that educational content is finished,
complete and inaccessible to critical enquiry or further development. Freire also
constructs a vision of two communicative and cognizing entities engaging with
selected aspects of the world in order to create meanings and understandings,
which we might conceptualize as knowledge. According to a view of language
based on dialogism, meaning does not arise in the mind of the teacher before
being inserted into signs that are directed towards a learner, which the learner
then must interpret. Rather, both learner and teacher engage with contexts,
environments, artefacts and educational content together in a process of
languaging through which new meanings emerge. Many thoughts are neither
planned nor always deliberated on. Instead, distributed and mediated thinking
processes across cognizing humans and cognizable objects in the natural and
artefactual worlds generate novel thoughts and spontaneous reactions that often
fail to appear as perceptible thoughts before they become part of the languaging
process. Freire’s concept of the ‘teacher-student with student-teachers’ functions
as a metaphor for how in dialogism theory, the notion of a sender and receiver
of messages collapses into the notion of the co-construction of cognition applied
to and centring around ‘cognizable objects’.
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 129

Conscientização

No exploration of Paulo Freire’s ideas would be complete if it neglected his

concept of conscientização. Translated as a form of critical consciousness, Freire
saw the development of learner conscientização as a necessary element for the
concept of critical pedagogy in facilitating learners’ abilities to transcend banking
forms of education and orientations to learned content that treat the world as
uncontended, apolitical and outside of our consciousness. Indeed, for Freire,
the banking approach to education actively discourages critical perspectives
on educational content and therefore ideologically ‘stimulates the credulity of
students’ to accept and thus adapt to a world of domination and control ([1968]
2017: 51). Learners are viewed as passive entities, passivated in two ways: First as
the mere recipients of the world via their acceptance and uptake of information,
but also in doing this, as entities that must change to fit society rather than
entertaining notions of educating people so that they can change society. Thus,
learners are viewed as needing to accommodate and bend to the system rather
than developing the tools of critical consciousness to challenge and change it
(ibid.: 49).
In the midst of the ongoing climate and biodiversity crises, the development
of such a critical consciousness is a necessary strand of environmental education
and pedagogy if learners are to be able to challenge particular narratives on
our relationship with nature and environmental problems. For example, as
previously mentioned, the climate crisis can be represented as a purely technical
issue that will be solved through the implementation of the ‘right’ technology,
or as a problem that is disconnected from our conceptualization and treatment
of nature more broadly. The solution to environmental problems can be
portrayed as being dependent upon and driven by purchasing choices, thus
depoliticizing environmental issues, distancing them from the responsibility
of elected representatives and placing them in the hands of companies and
consumers. The shooting of wild animal escapees from zoos or wildlife parks by
zoo management or the authorities can be reported on as mere common sense
and necessary according to the need to keep the public safe while ignoring and
omitting the notion that those maintaining wild animals in captivity also have a
responsibility to the animals in their care. In such cases, it is Freire’s concept of
Conscientização applied to ecological matters, what we might call an ecocritical
consciousness rather than the ability to learn environmental facts that will allow
individuals to assess statements, texts and images in order to determine the
environmentally relevant discourses and underlying narratives that undergird
130 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

their semiotic structures. Such analyses and the knowledge that they can
generate are invaluable in being able to determine the underlying sources of bias
and conflicts of interest that underpin many actions taken against the natural
world as well as the way they are reported on in the media. This can, for example,
allow the ecolinguist to be able to distinguish between pro-environmental
actions and greenwashing, or ecological pragmatism or economic rationalism
under the guise of the apparent inevitability of placing a monetary value upon
nature in order to protect it, namely, the natural capital agenda. In banking
views of pedagogy, in the classroom and more societal applications, learners
are not pushed to exercise a critical consciousness regarding our relationship
with the rest of nature. Moreover, it is problem-posing rather than depositing
facts or the forced learning of facts that brings about opportunities for genuine
communication in educational settings. The notion of genuine communication
here need not be seen simply as the democratization of the classroom. Rather, we
can envisage that high-quality communication brings about contexts through
which meanings emerge through the languaging process as a form of contextual
social construction (Linell 2009). Although we will return to the specific details
of how this might look in reality, it is safe to say at this stage that it is easy to see
how the Freirean concepts of problem-posing and the development of critical
consciousness are very compatible with the idea of applying critical analyses
of language and other forms of semiosis to educational contexts. Indeed, the
‘critical’ in critical discourse analysis and critical theory relates to taking a stance
that seeks to read between the lines, to uncover the hidden, to connect utterances,
statements, uses of patterns of grammatical features etc. to metanarratives,
ideological positions and the specific interests of particular actors, connections
and relationships that may not be immediately apparent on the surface of texts.
Practising Freirean literacy involves a process of ‘reading the word’ with a view
to ‘reading the world’ (Freire and Macedo 1987: 35). Thus, the way the world, or
rather, aspects of the world are both represented and constructed in language,
larger discourses and other forms of semiosis such as imagery, can allow us
access to how a multitude of different relationships between different actors and
aspects of society are viewed and understood. Similarly, changes in language
and representation can signal significant shifts in societal, political and cultural
norms (Fairclough 1992/2003b). Critical analyses of texts and other forms of
semiosis typically involve the posing of questions as well as learners (and often
teachers) as active agents of investigation and knowledge production as they
carry out analyses of language and images . Possible questions to ask learners
before analysing environmentally relevant texts might be:
 Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy 131

● How is climate change being represented in this text or this series of images?
● What sort of relationship with nature emerges from this text in relation to
the suggested solutions to climate change?
● What is being represented and what is being omitted? How are certain
aspects linguistically or semiotically highlighted and others backgrounded
or suppressed?
● Why might the authors of this text have wanted to omit these elements or
actors?
● How are wild animals being constructed in this text or series of images?
● Which features of the animals are highlighted and which are backgrounded?
Why is this the case? How might it be different in other texts and why?
● What intrinsic aspects of mass media have a bearing on how people
understand forest fire?
● Which overall conceptual metaphors are being used to represent nature and
our relationship with nature in this text or this image? Is it problematic?
How? What might be a more benign or even ecologically positive metaphor
and why?
● Which other ways of representing nature linguistically and semiotically
portray it in unhelpful ways? Why might this be the case? Which forms
of language or images might be more ecologically helpful? Why? Can you
provide guidance in this situation by re-writing this text so that it represents
nature in more ecologically positive ways?

Concluding Remarks

Freire’s writings represent much fertile ground for the application of

ecopedagogies for many reasons, not least his shift towards an ecopedagogical
stance in his later years. Much of this fertile ground derives from the parallels
that can be drawn from his ideas on oppression, which, though not specifically
applied by Freire to the natural world, can be applied to nature if read through
an environmental ethics lens.
 6

Ecopedagogy

The field of ecopedagogy grew out of a strand of Freirean critical literacy that
recognized the inseparability of environmental violence and social injustices
(Misiaszek 2012, 2018, 2020a; in Misiaszek 2021: 2). Misiaszek and Kahn offer
the following definitions of ecopedagogy:

Ecopedagogy is essentially literacy education for reading and rereading human

acts of environmental violence with its roots in popular education, as they are
reinventions of the pedagogies of the Brazilian pedagogue and philosopher Paulo
Freire. Ecopedagogies are grounded in critical thinking and transformability,
with the ultimate goal being to construct learning with increased social
and environmental justice. Rooted in critical theories and originating from
popular education models of Latin America, ecopedagogy is centered on better
understanding the connections between human acts of environmental violence
and social violence that cause injustices/oppressions, domination over the rest of
Nature, and planetary unsustainability. (Misiaszek 2020b: 1; in Misiaszek 2021: 2)
Ecopedagogy seeks to interpolate quintessentially Freirean aims of humanization
and social justice with a future-oriented ecological politics that radically opposes
the globalization of neoliberalism and imperialism, on the one hand, and which
attempts to foment collective ecoliteracy and realize culturally relevant forms of
knowledge grounded in normative concepts such as sustainability, planetarity,
and biophilia, on the other. (Kahn 2008: 8)

Thus, the broader ecopedagogy movement seeks to overcome the apparent

anthropocentrism and human centredness in Freire’s writings in order to extend
the concept of oppression to the natural world and the societal structures that
bring about its destruction. The field of ecopedagogy as a whole clearly draws on a
Freirean critical pedagogy by viewing education as political. Political perspectives
in education seek to identify, examine and critique the underlying philosophical
and ideological underpinnings of states of affairs as opposed to presenting
information as neutral and examples of sanctioned best practice. It also suggests
an avoidance of the presentation and teaching of decontextualized actions and
 Ecopedagogy 133

practices. Such a perspective on education would also therefore seek to avoid

engaging in the presentation of situations and even their causes in superficial ways
that ignore either consciously or inadvertently the structural, cultural and political
systems that produce them. Therefore, ecopedagogy occupies itself with exposing
the political and economic sources of inequality and ecological destruction.
Ecopedagogy practitioners place a clear emphasis on identifying and exploring
larger, structural causes of the oppression of people and nature and eschew the
imparting of ‘neutral’ information from teacher to student, which can be a feature
of many incarnations of environmental education. However, this understanding of
ecopedagogy also allows for the treatment and critique of cultural metanarratives
that are seen to either contribute to or encourage the destruction of the natural
world and therefore the very foundations upon which our species survives. In
contrast with some other forms of environmental education, such as education
for sustainable development, ecopedagogy, thus, draws very much on areas that
have become the preserve of the humanities and the environmental humanities.
Paulo Freire’s vision for literacy education involved the engagement of
learners in a continual process of ‘reading the world’ with a view to ‘reading
the word’ (Freire and Macedo 1987: 35). Ecopedagogical education extends
this notion so that ‘the world’ relates to the Earth, incorporating not only the
human world but also the other inhabitants of planet Earth (Misiaszek 2021: 1).
Ecopedagogy aims for the development of ecological literacy or ecoliteracy. This
is seen as arising out of the critical analysis of a wide range of texts that represent
particular cultural ideas on the natural world (Kahn 2008). Such texts include
‘print materials like books, magazines, and newspaper articles; video texts
such as films, television shows and other videographic forms; pictographical
representations ranging from museum pieces to t-shirt images; and digital texts
of the Internet and associated information-communication technologies’ (Kahn
2008: 14). In fact, the use of these different forms of media for the critical reading
of ‘the word’ can now be seen in the different academic fields of ecocriticism,
critical media literacy and multiple technoliteracies (ibid.).

Ecolinguistics as an Ecopedagogical Tool

Thus, we can understand ecopedagogy as a form of ‘literacy education’ that

is applied to ‘reading and rereading human acts of environmental violence’
(Misiaszek 2021: 2). It emerged out of the field of Freirean critical literacy
and thus aims at the development in learners of critical thinking regarding
134 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

the structural sources of environmental destruction (ibid.). Such ecoliteracy

is generated in the main from learners engaging in critical analyses of texts
and other forms of semiosis and media that contain culturally mediated
representations of the natural world and our relationship with it (Kahn 2008).
It takes from Freire’s teachings the importance of continually engaging in the
process of understanding the way the world works by reading texts critically
(Freire and Macedo 1987: 35).
Ecolinguistics would, therefore, seem to be perfectly aligned to such
an endeavour, a point not missed by Misiaszek, who argues for the use
of ecolinguistic analysis as a particularly useful instrument in the overall
ecopedagogy toolbox (Misiaszek 2021: 4). Indeed, Misiaszek points out how
reading within Freirean critical literacy already tended towards the carrying
out of analytical investigations into what might otherwise be considered to
be neutral uses of language that convey particular political and ideological
stances when used to justify oppression (2021: 2). Thus, in addition to the
rather striking pedagogical alignment between the pedagogical aspirations of
ecopedagogy and the forms of ecocritical text analysis that often come under
the banner of ecolinguistics, Misiaszek sees common ground between the
two fields in terms of their normative thrust. Moreover, Misiaszek sees no
incompatibility between Freire’s rather human-focused notions of oppression
and how this can be realized in ecopedagogy but also ecolinguistics. Indeed,
Misiaszek draws on Arran Stibbe in order to make key connections between
ecopedagogical reading, ecolinguistics and Freirean critical literacy. As we have
seen, for Freire, the overriding focus of critical forms of education is teaching
and learning for emancipation and allowing learners to transcend the systems of
oppression within which they might find themselves. Indicating both contiguity
with Freire’s philosophy but also an important divergence, Misiaszek quotes
Stibbe as follows:

language awareness may be aimed not at raising consciousness among the

oppressed of their own oppression, but among people in ecologically destructive
societies about the impact of their societies on others, both human and non-
human, close or distant, and present and future generations. (Stibbe 2014: 120;
in Misiaszek 2021: 4)

Thus, the concept of oppression may well maintain its position front and
centre in any dual ecopedagogical/ecolinguistics approach. However, in
countries negatively impacted by the apparently benign resource extraction
associated with forms of neocoloniality, the concept of oppression can be
 Ecopedagogy 135

broadened out to include the destruction and removal of the very life support
system on which they and future populations will depend. Conversely, in the
Global North, within such an ecopedagogical approach, oppression takes on a
particular relevance in terms of how our actions act as ripples in a metaphorical
pond, stretching out with consequences for non-human Earth others as well
as those peoples who contributed the least to environmental and ecological
breakdown.
Misiaszek also sees great utility in the analytical capacity of ecolinguistics
approaches for highlighting linguistically constructed false category distinctions
between humans and other species that are used to justify their oppression and
exploitation (Misiaszek 2021: 4). Such uses of language produce the knock-on
effects of devaluing nature (ibid.: 2). An awareness of how uses of language can
do this can provide the foundations for the ecopedagogical praxis of ‘world-Earth
de-distancing’ (ibid.) or, put differently, a reconnection and re-engagement with
the natural world that sees us as part of an interconnected and interdependent
ecological system (ibid.: 4).
Literacy in a Freirean sense relates to the subject or content knowledge
that results from learners and teachers engaging in critical readings of texts
and uses of language. Thus, the acquisition of this sort of knowledge is
prioritised over enhanced understandings of language or learning how to
write and craft texts.

The ‘reading’ or ‘rereading’ of reality as it is being transformed is the primary

consideration, taking precedence over the mere learning of the written language.
(Freire 1978: 160–1)

However, Misiaszek offers up another interpretation of reading the word in

order to understand the world. This different understanding views ecoliteracy
not simply as a knowledge of how the structural aspects of modern, industrial
and capitalist societies result in violence towards disadvantaged peoples and
other species. Rather, it incorporates into its meaning a knowledge of how
language works and how it can be used in order to construct the natural
world and our relationships within it in particular ways to the advantage of
certain human groups but often to the detriment of nature (Misiaszek 2021).
Therefore, an additional strand of ecoliteracy can be understood as educating
against oppression and domination by striving to unlock the vagaries of
language to elucidate the ways in which it can be used to normalize or hide
ideologies and actions that result in the denudation and destruction of the
foundations for life.
136 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Normative Perspectives in Pedagogical Approaches

All forms of critical pedagogy and indeed those particularly devoted to

environmental and ecological matters bring with them their own particular set
of normative beliefs on the exact nature and mechanisms of the environmental
crises – the root causes if you will. Invariably, these mechanisms are structural
and systemic in nature and relate to particular aspects of culture and society such
as, for example, the underlying metanarratives that undergird Western capitalist
societies. As ecopedagogical work often involves the critical reading of cultural
texts relating to the natural world, a normative theoretical background is necessary
so that language can be analysed and critiqued according to a certain set of ideas.
As mentioned above, within the field of ecopedagogy, Greg Misiaszek echoes
Val Plumwood’s notion of hyperseparation through establishing the concept of
‘world-earth distancing’ (2021: 3; 5). Similarly, Richard Kahn (2010) identifies a
form of structural and societal anthropocentrism as a guiding philosophy that
underpins the assumptions made about the non-human natural world in Western
culture. Kahn makes the case that as a movement, ecopedagogy addresses the
blind spots that previous schools of environmental education displayed towards
ethical positions that we might apply to the non-human natural world (ibid.: 19).
Indeed, in contrast with environmental education movements that view nature
as a stock of materials that should be used prudently for humanity’s betterment,
modern-day approaches to ecopedagogy are informed by a need to treat nature
as something that requires care and with which we are obliged to live together in
harmony. However, there has also been the inclusion of the more radical concept
of ‘the intrinsic value of all species’ (Kahn 2010: 19), aligning ecopedagogy with
a central tenet of the Deep Ecology movement as well as other loosely ecocentric
environmental philosophies.
However, as I have already briefly touched upon above, ecopedagogy
is also very much occupied by a focus on the ways in which the institutions
and organizing structures of modern societies simultaneously and often
intersectionally impact both oppressed humans and nature. For example, in line
with a Freirean sensitivity to the less palatable effects of capitalism and forms of
structural oppression, Kahn (2010) draws on sociologist Patricia Hill Collins,
who refers to a matrix of domination, that is, a structural system of power
consisting of ‘a global technocapitalist infrastructure that relies upon market-
based and functionalist versions of technoliteracy to instantiate and augment
its socioeconomic and cultural control’ and ‘an unsustainable, reductionistic,
and antidemocratic model of institutional science’ (ibid.: 9). Thus, the impact
 Ecopedagogy 137

on the natural world of the negative forces of unrestrained capitalism together

with the assumption that a constantly growing economy is consonant with a
finite planet becomes less and less tangible as the free-market economy becomes
increasingly digital and abstracted. Moreover, with modern societies dominated
by positivistic conceptualizations of science that encourage instrumental and
quantifiable relationships with the natural world while marginalizing and
devaluing others that cannot be measured or easily compared, Collins’ concept
of the matrix of domination exercises a form of power over individuals, defining
the particular ways in which both nature and our relationships and interactions
with it should be considered relevant and valid. For example, the ways in which
access to areas rich in biodiversity and flourishing wildlife might impact us in
all manner of intangible and largely unquantifiable ways rarely falls within the
priorities of modern society, or is treated as seriously or given anything like as
much priority in decision-making as the very quantifiable material gains that a
company will make from turning nature into raw materials.

Environmentalism as Terrorism

An additional element comprising this matrix of domination is the active

representation of those engaging in acts of environmental protest and resistance
as terrorists or criminals through their refusal to adhere to the standard
mechanisms of social change within democratic societies (Kahn 2010: 9),
regardless of the continued government inaction and the seriousness of the issue
they are protesting about. At one end of the spectrum this can manifest as what
might on the surface seem to be the innocuous journalistic practice of merely
representing the two sides in environmental disputes in terms of reporting the
claims made by each side, thus portraying issues that relate to environmental
and ecological facts as simply cases of differing opinion by individuals or groups
who are equal in their level of knowledge about ecological matters and the degree
to which they are affected by vested interests. However, at the other end of the
spectrum, this phenomenon can also be seen in the linguistic construction of
environmental activists as everything from killjoys to terrorists. Such examples
of linguistic dysphemism, ad hominem attacks and categorizations can be
understood as very effective mechanisms through which those in powerful
positions and with much to lose from changes to the status quo can attempt to
discredit messages that threaten these positions. When using ecolinguistics in
the classroom, learners can be encouraged to investigate the representation of
138 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

environmental activists and environmental resistance in general by comparing the

reporting of the same events by newspapers with different political stances. This
can lead to interesting discussions about a whole range of issues, such as how the
linguistic representation is performed, the possible consequences of representing
environmental protestors in different ways and why certain newspapers seek to
portray pro-ecological resistance in these ways. A good example of one short text
or text fragment that learners could analyse is the following headline and article
summary from the MailOnline on the 27th of December 2022:

Just Stop Oil eco-zealots were arrested up to SEVEN times each during
month of road-block chaos in London, figures show.
(a) Members of the group blocked roads and staged weeks of demonstrations.
(b) One in five eco-zealots was arrested more than once during the protests.
(c) At least 112 Just Stop Oil supporters have been charged with offences
since.
(Matthew Lodge 2022)

Learners will notice how the activists are being represented as ‘zealots’. However,
with some help and training they may also be able to identify how this is done
linguistically. For example, in this case, this occurs in two stages of representation.
First, the activists need to have the characteristic of zealotry applied to them, a
word that in denoting someone who is both fanatical and uncompromising in
striving for their religious ideals casts the activists as extremists. Second, the
linguistic strategy of metonymy is used in order to represent the activists so
that the concept of zealotry becomes their defining characteristic. Metonymy
is performed through using an aspect of an entity in order to stand in for the
entity’s name or standard form of classification. Thus, a characteristic that one
might display becomes their defining and essentializing feature. The person
noun zealot, the denotational root morpheme of zealotry, is used in place of
other possible identifying nouns, such as environmental activists, eco-activists,
environmentalists or simply protestors. Nouns are a feature of metonymy, which
is significant as nouns denote relatively fixed concepts and objects rather than
fleeting actions. Thus, there is a difference in meaning between the statements
(a) ‘You are being fanatical’ and (b) ‘You are a fanatic’. In (a), by using the present
continuous tense in this case, one does not define someone as having fanaticism
as their defining essence by relating it to their temporary actions. Alternatively,
in (b), a relational process clause within which the noun phrase ‘a fanatic’ as
the subject complement of the clause both relates to and stands in for the entity
 Ecopedagogy 139

denoted by the subject of the clause. In the extract, it is pre-modified by ‘eco’ so

that their zealous nature is very definitely connected to their environmental and
ecological concerns. A knock-on effect of this is that by associating the concept
of ‘eco’ with zealotry, the very concept of being sufficiently concerned and
engaged with environmental and ecological matters in order to protest becomes
imbued with the notions of fanaticism and an inability to compromise.
Digital media affords the ability to access millions of people and present them
with language and other forms of semiosis that construct and frame nature
and our relationship with it in particular ways that serve the agendas of some
while negatively impacting others. Of course, the framing of environmental
protestors and activists as ‘eco-zealots’ by national newspapers comes with its
own set of possible consequences for the environmental movement and indeed
environmental education. However, the potential that protest groups such as
Just Stop Oil in the UK could be defined in law and in the eyes of politicians
as ‘criminals’ and ‘terrorists’, thus illegal organizations carries with it very
real material consequences for their ability to function. It can function as a
declarative speech act, whereby the declaration of a particular status to an entity
brings about a new social or discursive reality for that entity (Searle 1969). Thus,
environmental organizations such as Just Stop Oil would suddenly be classed
very differently in the eyes of the law. This is why the language used by politicians
can be understood as not only environmentally relevant but also representing
important content and subject matter for ecopedagogical uses of ecolinguistics
that view politics and ideology as crucial to our relationship with the non-human
world and education. In the light of this, students might be tasked with analysing
texts and speeches such as the following short, verbally delivered statement that
was directed at the British prime minister in the UK parliament by the member
of parliament, Gareth Johnson:

Last month, Just Stop Oil clambered up the Dartford crossing causing chaos for
days. They then attacked art works, the M25 [motorway] and anything else to
cause misery and mayhem. These people are not protestors, they are criminals.
Will the prime minister, therefore, consider making Just Stop Oil a proscribed
organization, so that they can be treated as the criminal organization they
actually are? (Sky News 2022: [Online Video], 1:15–1:50)

This statement can be seen to have three overall communicative purposes:

1. To downplay and minimize the consequences of high levels of

atmospheric greenhouse gases.
140 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

This goal is attempted through the linguistic omission of the now well-known
consequences of continuing to emit ever-growing levels of greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere. On the other hand, the actions of Just Stop Oil are portrayed as
‘attacks’ that bring about ‘mayhem’ and ‘misery’. What we might also like students
to notice here is the non-intentionally ironic use of these nouns in relation to
the actions of Just Stop Oil when such concepts are very much associated with
the kinds of effects we are already seeing due to climate breakdown around the
world, not least in parts of the world where those suffering the most from the
effects will also be those who contributed the least to the problem.
Thus, the member of parliament’s statement is, of course, well-constructed
in the sense that it portrays the situation in a very one-sided fashion in order
to (a) maximize the extent to which Just Stop Oil and any similar groups are
viewed as terrorist organizations and (b) persuade the British prime minister
to define them as such in law. We can understand the communicative goals
as relating to the concepts of attempting and achieving. I have used the word
attempted rather than achieved here; however, we can also understand the
concepts of downplaying and minimizing particular features in terms of
achieving this overall effect in terms of the representations that others obtain
from the communication but also, importantly, in terms of what was achieved
linguistically. For example, it can be argued that certain uses of language do play
up certain aspects while simultaneously downplaying others regardless of the
impression the use of language makes on who reads or hears it. The achievement
of these communicative goals would depend on us knowing the effect it has on
the receivers of the message. Above, we discussed an example of a declarative
speech act. The linguist John Searle introduced the concept of speech acts and
through doing so developed the idea that language can be conceptualized in
terms of its performative function, in other words, the communicative acts
that different formulations are used in order to achieve. Searle distinguishes
between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (1969: 24–5). The former refers
to the communicative intent behind utterances. For example, the utterance ‘this
is an amazing film’ could carry the illocutionary intention of both providing
information (a referential speech act) or expressing one’s feelings to others
(an expressive speech act). The concept of perlocutionary speech acts, on the
other hand, refers to the communicative effect that a speech act utterance has
on people. If we take seriously the concepts of illocutionary and perlocutionary
speech acts, it will entail that we must be careful in making sweeping assumptions
about what people think or understand as a result of hearing or reading
linguistically formulated messages. But this doesn’t prevent us from speculating
 Ecopedagogy 141

about communicative intent, as, from a Hallidayan perspective on language,

linguistic items are chosen from a pool of other possible items for the particular
communicative affordances that they carry (Halliday and Matthiessen 2013).

2. To not only emphasize but also exaggerate negative aspects of actions

taken.

Again, we can talk here in terms of both attempt and achievement in terms of
how the text handles particular aspects of life. For example, we can understand
how texts are structured in order to represent entities and concepts in different
ways without necessarily attributing this to illocutionary intent. On the other
hand, in terms of the impact that such messages have on others, the verbs ‘to
emphasize’ and ‘to exaggerate’ can be considered linguistic, illocutionary concepts
but also perlocutionary ones. For example, we can understand that the effect of
emphasizing or exaggerating particular aspects of life may, for example, influence
people to pay particular attention or to favour those aspects over others. In terms
of the mechanics of how this has been done, we can first look at the use of material
process clauses used for all the actions attributed to the members of Just Stop Oil:

● They ‘clambered’ up the Dartford crossing bridge,

● they ‘attacked’ art works and the M25 motorway,
● they did all this ‘to cause mayhem and misery’. (Sky News 2022 1:15–1:50)

Saying that the actions of Just Stop Oil were carried out in order to ‘cause mayhem
and misery’ suggests a high likelihood that that they both achieved this and that
there was intent to bring it about. The omission of any connection to the group’s
larger goals (which we can assume was left out for rhetorical purposes) suggests
that the intent to cause ‘mayhem’ and ‘misery’ is based on mere malicious intent.
The use of material process clauses here clearly places the group as subject agents
of negative actions carried out against seemingly innocent members of the public
and aspects of our culture and transport infrastructure. We can also critically
view the use of the material process ‘they attacked the M25 [motorway]’. While
there are certainly issues here regarding the obstruction of roads and the need
for emergency services to be able to get through, to refer to this as an ‘attack on a
motorway’ is certainly an example of non-literal language in order to exaggerate
for rhetorical effect.

3. The third communicative goal of Gareth Johnson’s statement is to

reframe the environmentalist group Just Stop Oil as both a criminal and a
terrorist group.
142 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Through the omission of important contextualizing and motivating factors

together with the use of material processes and the use of emotive verbs and
exaggeration the member of parliament sets up his next rhetorical move – to
reframe the group from being environmental activists or protestors to being
criminals and terrorists:

These people are not protestors, they are criminals.

Thus, what entities have been known as or have identified themselves as can be
refuted in the first clause, with the second clause reframing them as something
altogether different. Rhetorically, such a structure is used to powerfully deny or
ridicule certain framings of entities while at the same time apparently righting
these wrongs in order to ‘correctly’ represent them according to the rhetorical
whims of the speaker. Here we can see that the member of parliament (to
great cheers from his party colleagues) attempts to dismiss any notion that the
members of Just Stop Oil have larger, ethical and perhaps altruistic motives for
their protests. Instead, they are branded simply as criminals.
As we have seen, one of the key concepts within Freirean critical literacy is
a rejection of a banking model of education in favour of the empowerment of
students and their inclusion within the processes of learning. This often relates
to the use of open dialogue with students about possible meanings, possibilities
and the consequences of that which is to be learned and understood rather than
the imparting of neutral, inert facts from above. As we have also seen, another
way this can be realized is through learner problem-posing. One of the ways that
this can be done through the application of ecolinguistic analysis in educational
settings is through learners asking questions about the legitimacy and accuracy
of language use in the representation and portrayal of events, people, animals,
situations etc. In addition, learners can problematize the political and ideological
biases that can drive the choice of particular language items and discourses over
others. Learners can be encouraged to ask the question, ‘why this here?’ in relation
to a variety of linguistic and symbolic factors, such as choices and frequency
of certain items of vocabulary and semantic sets, grammatical structure,
discourses that characterize texts or the ways in which these discourses might
interact to produce particular discursive effects in texts and imagery. Learners
can also look at the overall textual structure and ask themselves whether the
text might be considered persuasive to particular audiences, and crucially, how
its structure contributes to its rhetorical effectiveness. As mentioned above,
learners might notice the ways in which the member of parliament builds a case
against the members of Just Stop Oil through employing a variety of linguistic
 Ecopedagogy 143

strategies before performing the rhetorical functions of reframing Just Stop Oil
as criminals and calling on the prime minister to solidify this representation in
legal jargon:
This legal jargon can be seen in the use of the legal adjective ‘proscribed’,
which refers to the following according to the British government:

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the Home Secretary may proscribe an
organization if they believe it is concerned in terrorism, and it is proportionate
to do. For the purposes of the Act, this means that the organization:
● commits or participates in acts of terrorism
● prepares for terrorism
● promotes or encourages terrorism (including the unlawful glorification of
terrorism)
● is otherwise concerned in terrorism (Home Office 2021)

Thus, we can see that through the pre-modification of ‘organization’ with the
adjective proscribed, Just Stop Oil was reframed as terrorists. This branding
of Just Stop Oil as criminals is continued through the use of an existential
presupposition, which treats the notion that the group is a criminal organization
as a given rather than newly asserted and perhaps a contestable position.
Important to note here is the difference between, on the one hand, a statement
that proposes as new information that the group is a criminal organization and,
on the other, one that assumes or rather, presupposes that they are:

so that they can be treated as (the criminal organization they actually are?)

Reading language in use against the grain or at least from a critical but also
ecopedagogical perspective allows students to study and identify ways in which
language is weaponized by the dominant structures of modern society, such
as politics, politicians, the mainstream media and education systems. Such
classroom investigations can lead to pedagogically important talk around texts
not only about language use and coercion and control but also ecopedagogical
perspectives on both the willingness of those with power to relinquish that control
and how downplaying, denying and dismissing environmental problems as well
as cause-and-effect relationships and responsibilities are all aspects of holding
onto power and maintaining the status quo. Moreover, through disrupting,
identifying and critiquing political and ideological positions on nature taken
by those in power, the application of ecolinguistics to a larger ecopedagogical
movement provides another pathway for establishing the ecopedagogical notion
that education is a form of politics.
144 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Critically Reading Sustainable Development

Ecopedagogy practitioners also often prioritize the critical reading of the

‘development’ aspect of sustainable development discourses as well as sustainable
development for education (Misiaszek 2021). Misiaszek suggests that a critical
reading of the concept of ‘development’ in this case can make clear the presence
of two different interpretations of the concept of ‘development’. One is that which
incorporates notions of social justice and genuine sustainability on a planetary
scale, while the other is rooted in neoliberalism and has historically been
associated with the othering of certain groups of humans as well as constructing
a conceptual distance between humans and the rest of nature (Misiaszek 2020a,
2020b; in Misiaszek 2021: 3). Work in ecopedagogy functions to counter
neoliberal understandings of the nature of development. Moreover, it empowers
students by providing them with the tools that they need to identify and critically
analyse language which promotes unsustainable forms of development (ibid.).
In fact, the use of ecopedagogical reading is necessary to provide learners with
the ability to critically understand how the sociohistorical structures of the past
morph into oppressive forces of exploitation today (ibid.). For example, through
the affordances provided by globalization, the resource extraction imposed upon
poor countries in the era of colonialism has been reworked in the modern world
as neocoloniality, a form of oppression made possible through economic rather
than military power (ibid.). Misiaszek makes the case that the acceptance of such
forms of development is supported by ‘forms of banking education models which
instil development as apolitical and falsely portray it as beneficial to those who
are oppressed by its processes’ (Misiaszek 2012, 2018, 2020a; in Misiaszek 2021:
3). The banking education model not only presents aspects of the world as facts
that are finished and complete but also discourages the notion that a different
lens used in reading these ‘facts’ will likely produce different perspectives and
bring out into the light aspects that would otherwise have lain hidden. Key here,
therefore, is the importance of problem-posing and taking on a critical stance in
the reading of sustainable development projects.
For ecopedagogy scholar Richard Kahn (2010), there is also some doubt about
the potential for environmental pedagogies that are based on the discourse of
sustainable development to take on the sorts of critical and ethical perspectives
on our relationship with the natural world that are necessary to tackle the
multidimensional nature of ecological destruction in the current era. Kahn (ibid.: 16)
suggests that sustainable development as it currently stands is incompatible
with such perspectives due to its alignment with a particularly human-centred
 Ecopedagogy 145

and economic vision of development and argues that the vision projected by
sustainable development discourses is that of an integrated and globalized
world centred around the concept of expanding and liberalizing responsible
economic trade, all controlled by altruistic and benevolent leaders who make
decisions for the benefit of the people while also making sure that they benefit
financially from the very economic liberalization that they promoted (ibid.). For
Kahn (ibid.: 9) a major problem with the concept of sustainable development
lies in the phrase itself, as it is so vague and ill-defined that it has been able
to be commandeered by such neoliberal and neo-colonial agendas, intent on
modernizing the world and opening up new markets in spite of the potential
sociocultural and environmental impacts that entails. However, in keeping with
its Freirean roots, ecopedagogy aims at fomenting conscientization in learners
regarding the very concept of sustainable development. It is, Kahn argues, such
enhanced skills of critical thinking that are needed in order to allow learners to
reimagine the concept (ibid.).
Key, then, suggests Kahn (2010), will be the extent to which, environmental
educators will be able resist the discourses of neoliberalism and globalization
and work with other interpretations of what the terms ‘sustainable’ and
‘development’ can mean in order to align the concept with a less human-centred
form of ecoliteracy and more politically and socially sensitive leanings within
environmental literacy movements; in essence, a heightened awareness and
sensitivity to the needs of disenfranchised groups of humans as well as nature.
In agreement is Misiaszek (2021: 4), who argues that ecopedagogical work,
therefore, necessarily includes alternative but also critical readings of how
‘development’ and ‘sustainability’ are being formulated in particular contexts in
order to determine the forms of ‘development’ they align with.
Misiaszek argues for the need for forms of ecopedagogy that incorporate
ecolinguistic analyses in order to be able to break down language use in order
to expose its political nature. In this endeavour, of particular import is the use
of ecolinguistic analyses of the language and rhetoric of the organizations that
play the biggest role in funding, steering and implementing the sustainable
development goals (ibid.: 3). Misiaszek also sees ecolinguistics as being able to
play a significant role in supporting ecopedagogical readings of the sustainable
development goals themselves. Such readings and analyses would facilitate
the task of ‘disrupting’ the language and therefore the politics of certain forms
of development that are hidden within the sustainable development goals.
In invoking the concept of disruption, Misiaszek here recognizes the way in
which the use of forms of text analysis such as ecolinguistics that carry certain
146 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

normative concepts can create disturbance patterns, as texts and the perspectives
and ideological positions that they set out become highlighted through their
interplay and intra-action with the diffractive apparatus of the normative
perspective used by the analyst. This will rely on ecolinguistic analyses and a
critique of the language underpinning the sustainable development goals in
order to unsettle the ideologies behind their notion of development (ibid.: 4).

Alternative Pathways and Educational

Opportunities of Ecopedagogy

Kahn (2010) provides an example of standard environmental education in the

United States and uses it in order to show how ecopedagogical approaches
might provide alternative pathways and educational opportunities. The example
that Kahn uses here is the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley
Minnesota, often referred to as ‘the Zoo School’ as it is based within the grounds
of a zoo. The high school-aged students use the zoo itself in their learning as it is
often used as the object of pedagogical investigations and experiential learning
as well as a way of contextualizing the overall education against the backdrop of
environmental themes (Kahn 2010: 7). The ‘Zoo School’ was lauded by a pamphlet
produced by the US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Environmental
Education, Advancing Education through Environmental Literacy (Archie 2003)
as succeeding in ‘using the environment to boost academic performance,
increase student motivation and enhance environmental literacy’ (ibid.: 8; in
Kahn 2010: 7). However, despite the school’s recognition and academic credits,
Kahn (ibid.: 8) argues that the kind of environmental education that it offers
students lacks the sort of critical and ethical approach to environmental issues
that is needed to address today’s environmental and ecological crises. For Kahn,
situated as it is in the grounds of a zoo, the School of Environmental Studies has
immense potential to provide opportunities for critical examinations of certain
status quo assumptions about how we view and treat domestic and wild animals.
For example, by outlining a form of ecopedagogy that clearly draws heavily on
Freirean critical literacy, Kahn makes the case that the school does not but indeed
could have students engage in Freirean forms of problem-posing regarding the
very concept of zoos and the captive maintenance of wild animals. Likewise, its
students could engage in forms of praxis by campaigning against not only the
zoo’s keeping of dolphins but also their use for entertainment by the zoo, with
customers able to pay sums of money in order to swim with them. Embedded
 Ecopedagogy 147

within the ‘Zoo School’ is the Wells Fargo Family Farm. The zoo makes the claim
that this farm brings about environmental literacy affordances for the students,
allowing them keen insights into ‘how food gets from farms to tables’ (Kahn
2010: 16). However, for Kahn, this farm represents another missed opportunity of
engaging students in critiques of status quo forms of agriculture, ways of relating
to animals, and food production. Kahn (ibid.: 16) suggests that students could be
engaged in critical praxis by being taught the literacy of how to both critique and
oppose the questionable presence of executives from a corporate agribusiness
sitting on the zoo’s board of directors (ibid.: 8). Kahn also questions how the zoo
fails to critique the standard American meat-based diet and how it instead opts
to normalize and celebrate forms of agriculture that are ecologically destructive.
Instead, Kahn suggests that students read how the family farm is presented from
more critical perspectives to disrupt the unquestioned orthodoxy of the status
quo that they were being tacitly expected to just accept.
The Freirean influence on the ecopedagogical practices suggested is clear to
see. For instance, students engage in forms of dialogue both with and about the
topics and contexts in focus. Here, this relates to that which occurs between
contexts and questioning individuals through problem-posing rather than
banking forms of education where students are expected to learn and memorize
sets of unanalysed and unquestioned facts. However, learners don’t stop at
engaging in dialogue and problem-posing with people and situations, they also
seek to apply the gains that come from such interactions to praxis or action.
Reading texts and contexts through critical and in this case more ecologically
ethical perspectives conforms to the Freirean notion of ‘reading the word’ for
‘reading the world’ (Freire and Macedo 1987: 35). The ‘word’ is read here not
on face value but instead with full acknowledgement of the use of language to
advance as normal and fatalistic certain states of affairs and structures that enact
forms of oppression on some while benefitting others.
It is, therefore, relatively easy to see how an ecolinguistic approach could be
both applied to and contribute fruitful insights to such ecopedagogical practices.
For example, students could be tasked with investigating both the promotional
materials for the zoo and the language used in the exhibit notice boards. In
doing this, they could carry out analyses of how wild animals are represented
in language by the zoo. Students could carry out ecolinguistic analyses on how
the zoo portrays both the dolphins and the conditions that they are provided
with. They could look for linguistic assumptions but also omissions regarding
dolphins’ needs and also cognitive and emotional capacities that might be
advanced in order to justify what is becoming an outdated and questionable
148 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

practice. For instance, the language might purposely disfavour the use of
mental process verbs to describe the dolphins. On the other hand, promotional
materials might include such mental verbs in order to work up the emotional
and cognitive benefits that captive dolphins derive from their participation in
entertainment shows for zoo visitors.
Similarly, any promotional or educational materials produced for the
‘family farm’ could be ecolinguistically analysed for the presence of linguistic
assumptions or presuppositions regarding proposed benefits to biodiversity of
animal agriculture, while the impacts on ecosystems might be backgrounded or
left out entirely. This could lead to students questioning and posing questions
about the relative benefits versus downsides to animal agriculture and more
specifically the giving over of large areas of land for the grazing of cattle and
growing of crops and silage for their feed when this land could potentially be
rewilded, providing benefits for nature while also sequestering CO2. Potentially
recurring items of jargon such as pasture-fed/raised beef/meat could be noted
and critiqued, and their inherent assumptions problematized. Students might
then carry out further investigations into the validity of such claims, which
might lead to interesting ideas and concepts that contradict those that they have
been encouraged to uncritically accept. These different perspectives and visions
for how we can both use the land to promote rather than degrade biodiversity
and produce food in as benign ways as possible often come with their own
new coinages and collocations. For example, Monbiot (2022: 77) uses the term
‘ecological opportunity cost’ to refer to the loss of possible carbon storage and
rewilding possibilities that come with keeping farm animals on any given piece
of land.
In addition, learners might look for linguistic traces of biased and ideological
representations of the lives of farm animals. Students could look for evidence
of the farm animals’ lives being linguistically constructed in quite vivid and
concrete terms when referring to ways in which they might experience life
positively, whereas, on the other hand, the animals’ deaths might be omitted or
only referred to through the use of vague or abstracting language. Students might
also look out for the use of objectifying language used to represent farm animals.
As we have seen, in Stibbe’s 2012 ecolinguistic analysis of the language of the
pork industry, he found the overwhelming use of the metaphorical reframing of
pigs as machines (2012). This framing represents farm animals in instrumental
terms encouraging us to view and understand them not as individual animals
with the ability to feel pain and experience stress but rather in terms of their
functions and what we obtain from them. It could be argued therefore that such
 Ecopedagogy 149

portrayals and constructions either by design or incidentally encourage us to

pay less attention to the physical and psychological needs of farm animals as well
as discouraging us from questioning animal agricultural practices and searching
for alternative, more ethically and ecologically benign forms of food production.
Such analyses and receptive understandings of texts could lead to the productive
work and praxis of, for example, collaboratively writing a language guide for the
farm on how to use language to represent farm animals more accurately and
sympathetically, or at the very least, not ideologically aligning the farm and the
zoo with a Cartesian ideological perspective on humans and other animals.
 7

Ecojustice Education and Pedagogy

of Responsibility

Ecojustice Education

Rebecca Martusewicz and Jeff Edmundson conceptualized and developed

ecojustice education based on an understanding that ‘to be human is to live
engaged in a vast and complex system of life, and that human well-being
depends on learning how to protect it’ (Martusewicz and Edmundson 2005:
71; in Martusewicz et al. 2014: 12). Very much in line with ecopedagogy,
ecojustice education views traditional forms of environmental education as
fundamentally flawed due to their preoccupation with educating learners to
only see and treat the surface level causes of environmental and ecological
problems rather than taking a deeper perspective which identifies and
addresses the systemic and cultural causes. Thus, ecojustice education shares
with ecopedagogy its shift away from the purely fact- and science-based
perspectives traditionally seen in forms of environmental education or
education for sustainable development towards the inclusion of humanities
perspectives that seek to understand how aspects and artefacts of the human
condition impact the natural world.
Ecojustice education draws heavily on North American theorists, Wendell
Berry and Chet Bowers. Wendell Berry is a world-renowned writer, poet and
environmentalist, while the late Chet Bowers was a leading light in environmental
education.
There are a number of features of ecojustice education that are of great
relevance within the context of this book and the possible use of an overarching
pedagogical framework for the application of ecolinguistics to education;
therefore, they are worth exploring in more detail here.
 Ecojustice in Education 151

Normative Concepts

As part of the ecojustice ‘project’, Martusewicz et al. (2014) advance a number

of ethical, normative but also linguistic concepts and indeed metaphors
that relate to ecologically positive or benign forms of orienting to the world
and others. In many ways, these concepts advance a particular pedagogical
orientation to environmental education and are key drivers of particular ways of
conceptualizing environmental perspectives. Indeed, linguistically manifested
concepts such as these can be powerful pedagogical tools for establishing new
ideas, opening learners’ eyes to new areas and ways of thinking, but also for
encouraging them to reflect on their own assumptions and perspectives on the
world. We will examine two key phrases that advance important concepts within
the approach.
The first of these is the noun phrase ‘the environmental commons’. The use
of the noun ‘commons’ establishes the important idea that all organisms depend
on the life-providing and sustaining interdependent relationships that occur in
nature. It highlights the notion that certain actions degrade the very life support
system that humans and all other living beings depend upon. The use of the
phrase also introduces the important concept of an ethics of relationality and
that the results of our physical actions have impacts on others and their well-
being but also the idea that nature is finite, which entails limits to actions and a
degree of restraint when using it for our needs. Educational settings that utilize
ecolinguistics methods and approaches are the perfect environments for not
only investigating ecologically unhelpful uses of language but also applying a
knowledge of semantics and syntax in order to unpack and investigate in greater
depth the use of language in order to advance ecologically useful concepts.
Learners who have had some knowledge and experience of linguistics and
approaching language critically are well placed to be able to maximize such
pedagogical approaches to environmental education that use language to advance
ecologically beneficial concepts while also casting a critical eye on symbolic ways
of normalizing and naturalizing ecologically destructive (or violent) behaviour
and diminishing the natural world’s autonomy and importance.
Another example of an ecologically positive concept that is introduced
through novel or interesting uses of language can be seen in the use of the noun
phrase ‘ecological violence’. The head noun ‘violence’ stands in as a signifier
for the more commonly used nouns ‘damage’ or ‘destruction’. Learners with
a knowledge of CDA or ecolinguistics might notice here that these nouns are
derived from the verbs ‘to damage’ and ‘to destroy’, and that, as verbs, they
152 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

are instrumental rather than interactive, that is, they are used to refer to direct
objects that denote things or non-sentient entities (van Leeuwen 2015: 148).
Thus, the more commonly used ‘environmental/ecological damage’ refers to
damage and destruction being done to a dead, inert, environment. The noun
‘violence’, on the other hand, is derived from the verbal form ‘to be violent’,
which is interactive in the sense that it is understood as performed against a
nature comprised of sentient beings that can suffer. The advancement of the
noun phrase ‘ecological violence’ therefore reformulates ecological damage as
violent acts enacted on living beings, which includes humans. Violence against
living entities evokes the notion of a relational ethics; that what we do to ‘the
environment’ is actually killing living organisms and destroying people’s lives
rather than merely changing a passive, material and exterior background against
which we live ours.
Other key concepts in ecojustice education are that of ‘commodification’ and
‘hyper-consumerism’. These are placed together because ‘commodification’ is a
facilitator of ‘hyper-consumption’. Again, ecolinguistics students will be able to
see that the verb, ‘to commodify’ means to turn something into a commodity for
human consumption and use. Therefore, when applied to the natural world, it
means that natural beings are turned into commodities or products for human
utility, a process that requires the prior instrumentalization and objectification
of natural entities and organisms.
While Martusewicz et al. (2014) utilize language to advance particular
ethical and normative perspectives on environmental education, they also
establish concepts and ways of being in the world that are to be viewed as
ecologically problematic. A central and familiar issue here is the notion
of oppressor and oppressed and what constitutes oppression. While Paulo
Freire was for much of his life preoccupied with the oppression of the poor
and disenfranchised in South America and the Global South at the hands of
the rich and those who wield power, in line with ecopedagogy, Martusewicz,
Edmundson and Lupinacci (2014) conceptualize the notion of being
oppressed with the ecological violence that diminishes and degrades the very
environmental commons upon which all organisms depend. They establish
the concept of ‘Earth democracies’, which expands the notion of who or what
has a worthy stake in the maintenance of a healthy, functioning ecological
commons, including as it does, other organisms and future generations. Thus,
the concept of who can suffer oppression is expanded. These concepts are
important in terms of characterizing ecojustice education as well as applying it
to ecolinguistics in educational settings.
 Ecojustice in Education 153

While the approach does make reference to anthropocentrism and the

implications of aligning policies with an anthropocentric perspective, it steers
clear of invoking the anthropocentrism/ecocentrism distinction as an orienting
principle. Instead, the notion of ‘Earth democracies’ highlights the democratic
implications of individuals, groups or larger bodies destroying and taking too
much from the common life support system. What is emphasized is the need for
the natural world to be allowed to replenish so that it can nurture and sustain all
who rely on it for life.
As mentioned above, in common with the field of ecopedagogy, ecojustice
education strives to develop in learners an awareness and deep appreciation
of larger structural causes of environmental problems and ecological violence
rather than looking for solutions in promises of technological innovation and
piecemeal behavioural changes. Therefore, a major strand within ecojustice
education is that of teaching learners about cultural narratives and metaphors
that establish the foundational attitudes and perspectives that lead to ecologically
damaging and violent policies and behaviours. They have selected the following
cultural narratives: Individualism, Progress, Anthropocentrism, Nature as
Machine, and Commodification and Hyper-consumerism.
We will now have a more detailed look at two of the examples of these
cultural narratives and explore how they might help to inform ecolinguistic
investigations in educational settings.

Focusing on Cultural Narratives in Educational Settings

Progress
When it comes to the modernist notion of progress, learners could, for example,
analyse news articles that relate to economic development. They could look at
how texts can contain linguistic assumptions and evaluations about never-ending
economic growth as positive in the context of a non-finite planet. For example,
in this article by the Daily Mail online, economic growth is evaluated positively
(Fairclough 2003a) through the use and placement of particular lexical items:

The U.S. economy maintained a strong pace of growth in the fourth quarter as
consumers boosted spending on goods, but momentum appears to have slowed
considerably towards the end of the year, with higher interest rates eroding
demand. [. . .] Retail sales have weakened sharply over the last two months.
(Mutikani 2023, emphasis added by author)
154 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

For example, the ‘pace of economic growth’ is pre-modified by the adjective strong,
which has positive connotations. Consumerism is represented as ‘consumers’,
who ‘boost’ ‘spending on goods’. ‘To boost’ something, again, has a positive
connotation. Therefore, the buying of products per se regardless of whether they
are needed or not is portrayed as unquestionably positive. Then, the contrastive
coordinating conjunction ‘but’ is used in order to introduce the ostensibly bad
news that the ‘momentum’ of purchasing has ‘slowed considerably’. ‘Momentum’
is usually considered to have a positive connotation, which just adds to the overall
impression created here that a slowing down of buying products is negative. The
representation of economic growth in this newspaper article corresponds to
Halliday’s notion of linguistic growthism ([1990] 2003: 165). Halliday argues that
in the English language, ‘quality and quantity are always lined up together’ (ibid.).
Thus, ‘the grammar of “big” is associated with the grammar of “good”’ (ibid.).
In the article, the ‘demand’ for products is represented as ‘eroding’. The
notion of entities eroding is generally considered to have a negative connotation.
This meaning is strengthened through the semantic prosody of being used in
situations that are perceived as being negative for people. For example, it is usually
connected to loss, such as the loss of cliffs to the weather, or the foundations to
a house. And finally, ‘retail sales’ are represented as having ‘weakened’, another
word that carries a negative connotation by referring to less strength, which is
associated with being less.
Another problematic example of this narrative played out in text can be
seen in the following quote from the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (2010) taken from a study by Irving and Helin (2018). The field of
sustainable development is an interesting area for ecolinguistics students to study
because of the ecologically benign claims often made by its advocates. Indeed,
the use of the pre-modifier ‘sustainable’ makes clear that it is development that
has a clean conscience. According to this position, even economic development
can be green. However, does the field and its associated green and virtuous
rhetoric stand up to critical linguistic scrutiny?

Just 40 years from now, some 30 per cent more people will be living on this
planet. For business, the good news is that this growth will deliver billions of
new consumers who want homes and cars and television sets. (World Business
Council for Sustainable development 2010: iv; in Irving and Helin 2018: 270,
emphasis added by author)

We can see that growth is evaluated positively by the placement of positive items
of lexis. The growth of the world’s population by 30 per cent is ‘good news’ ‘for
 Ecojustice in Education 155

business’. An important concept for learners to grasp is that language in texts

cannot be analysed as if existing in a cultural or societal vacuum. It is always
necessary to consider who or what organization or body produced the text
and any vested interests they might have as this will affect the interpretations
that we derive from the use of language. In this case, the organization is tasked
with the administering and promotion of sustainable development projects
around the world. Therefore, economic development is seen as something that
can proceed without causing undue harm to the natural world. Thus, the ‘good
news’ here is not a neutral statement concerning what business might consider
positive or negative. Rather, it is seen as generally positive for economic growth,
as it will ‘deliver billions of new consumers who want homes and cars and
television sets’, regardless of the impact that will have on the planet. People here
are metonymically represented as ‘consumers’, as the most important aspect of
their existence is that they sometimes ‘consume’. And these ‘consumers’ will
be ‘delivered’ by this increase in the population, a verb that also has positive
connotations. Again, ‘growth’ or being more is evaluated positively as ‘good
news’ as it lines up as positive in the English language:
These sorts of texts and the fruitful and sometimes eye-opening analyses that
can be carried out on them create good opportunities for discussions around texts
that further deepen learners’ knowledge of the connections between meaning-
making and language forms. They also offer possibilities for understanding
the ways in which unquestioned narratives such as that of progress and never-
ending economic growth on a finite planet are disseminated and presented in
ways that encourage their acceptance.

Anthropocentrism

Martusewicz et al. (2014: 54–7) provide their own excellent example of how
anthropocentrism can manifest in language use by looking at how a stream
can be referred to as a drain. Linguistically, this is done through metaphor,
where the source domain of drain is used to stand in for the target domain of a
stream. The reasons why this might be done can be attributed to the underlying
anthropocentrism that permeates modern societies. The anthropocentric
perspective views the non-human natural world as worthless unless some sort
of human-related value can be attributed to it. As Martusewicz et al. (2014) point
out, a stream supports a range of different sorts of organisms. However, if these
entities are viewed from an anthropocentric perspective as not serving human
156 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

needs, they are likely to be seen as devoid of value. The use of metaphor to
reframe a stream as a drain openly displays the human-centred priorities at play.
As a drain, it has value, while as a stream its value is not immediately apparent.
Martusewicz, Edmundson and Lupinacci (ibid.) make the case that if we are
encouraged to see a stream as a drain, we are likely to treat it accordingly.

Language and the Natural World

A key area of compatibility between ecojustice education and ecolinguistics

is, therefore, the acknowledgement of the importance of language in how we
think about and act towards nature. Language in ecojustice education is seen as
a mediator between us and the world and forms the conceptual foundation for
communicating cultural meanings. The signifiers that form the basis of language
are seen as having a slippery relationship with their signifieds, that is, those
entities which they denote or refer to in the social or material worlds. As we
saw with the stream is a drain example, the importance of understanding the
communicative and discursive power of metaphors is a major theme within this
approach. The authors highlight the tendency of metaphors to present entities
in terms of particular features while backgrounding others that do not suit the
interests of the language user. They also make the case that certain metaphorical
representations imply particular understandings about the represented aspect of
life. They use the example of referring to the world as ‘a treasure chest of natural
resources’ (Martusewicz et al. 2014: 67). Such a framing presents the world as
something to be taken, perhaps before someone else does. What it hides, on
the other hand, is the finite aspect of the natural world. We might add to this
that the metaphor here encourages us to dismiss any notion that nature has
requirements and needs to be nurtured and cared for if it is to function well
in supporting our lives. The authors view language items as cultural artefacts
that have histories and that through their use in society have become imbued
with particular associations (ibid.: 66). This perspective on language eschews
the conduit model of language, which views language items as neutral vehicles
for passing information from person to person. Instead, words, phrases and
expressions are seen as bringing something to the act of communication. This
perspective sees some strong similarities with Per Linell’s theory of dialogism,
whereby meanings arise through the process of communication and interaction
through our engagement with linguistic and physical resources (Linell 2009). In
this case, discursive features bring their own associated meanings to meaning-
 Ecojustice in Education 157

making in interaction. Thus, learners can be encouraged to think about the

associations that words carry and how these might not always align with
dictionary definitions.

A Pedagogy of Responsibility

Rebecca Martusewicz has formulated a conceptual adjunct to ecojustice

education, which she calls a pedagogy of responsibility (2018). This approach seeks
to investigate and apply the thoughts and theories of author and conservationist
Wendell Berry to environmentally oriented education. Very much in line with
general conceptualizations of critical pedagogy, a pedagogy of responsibility
views pedagogy in broader terms than that which relates the concept to purely
institutional settings.

Responsibility
In line with Berry’s writings, Martusewicz argues that in the fight against
ecological destruction it is both the stance that we hold regarding nature
as well as the corresponding actions and skills that naturally flow from such
orientations and which we apply in our interactions with the natural world
and natural places that can provide the foundation for the kinds of ecological
protection and restoration that are necessary in the face of the multiple forms
of ecological destruction now being enacted upon the planet in the era of the
Anthropocene (Martusewicz 2018: 2). The stance in this case is primarily that
of responsibility towards the natural world. In fact, the concept of responsibility
is a major philosophical and theoretical strand running through the approach.
In very broad terms, learners are encouraged to recognize their responsibilities
towards the natural world as actors that are part of societal structures that can
either nurture or destroy it. However, there are several key ways in which this
responsibility towards the natural world is conceptualized and it is these details
that are worth exploring now.

Membership and Connection within Communities

A good place to start is how the concept of responsibility is used in the naming
of this approach in order to distinguish it from other schools of critical
pedagogy, such as Freirean ecopedagogy, that emphasize ‘transformation’ or
158 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

personal emancipation while at the same time ignoring how our embeddedness
within ecological systems results in an ‘unavoidable interdependence with
the more-than-human-world’ (Martusewicz 2018: 5). Central to this idea,
for Wendell Berry, is the notion of ecological communities and the material
interactions that occur within them. Martusewicz is keen to point out that
the overall application of the approach carries the aim of developing ‘ethical
agents of healthy communities’ (ibid.: 6). The notion of communities here
more specifically relates to Berry’s understanding of the concept as referring
to the community of human and non-human entities that live together in
places in a state of mutual harmony. This conceptualization of community
has much in common with that originally introduced by the writer and
conservationist Aldo Leopold and his concept of ‘a land ethic’ (1970). In stark
contradiction to the prevailing and dominant view of nature as requiring
instrumental reasons for its existence, Leopold argued for a position that
grants moral status to an overall land community. This concept for Leopold
‘simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters,
plants, and animals, or collectively, the land’ (1970: 239). As far as Leopold was
concerned, the land was not merely a substance to be used but instead should
be viewed as a living entity and an ecosystem that hosts its own community
of organisms. Berry essentially widens the concept of community to include
human as well as non-human actors. However, both men expanded the more
accepted notion of community, in terms of that which is comprised of humans
specifically, to that which incorporates groups of different species all living in
the same locale in relationships of mutual benefit. Although Berry does not
embrace dichotomizing definitions such as anthropocentrism or ecocentrism
(Martusewicz 2018), his ethics of care for the natural world and notions of
ecojustice strongly suggest a rejection of the human-centric perspectives that
are such key elements of an anthropocentric world view. This can be seen in
Berry’s thinking about the notion of community membership. For Berry, those
most affected by decisions should be those making those decisions (ibid.: 13).
Crucially, however, other living organisms forming communities within
communities and who are also subject to the effects of decisions should also be
treated as fully fledged members. Such decisions should be taken together with
all members of a community taking into consideration what they need in terms
of being able to live well. Drawing on Berry, Martusewicz (2018: 2) makes the
case that the prevalence in modern industrialized society of the narratives of
individualism, consumerism and unrestrained capitalism work against the
notion of mutually supporting communities. Thus, in line with ecojustice
 Ecojustice in Education 159

education, a strong critique of these metanarratives is a point of importance for

this approach to critical pedagogy.

Relational Ethics
The concept of harmonious communities suggests a relationality based on
our material interactions and relationships with other organisms within these
communities. This itself brings about ethics that are based on how our existence
and actions impact others as opposed to more abstract concepts such as
ecocentrism, animal rights or utilitarianism. Thus, the concept of responsibility
becomes relevant here because of the ways in which our actions have real
material consequences on the lives of others within these communities. In fact,
part of Berry’s dismissal of overarching concepts such as anthropocentrism
stems from his prioritization of these relationships, which for him suggests
the need for an ethical orientation based on relationality, or in other words, a
relational ethics. Therefore, drawing on Berry’s prioritization of the importance
of paying attention to relationships rather than abstract and sterile academic
concepts such as anthropocentrism or ecocentrism, Martusewicz (ibid.: 43)
attempts to form the theoretical foundations to a pedagogy of responsibility by
marrying the notions of ethics and relationality to empathy and responsibility.
Ethics, she suggests, should primarily be viewed and understood in terms of
our relationships with others and how our actions impact them. The concept
of empathy is therefore key here, as both our material relations towards and
impacts on others necessitate the ability to imagine the conditions and needs of
the other (ibid.). Thus, in taking a stance in line with a pedagogy of responsibility,
the role of education is to develop the extent to which one can and indeed
wants to foster broad, multispecies communities within which all members
thrive in mutually beneficial co-existence. It is an approach that encourages us
to ‘open our hearts by asking again and again to whom and to what we are
ethically responsible’ (ibid.) and to inspire learners to ask themselves about the
knowledge we need to learn about ourselves, the places where we live and the
contexts in which we live in order to be able to foster communities in which all
members thrive together (Bowers 2001b, 2006; Martusewicz and Edmundson
2005, in Martusewicz 2018: 5).
In this vision of relational or community ethics, Berry puts forward a powerful
imaginary of ecological harmony and living well in a state of co-existence.
He implores us to view natural places and our relationships with them as
sacred (ibid.: 48). Important for Berry is that we understand that ecological
160 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

communities and indeed the world are made up of a complex and co-evolved
diversity of species and within each species, diverse individuals (ibid.: 47).
This order, with its multitudinous range of relationships, should be considered
sacred. Each species has its own role and position within a larger integrated
ecologically balanced system, and every individual organism has its own needs.
For us to acknowledge the need for balance in the whole ecological system, we
must also pay attention to the health and well-being of individual organisms.
Therefore, it is in our relations to multispecies others within our communities
that we acknowledge and affirm our place within a larger ecological economy.
An inability or refusal to see our situatedness within a larger system results in
an abusive and instrumentalized relationship towards other members of the
community (ibid.). What is needed, suggests Berry, is an ‘order of loving care’
in which a growing understanding of our position within a larger ecology, or as
Berry calls it, the great economy, and the resulting situated and local material
relations that this entails push us to take seriously our ethical responsibilities
towards others and the Earth (Berry 2017; in Martusewicz 2018: 47).
There are important parallels here between Berry’s philosophy and key tenets
within ecofeminism. For Berry, our material relations towards others within
mutually supporting communities and the impacts on our fellow community
members that arise from these suggest the need to develop ethics that are based
on the concepts of love and care. This aligns with the feminist ethic-of-care that
was first formulated by Carol Gilligan in her book In a Different Voice (1982).
Gilligan highlighted how women’s ethics are ‘concerned with the activity of
care . . . responsibility and relationships’ (Gilligan 1982: 19; in Donovan 2015:
62). She contrasts this perspective with that of men’s ‘conception of morality
as fairness,’ and the more abstract and male notion of ethics as equated to a
system of ‘rights and rules’ (ibid.). Gilligan suggested that feminine ethics are
based around a ‘morality of responsibility’, which contrasts strongly with a
moral system based on rights, which, for Gilligan, suggests ‘separation rather
than connection’ (ibid.). Donovan argues that an ethics of care is in line with the
key ecofeminist rejection of dualistic thinking (Donovan 2015: 62). We have
seen how dualistic thinking views the world in terms of binary relationships
or categories, for example, man–woman, human–animal and culture–nature
(Plumwood 1993). Within these relationships, one half of the binary is
prioritized as the preferred concept, while the other is devalued (ibid.). As
we have seen, dualistic thinking became formulated in more concrete and
radical terms with the advancement of René Descartes’ theory of mind–body
separation, according to which the universe consists of two elements: matter
 Ecojustice in Education 161

and spirit. The implications of this theory were that in contrast to premodern,
animistic thinking, mind and spirit were considered completely separate from
the body and matter. Nature, which was associated with matter, became seen as
passive and dead, whereas the realm of mind, logic and reason was elevated and
prioritized. In contrast, a feminist ethic of care seeks to counter such dualistic
thinking by viewing non-human animals as diverse individuals, each with their
own situated lives (Donovan 2015: 62). It understands them as sentient beings
who have an interest in avoiding suffering and death (ibid.). For ecofeminists,
other animals therefore have needs that we can understand in relation to our
own. These are therefore needs that we are obliged to recognize and not dismiss
for reasons of ideology or convenience. However, a gendered split in how
ethics are conceptualized can also be observed in eco or biocentric fields and
their associated discourses. For example, Deep Ecology has been criticized by
ecofeminists for its emphasis on the need to focus on the integrity of ecosystems
sometimes at the expense of individual animals and animal suffering (ibid.: 63).
Plumwood (2002) has criticized Deep Ecology for appropriating nature
through claiming it as an extension of the self, thus denying the non-human’s
own essence. A recognition of the non-human’s separateness and therefore
individual needs and requirements (in other words, an ethics of care) is for
Plumwood a necessary prerequisite for a relational understanding of both the
self and the non-human other (ibid.).
An ecofeminist ethics of care is also at odds with utilitarian environmental
ethics, which tend to abstract and subordinate the plight and requirements
of individual animals in favour of the overall health of ecosystems (Donovan
2015: 63). Ecofeminists have also criticized Peter Singer’s animal rights position,
which views non-human nature in terms of species hierarchies based on the
extent of similarity to human forms of consciousness and ways of reacting to
the world (Donovan 2015; Plumwood 2009). Plumwood (2009) argues that
such a perspective, which she terms ‘neocartesianism’ for its continuation of the
privileging of mind over body, merely broadens the category of the human rather
than extending compassion and recognition of needs out towards the larger
biotic community. Instead, Plumwood (1993, 2002) advances an ecofeminist
position that suggests the need for both a stance of responsibility and an ethic
of care applied to the living world. The non-human world is devalued and its
contributions towards the maintenance of the foundational conditions by which
we survive are denied. Thus, we either fail or actively refuse to recognize both our
place within a larger ecological system and our dependence upon a healthy and
functioning nature. This suggests a recognition of the roles of other organisms
162 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

in the life-supporting actions and processes upon which we depend. It also

suggests an ethics of care based on the material relationality and dependence of
our interrelations with these providers of ecosystem functioning, which bears a
striking similarity to Wendell Berry’s notion of working towards communities
within which all members live well in their material relations.
However, for Martusewicz, a relational ethics also suggests an appreciation
of the material interactions through which life itself becomes possible, as these
connections are also productive, thus capable of creating phenomena both
physical and ideational:

[O]ur body is comprised of, and is in relation to, many bodies as it all forms a
pulsing, cyclical and sacred system of living and dying, joy and grief. Nothing
happens – no ideas, no creation, no birth, no death – outside a multitude of
generative relationships, or as Buddhists put it, nothing comes into existence
outside its relationship to something else. (Martusewicz 2018: 44)

Thus, the important ontological concepts from the field of new materialism can
be seen both in Berry’s writings and as underpinning the theoretical position
taken by a pedagogy of responsibility. In line with Barad’s concept of agential
realism, bodies are seen as being in a constant state of becoming something
else through their interaction and intra-action with others. The notion of
the individual and the self-contained and separate body is challenged and
replaced with a new understanding of our corporeality as constituted by the
bodies of countless others and as porous and open to flows of matter (Alaimo
and Hekman 2008). Mind is reunited with the body as thought and cognition
become embodied, and we gain a heightened awareness of and ability to perceive
and appreciate a lively, dynamic and sensuous world of material and affective
connections. Similarly, for Berry, a recognition of our place within a larger
system of physical and mental connections amounts to an understanding of our
position within a larger system of interactions (Martusewicz 2018). It is through
a deep acknowledgement of our place within this great economy that we gain
humility but also a sense of responsibility towards others, affected and impacted
as they are by their interactions and intra-actions with us. Drawing on the words
of the environmental educator, David Orr, educating learners that they are a part
of rather than apart from this larger integrated system becomes a fundamental
goal within a pedagogy of responsibility.
However, Berry deviates from the new materialists in his prioritization of this
larger economy as an ecological system within which we must find our necessary
but humble place. For Berry, our existence within the great economy owes itself
 Ecojustice in Education 163

to the continual processes of living and dying, where our bodies become the
sustenance and the material for the birth and growth of others. Another area
of divergence between Berry and new materialists comes in how Berry frames
our relations within this overall system. Berry imbues these relationships with
religious connotations and often refers to the need to consider them and their
associated cast of characters sacred and as parts of ‘the Kingdom of God’. (Berry
2015: 26; in Martusewicz 2018: 50)

Both Oppressed and Oppressor

The concepts of responsibility and relationality are also evoked through
another key distinguishing aspect to a pedagogy of responsibility, that is, in its
rejection of a simple binary representation of oppressed and oppressor. Instead,
according to this approach, there is a need to highlight the inherent complexity
of situations in which one can simultaneously be both oppressed and oppressor
through our complicity and participation in symbolic and material societal
structures that normalize destructive perspectives and actions against nature
(Martuseivicz 2018: 5). As discussed previously, so far as we all participate in
the communication, construction and perpetuation of certain ‘regimes of truth’
(Foucault 1980: 1) in terms of material structures and actions as well as their
symbolic blueprints – that is, discourses and symbolic representations and
constructions of the world – we are all to varying degrees responsible. However, it
is also within these discursive formations of actions, structures of knowledge and
knowledge production and representations of nature that our own orientations
and perspectives on the natural world are formed and constantly reformed
(Martusewicz 2018: 5). An important educational endeavour thus becomes
that of recognizing our situatedness and participation within these discursive
systems and encouraging contemplation on how our beliefs and perspectives
on our relationship with the non-human have been influenced or even shaped
by these networks of representation, but also how ours affect the mental models
and attitudes of others.

Implications on Thought, Language and the Natural World

The notion of connections between mind, language and the natural world is in
fact another example of the central position that the concept of relationality takes
within a pedagogy of responsibility. Martusewicz makes the case that in addition
164 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

to our material relations and interactions, the concept of relationality also applies
to the ways in which our presence in the world can also be understood in terms
of our conscious selves and our ideas that we share but also develop with others.
We can therefore see important conceptual parallels between a pedagogy of
responsibility, Freirean critical pedagogy and dialogism. There are also important
parallels here with a new materialist perspective, Gregory Bateson’s an Ecology of
Mind and the field of material ecocriticism but also Karen Barad’s onto-ethical
theory of agential realism. I will detail these parallels below; however, what can
be said at this stage is that all these theoretical positions see our interactions,
material and communicative and ideational as enacting significant effects on
others, effects that have ethical implications and which therefore suggest certain
responsibilities.
However, there are other educational implications here. As we have seen, for
Martuseivicz, relationality is understood in extensive terms, whereby even the
communication of ideas through interaction and dialogue can be understood
as action and a way of materially impacting others. Nothing is possible without
the coming together of entities and phenomena, where difference, as Bateson
suggests, ‘makes the difference’ (Bateson 2000: 459). Linell (2009) suggests that
this is a dialogic view of the world due to the parallels with how dialogism sees
meaning as created out of interactions between communicating entities and the
world rather than pre-formed thoughts being encoded into language and then
directed towards others for them to try to interpret. According to a dialogic
perspective, meanings do not necessarily have to precede interaction; they can
and do emerge out of our engagements with communicative others and other
phenomena and entities. Within education, Freire relates to what could be
understood to be the same processes in his view of education: that knowledge
emerges organically out of open dialogue rather than the top-down imposition
of one person’s discourse upon another.
The more extreme take on this position is that made by Barad (2007),
who, as we have seen, through her theory of agential realism argues that
phenomena do not precede their intra-actions and that we are never finished
entities but instead are always changing, always in a state of becoming
something else and that this change and development occurs through our
material (and other) interactions with others. When we interact with others,
we become something different through the encounter. Barad’s theory of
agential realism uses the concept of diffraction: that phenomena interact and
become something different through the process. While Paulo Freire was a
critical literacy and education scholar and not a new materialist philosopher,
 Ecojustice in Education 165

Barad seemingly echoes Freire here by relating agential realism to knowledge

in addition to matter and suggesting that it is generated through being and
acting in the world:

Practices of knowing and being are not isolable; they are mutually implicated.
We don’t obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because
we are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming. The
separation of epistemology from ontology is a reverberation of a metaphysics
that assumes an inherent difference between human and nonhuman, subject
and object, mind and body, matter and discourse. (Barad 2007: 185)

Barad makes the case for a rejection of the separation of the nature of being
(ontology) and how we come to know (epistemology) and suggests that it is
through participation in the world that meanings and therefore knowledge
emerge.

Applying These Ideas to Ecolinguistic Analysis

Thus, in the search for pedagogical foundations for the use of ecolinguistics in
education, the view of ontology and epistemology that we find in a number of
theoretical perspectives on pedagogy,as well as environmental, new materialist
and posthuman philosophy provides us with an overall philosophical way of
viewing the world. From this we can derive three theoretical resources that can
help to facilitate ecolinguistic work in education. The first of these is a theoretical
justification and roadmap for how and why we read texts and symbolic
representations through the lenses of particular theories. The second relates to
a normative lens or conceptual apparatus through which representations and
constructions of nature can be read or diffracted when carrying out ecolinguistic
analyses, in this case a view of the world as comprised not of dead, passive matter
but instead of lively organisms and phenomena that intra-act and either evolve
or produce new phenomena and entities through their intra-actions. These
inter and intra-actions and relationality suggest both a relational ethics and an
ethics-of-care and a position of responsibility. Third, this way of seeing the world
provides us with a perspective on pedagogy itself, one in which meanings and
knowledge emerge out of and not prior to inter and intra-action with the world.
Thus, producing language as well as analysing and interpreting texts are acts of
being in and impacting the natural world.
166 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Diffractive Reading and Ecolinguistics

As discussed in Chapter 2, the notion of intra-action is the metaphor that Barad

uses for diffractive reading. When we diffract certain texts through particular
theories, they can be read in different ways and produce different meanings to
those that they would have produced otherwise or through different diffractions.
Thus, new phenomena or meanings are produced through the process. This can
be seen to happen in reading practices and therefore ecolinguistic readings and
textual analysis more broadly, as well as in life in so much as we are all produced
through our diffracted interactions with other phenomena and entities. Similarly,
new meanings are produced through their coming together. Thus, meanings do
not pre-exist their production within these inter and intra-actions. More broadly,
our , physical and ideational relations with others have productive effects.

Diffraction and Environmental Education

Thus, how we read texts, for example, when done through an ecolinguistic
lens, produces different meanings and understandings, meanings and
misunderstandings that did not precede the analysis. This suggests the
importance of paying serious attention to the lens or apparatus which we use in
order to both read and analyse environmentally relevant texts. This theoretical
and philosophical perspective is in stark contrast to that of the theory of
representationalism, which posits that language not only produces or reflects
reality but also that it is capable of accurately doing this. When applied to the
reading of texts, it suggests the rather naïve view that language use is always
transparent and straightforward and that textual interpretations can proceed on
that basis. This perspective shares a significant degree of similarity to Donald
Schön’s notion of reflective practice, which stresses the advantages of reflecting on
one’s practices in order to gain keen insights into possible areas of improvement
(Schön 1991). The optical metaphor of reflection is seen as mirroring reality in
order to access an objective version of it (Barad 2007). For Barad (ibid.), however,
the theoretical and philosophical assumptions underpinning representationalism
and contructivism, when put into practice in approaches to reading texts, merely
result in an unproductive reflection of phenomena from one place to another
and crucially depend upon the view that language does the work of attempting
to displace the ontology of existence elsewhere. In other words, our analyses
result in simply reproducing what was expressed in the original text.
 Ecojustice in Education 167

However, if one utilizes diffractive reading, of particular relevance is the

normative framework that is used in order to carry out ecolinguistic analyses.
We have seen how Stibbe (2015) suggests the formation of an ecosophy or set
of ecologically relevant ethical principles against which language and discourses
are analysed. According to Barad’s concept of diffractive reading, there is the
potential for different ecosophies to result in different analyses and different
conclusions. The tension that is created by reading texts or discourse through
particular theories and perspectives brings with it the potential for different
interpretations but also different meanings, rather than the mere reproduction
of what is said in the text through carrying out an analysis.
However, if we understand the metaphor of diffraction here more broadly
as the reading of ideas through other ideas, there is another way in which it
becomes a hugely relevant concept to environmental education. The mental
models and habits of mind that our learners have developed through their lives
can act as a diffractive apparatus through which they read and make sense of
representations of nature and environmental problems. In a sense, we all have
our own informal ecosophy that implicitly diffracts the ideas and concepts
that we are exposed to through discourse. The parallels here between ecojustice
education, a pedagogy of responsibility and transformative learning are striking.
All three approaches identify our belief systems and habits of mind as being
the drivers of particular actions and ways of acting in the world. Equally, all
three suggest the educational practices of exposing learners to and examining
symbolic portrayals and discursive constructions of nature that align with
particular cultural metanarratives while also encouraging open reflection on the
extent to which our own belief systems are the products of our embeddedness
within particular discursive formations.

Our work must be about examining ourselves as deeply implicated members of

our society’s symbolic, material and psychological processes. [. . .] Educators,
no matter what context they work in, whether formal or informal, need to
understand how to create the proper conditions – the relationships and the
lessons – to encourage our students to examine their unconscious patterns of
belief and behaviour as the means towards healthier, more responsible ways of
living on this planet. (Martuseivicz 2018: 7)

Thus, we see in a pedagogy of responsibility that the concept of responsibility is

constructed in several different ways. One of these is the relational perspective
that allows us to take on the notion that we are all, both oppressor and
oppressed, enmeshed within and participants in the construction, perpetuation
168 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

and dissemination of discursive formations and networks that have the potential
to influence how we think, feel and therefore act towards the rest of nature.
However, the notion of responsibility is also applied to the need to take account
of how our implicit beliefs and habits of mind might have been influenced by our
participation in these forms of representation.

Responsibility as Relationality and Materiality

Thus, a pedagogy of responsibility, heavily influenced as it is by the writings of
Wendell Berry, places a strong emphasis on the concept of relationality and
material or relational ethics over more abstract ways of understanding the
natural world. Indeed, Martusewicz argues that every day we exist in sensuous
relations with the material and natural worlds (2018: 45). However, the author
further states that modern culture, or what we might understand as public
pedagogy (Giroux 2011), ‘educates’ us to dismiss our embodied experiences,
encouraging us to see them as ‘a figment of our imagination or as irrational
“romantic” nonsense, soft or feminine perceptions in a world demanding rational
efficiencies, measurement, control, and profitability’ (ibid.). Our cultural systems
of making meaning represent the mind as separate from the body, and humans
as hyperseparated from the rest of nature (ibid.: 46). Therefore, an ecolinguistics
approach that functions as a pedagogy of responsibility might seek to examine
and contrast examples of public pedagogy that on one hand construct the natural
world in terms of abstractions and on the other as a sensual, visceral materiality
which we might feel, hear, touch and interact with. Learners can be encouraged
to compare and contrast texts and forms of visual representation that portray
nature in instrumental terms as a resource with those that relate to sensual and
affective experiences with nature. Learners can be helped to explore forms of
symbolism that construct other organisms as individuals that can be met with
and experienced on their own terms rather than caricatures or generalizations.
In the light of these different ways of seeing the natural world and other
animals, an ecolinguistics approach that is in line with a pedagogy of responsibility
might also aim to engage learners in post-reading and post-analysis discussions
around texts in order to heighten the awareness of the extent to which learners’
perspectives and habits of mind have been influenced by particular cultural
constructions of nature and our relationship with it. However, as is the case
with ecojustice education, discourse analyses that aim to uncover and identify
specific discourses that align to ecologically destructive cultural narratives
can be particularly fruitful in this regard. Such analyses can be carried out
 Ecojustice in Education 169

according to varying degrees of linguistic knowledge and detail. These can

range from investigations of the more holistic construction of overall messages
communicated by larger chunks of text to the ways in which the use of certain
grammatical constructions, evoked metaphors, semantic fields, framings and
so on can contribute to the reproduction of particular narratives, discourses
or ‘stories-we-live-by’ (Stibbe 2015). Whichever approach is chosen, discursive
analysis that focuses on the identification of larger ideological or narrative
structures can combine the subject matter study of environmental ethics and
philosophy with a developing awareness of how languages and other forms of
semiosis function to convey particular portrayals of the natural world. However,
when it comes to aligning ecolinguistics with a pedagogy of responsibility as a
form of environmental education, an awareness of environmentally relevant
cultural narratives and ideologies and the discourses that carry them and realize
them semiotically functions as a crucial foundation for consciousness-raising
and educational discussions that relate these ideational formations to our own
either conscious or unconscious belief systems.

Mentally Engaging with Nature

Another way in which a pedagogy of responsibility uses the notion of responsibility
is in the establishment of the need to mentally engage with natural places in
order to bring them to the forefront of our perceptual awareness. According to
Wendell Berry:

for humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine
their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong to a place, to live from a place
without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated
by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination, we recognize
with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we
share our place. (Berry 2012: 14, in Martusewicz 2018: 4)

For Berry, ‘[i]magination is a particularizing and a local force, native to the

ground underfoot’ which places ‘the world and its creatures within a context
of sanctity in which their worth is absolute and incalculable’ (Berry 2010:
32, in Martusewicz 2018: 4). Thus, we see in Berry’s concept of responsibility
the need to direct mental and imaginative attention to not only the natural
world in general but also our local environments. It is through the detailed
and loving configuring of nature in our minds that we not only imbue it with
personal meanings but also highlight its particularities, its characteristics
170 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

and its vulnerabilities and threats to its existence. By privileging our local
places through making them subjects of our imagination, we take on our
responsibilities to attend to our relationships of care. By the same token,
abstracting natural places in our imaginations or backgrounding or omitting
them entirely is incompatible with a position of taking responsibility for their
protection and specific requirements.
We can understand Berry’s notion of imagining the natural world as the
mental representation and constructions of nature in the formation of mental
models. Thus, natural places and their host of characters with their particular
characteristics, relationships and needs exist not only as material realities, but also
as mental constructions or models. In essence, they become a part of our mental
worlds. We can therefore view the application of ecolinguistic analyses and the
sorts of discussions around texts and other forms of symbolism that can occur
in educational settings as facilitating imaginative renderings of not only nature,
but also imaginaries of nature associated with alternate ways of coexisting. Berry
suggests here that by conjuring up the natural world into our imaginations, it is
‘illuminated’ and thus brought into the sphere of consciousness and awareness.
Stibbe (2015) refers to the importance of linguistic representations for increasing
the salience of aspects of the natural world so that their inherent features
become linguistically foregrounded and highlighted rather than backgrounded.
Increasing the linguistic salience of natural entities can involve the production
of vivid depictions that result in a high degree of linguistic granularity in much
the same way an image can be either detailed or granular. Moreover, organisms
or other features of nature can be represented as they are in real terms or as
abstractions of the real, living entity (ibid.). Likewise, animals’ actions in nature
can be linguistically portrayed and constructed as either activated or passivated
(van Leeuwen 2008). Thus, through the use of particular words, phrases, and
grammatical formations we can increase the salience of aspects of the natural
world and at the same time produce more vivid mental models that illuminate
and highlight particular features of nature. Our mental models are comprised
of characters that have particular identities and motivations. They perform
certain actions, engage in or are affected by processes, and make their way to or
from different locations. Through the process of imagination and being faced
with particular and novel representations and imaginaries of nature our mental
models are refined and focused in terms of constructing certain relationships,
vulnerabilities or impacts in particular detail and granularity. Thus, such vivid
portrayals become distinct and detailed parts of our mental models. They form
the subject matter that guides the formation of our perspectives and stances.
 Ecojustice in Education 171

However, what might such an approach to imagination look like in practice?

Martusewicz (2018) provides the example of the application of a pedagogy of
responsibility to the production of a mural as part of a collaborative art and
ecology project. A famous Detroit artist worked together with a group of
seven- to twelve-year old students in order to produce the art mural. For the
students, the process involved a wider project investigating the Huron River
in Michigan. The students gained first-hand experience of the river by visiting
it and interacting with it. They studied the biology, ecology and history of
the river. They learned about the people who lived along its banks and the
pressures that had been brought to bear on the river in terms of how it had
been polluted.
Martusewicz participated in the project and relates how she asked the students
how and what they could learn from a river:
‘Can a river be our teacher?’ There was the briefest of pauses and then hands
flew up: ‘Yes!’ ‘No!’ ‘Maybe!’ ‘Yes!’ ‘How so?’ I asked. ‘What might a river have
to teach us?’ One young girl ventured, ‘Well, we could learn what lives there,
what fish and birds and stuff.’ How? ‘We could go there and look.’ ‘What else?’
‘We could put our feet in and see what it feels like; if it’s warm or cold. What the
bottom feels like.’ ‘What would the river be teaching us then?’ ‘Well, maybe what
needs rocky bottoms, or what plants like it warmer or colder. . . .’ Another, ‘And
maybe find out who has used the river.’ And another, ‘We could learn how it’s
being harmed too!’ ‘Yeah, the river could tell us how it’s been polluted!’ I waited
for more. A young boy, perhaps a second grader, raised his hand tentatively.
‘Maybe the river could help us learn how to care for it better. How to be better
people.’ (Martusewicz 2018: 64)

Through this question-and-answer session, the students were nudged into

engaging their imaginations about the river, about its ecology and how that
relates to the needs of its inhabitants and thus how these organisms are therefore
dependent on very specific conditions. In fact, one of the students displayed a
remarkable understanding of ecology, hinting at how certain species of stream-
loving fishes such as species of trout, salmon and bottom-dwelling darters
require open areas of pebbles free from mulm and detritus in order to deposit
their eggs in oxygen-rich, flowing water. The students also considered how the
river might have been polluted and how, through interacting with it, it might
reveal to us its story and how through this process we might learn more about
its needs and how we can protect it. Thus, through the dialogism and interaction
of teacher and students, both the river and its host of inhabitants are jointly and
collaboratively imagined as vulnerable entities with their own set of needs and
172 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

vulnerabilities. As such, the river becomes the subject rather than the object
of their imaginations. Through this process, the students depicted all of these
different aspects in their own sketches, which were later added to the mural. The
result, says Martusewicz, was ‘a beautiful mural and 17 very excited (and) proud
7–12 year olds’ (ibid.: 64).
Thus, the painting of a mural turned into a material ecocritical and
ecopedagogical exercise in deeply imagining a river as a fully fledged subject, as
an entity that provides the necessary foundational conditions for life to a whole
host of organisms, but also that which itself requires certain conditions for
flourishing. Through an initial meeting of minds and distributed imaginings,
new meanings, knowledge and understandings emerged. This learning process
continued through investigations and interactions with texts and sources
written about the river. The river, its troupe of characters, and its threats were
all pictorially represented and to some extent constructed. These pictorial
representations were created on the basis of the students’ developing mental
models of the river and its ecology, history and threats. However, it is also likely
that the process of constructing the sketches for the mural and then seeing how
they form an overall discursive picture and narrative further contributed to the
development of their mental models, and through this, the river was deeply and
materially envisioned in terms of its particular material characteristics but also
the specific nature of its threats. Rather than engaging in the receptive activity
of carrying out a semiotic analysis of images of the river and its relationships,
or linguistic or discourse analyses of how it has been represented in language,
the students were engaged in the productive activity of composing separate
sketches that represented and constructed a range of different aspects related
to the river and its relationships. Thus, as Wendell Berry might suggest, they
brought forth a place into the imagination in order to facilitate a position of
responsibility towards it. However, its detailed imagining was brought about
through the combination of a series of pedagogical activities. First, the learners
were engaged in interactive dialogue with the teacher and the idea of the river,
and then they experienced first-hand and interacted with the river. Finally, they
constructed the river and the particulars of its existence as separate paintings
and sketches.
This approach can easily be applied to the use of ecolinguistics in language
teaching settings or even the teaching of environmental education that aims
to take a more humanities perspective. After learning how to carry out basic
ecolinguistic analyses of texts and uses of language and images, learners can
take knowledge and skills gleaned from these sorts of activities and apply them
 Ecojustice in Education 173

to the production of texts written about natural places. Such work could even
include the creation of combinations of text and images that seek to tell a story
about a particular area. Nature writing is a genre that encourages the use of
linguistic techniques that actively increase the salience of particular aspects of
the natural world (Stibbe 2015). The shift from the receptive skills of reading
to the analytical skills of carrying out ecolinguistic analyses and then to the
production of language and symbolism that portrays the natural world in
particular ways mirrors the natural progression inherent in how we use new
language and the idea that ‘logically, comprehension must precede production’
(Clark 1993: 246). Although Clark was referring to the acquisition of second
language vocabulary, there is an important parallel here, as the knowledge and
understanding of how language and imagery can be used to create different
portrayals of nature and our relationship with it is necessary for the creation
of texts or multimodal uses of images and language that avoid anthropocentric
representations and at the same time emphasize the salience and specific
threats to particular natural places. Opportunities to produce language and
symbolism that act as mediated forms of imagining natural places also allow
for the application of the ecolinguistic skills and forms of language and imagery
that have been developed through analysing texts and symbolism. Thus, we can
think of the receptive skills of analysis and the productive skills of writing and
image creation as complementing each other rather than the latter representing
an evolution of the former.
Therefore, learners can be tasked with producing standard or multimodal
texts about a natural place that holds particular meaning for them. The brief for
such texts can be, for example, to breathe love and life into the textual and/or
symbolic rendering of the place and all of its inhabitants. Learners can be asked
to draw on their previous analyses and to avoid the deadening, instrumentalizing
uses of language employed, for example, by many environmental management
texts, and to be wary of the linguistic abstraction so often observed in scientific
genres or environmental management discourses. The production of texts and
the processes of reflection that it relies on not only facilitate learners’ ability to
vividly imagine their natural places but also engage their creative skills.
Despite not necessarily being trained linguists, learners can apply
ecolinguistic knowledge to produce texts that perform a number of
environmental and pedagogical roles. At Linköping University in Sweden,
I gave a group of English teacher students studying ecolinguistics as part of
a larger module in English linguistics the following task as part of a larger
assessment for the module.
174 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Teaching Activity 5: Nature Writing

Imagine you are an English teacher in a school. You have recently become
dismayed by the amount of time that your pupils spend on social media and with
how little genuine contact, (physical, mental, psychological, or spiritual) they
have with the natural world. You suspect that due to their highly mediated lives,
the climate crisis and sixth mass extinction are distant and abstract concepts for
your pupils.
You would like to launch a nature writing project in your school.
However, in order to show your pupils what they should do, you need to
write a piece of nature writing to act as a guide before they embark on their own
productions.
Your task for this section of the assessment is also that which you would give
your imaginary pupils in the imaginary situation given above:
Think about a place in nature where you love to go and spend time.

● Physically go there.
● Sit down and simply open your senses to your surroundings and the natural
rhythms of nature.
● What do you see/observe?
● What do you smell?
● What do you hear?
● How does it feel to be there?
● What are the textures around you?
● Are there any non-human animals going about their lives?
● Do you know what type of animal or plant they are?
● Do you know their names?
● Make notes about all of these things in a notepad while you are there.
● As an alternative to sitting quietly, you could go for a bike ride in nature.
● As an alternative to actually going to a natural area, you could write an
account of a special place in nature that you knew as a child – perhaps
a special place in nature that you used to go to as a child and how you
experienced it and its inhabitants.

Write a piece within the genre of nature writing about what you experienced,
physically, perceptually, mentally, psychologically and perhaps spiritually. If you
don’t know the names of any plants or animals that you observed/experienced,
try to research their names so that you can include them in your writing.
 Ecojustice in Education 175

● Try to breathe life into the natural world through your writing in order
to offer an alternative to anthropocentric writing, which backgrounds,
distances, objectifies, commodifies, and deadens the natural world.
● Your piece of writing should be a minimum of half a side of A4 but can be
much longer than this if you feel that, creatively, it needs to be.

One of the teacher students, Astrid, chose to write about a wood near her home:

Sitting down on the old stump, that had stood there for over a decade, I
breathe in the cold spring air. The air is pure and I inhale it like it is my last
day on earth. The sun has finally decided to appear, creating a golden glow
that touches me, the stump and everything that surrounds us. I realize that I
am not the only early riser today. A family of foxes have made camp a few feet
away. The mother seems to have her hands full taking care of the little ones,
that are bickering just like most siblings does. She is beautiful and strong as
she takes care of her family, not letting anyone disturb their morning. When
I close my eyes and listen, I can hear that the foxes aren’t the only creatures
living in the forest. Above me birds are chirping and welcoming the new day.
Beneath me, insects are crawling, inhabiting the stump I´m sitting on, creating
a perfect home. I open my eyes and follow an ant that has set out for today’s
work. He is carrying a small stick, probably bringing it home to his family
and his queen. I can see that he is struggling carrying it, over the green moss
that is still a bit damp from the nights rain. The forest still smells like rain, a
smell I can’t quite describe since it’s so specific to this particular forest and its
inhabitants. No other forest would smell the same. It’s created by the forest
itself, its animals and plants growing here. I can’t help but loving this time of
year, the early spring when the wood anemone has come alive, colouring the
forest the same shade as snow does. They seem to come slow at first, then all
at once, making you believe that the forest was always this white and couldn’t
possibly be any other colour. Until they decide the early spring is over and
disappear until next year. It makes me sad to think that these flowers soon will
be gone, but equally as happy thinking that they are here now, making my day
better. The ant has finally reached its goal and I stop watching it as I stretch my
legs out. As I do, something cracks beneath my feet and I see that I stepped on
a small twig. The mother fox hears the crack and looks up. Her eyes are light
brown, almost golden as they stare at me. Her gaze, worrisome and suspicious.
I feel like an intruder of her home, but she lowers her head again, giving me
permission to stay, since I’m no threat to her. I take my pen out and try to draw
the foxes in the small notebook I always carry with me when walking in the
forest. The hardest part of the drawing are the eyes. How can you convey the
feelings and emotions of a creature on a piece of paper. How could I capture
176 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

the mothers protectiveness and the playfulness of the cubs, that are shining
through their eyes as I watch them. It truly is impossible, but I try the best as
I can. Connecting the foxes on my paper with the flowers by their feet and the
trees behind them. The drawing will never be perfect but that will never stop
me from capturing these moments in the wild.

In this piece of writing, Astrid certainly conveys her affection for her local wood.
She positions herself together with the other animals as a fellow experiencer
of the place and intertwines her experiences with those of the animals she
encounters. Indeed, in much the same way as she writes about what she
perceives and experiences, the animals are also portrayed as thinking, feeling
and experiencing entities. Her writing very much illuminates the organisms
and features of nature that make up the place she describes. In fact, what might
otherwise be overlooked or considered unremarkable by a passer-by is revealed
to be a vibrant world with its own cast of characters.
Astrid’s application of the genre of nature writing here aligns to the use of
ecolinguistics as a form of text production as opposed to that of reception or
analysis. Astrid is participating in a natural world comprised of matter, energy
and messages (Glotfelty 1996: xix). It can also be seen as a use of ecolinguistics as
a realization of a pedagogy of responsibility within the overall context of ecojustice
education. If we carry out an analysis of the linguistic choices made by Astrid
in order to imagine her local wood and portray it in words we can see that there
are several overall categories of representation that align strongly to ecological
concepts promoted by a pedagogy of responsibility. Let’s now examine Astrid’s
nature writing in terms of these categories.

Continuity and Relationality rather than Separation

within Multispecies Communities
The first way in which Astrid’s writing about her cherished place can be thought
of as an ecolinguistic realization of a pedagogy of responsibility is the way in which
she uses language to construct herself as part of a community of creatures. This
sort of construal of the self eschews the Western notion of hyperseparation of
humans from nature, seen as part of a larger set of binary relationships, such as
human–animal and nature–culture (Plumwood 1993). Very much connected to
this concept, Astrid’s writing also relates to Wendell Berry’s notion of the need to
prioritize a state of living well with others in multispecies communities, within
which our material and sensuous engagements with other natural bodies (in
 Ecojustice in Education 177

other words, organisms) evokes a sacred web of connections and interrelations

and brings about the need to recognize a relational ethics.
The first discursive strategy to note here is Astrid’s use of inclusive terms
when referring to her interactions with nature:

The sun has finally decided to appear, creating a golden glow that touches me,
the stump and everything that surrounds us.
I realize that I am not the only early riser today.

When referring to the ‘golden glow’ and what (or whom) it touches, Astrid
places herself within a list containing features of the nature that surrounds her.
This list creates the relationship of hyponymy, whereby all the elements within
the list become concepts that are portrayed as being a type of entity that is the
superordinate category. For example, a dachshund and German Shepherd are
both hyponyms of the superordinate category dog, and dogs and cats are both
hyponyms of the superordinate category of mammal. The linguistic relationship
of hyponymy suggests for each a degree of equivalence and categorical similarity.
We can understand that Astrid and ‘the stump and everything that surrounds us’
are all parts of nature, all related to as equal members of a community of natural
entities, as ‘everything that surrounds us’ includes all the aspects of the natural
world that she engages with through her writing. Of course, the superordinate
concept here, although not explicitly stated, is either nature more generally, or
the community of natural elements existing in that place at that time.
By using the object pronoun ‘us’, she represents herself materially as sharing
the same physical space as the tree stump and as co-experiencers of the sun’s
‘golden glow’:

The sun has finally decided to appear, creating a golden glow that touches me,
the stump and everything that surrounds us.

Similarly, she connects herself to the animals in the wood in terms of the concept
of being an early riser. Thus, humans and other animals perform the same sorts
of actions and share aspects of their daily existence:

I realise that I am not the only early riser today.

Thus, Astrid recruits language forms that affirm similarities between human
and non-human animals rather than using those that emphasize or construct
differences. In the example below, the personal pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’ are used
to denote an ant and a female fox. The fox family is represented as having a stake
in the morning by representing it as ‘their morning’. Animals are portrayed as
178 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

having the same fundamental requirements that humans have, that is, having
homes, taking care of their families and setting up camp:

He is carrying a small stick, probably bringing it home to his family and his
queen. I can see that he is struggling carrying it.
She is beautiful and strong as she takes care of her family, not letting anyone
disturb their morning.
Beneath me, insects are crawling, inhabiting the stump I’m sitting on, creating
a perfect home.
A family of foxes have made camp a few feet away.

Similarly, young animals are portrayed as carrying out the same sorts of actions
that human children engage in:

the little ones, that are bickering just like most siblings.

Astrid signals this connection explicitly by using the comparative structure ‘just
like most siblings’.
Landscape entities are represented as actors in material processes rather than
existents in existential processes or as elements within circumstances. In many
of these examples, the material processes are transactive in that they portray
these natural features as having the power to impact the writer, in terms of one’s
feelings and senses:

The sun has finally decided to appear, creating a golden glow that touches me,
the stump and everything that surrounds us.
It’s created by the forest itself, its animals and plants growing here.
the old stump, that had stood there for over a decade.
something cracks beneath my feet.
the wood anemone has come alive, colouring the forest the same shade as snow
does.
They seem to come slow at first, then all at once, making you believe that the
forest was always this white and couldn´t possibly be any other colour.
making my day better.

Perspectivization
One way of portraying herself and the animals living in that place as all part of
one community of organisms is to relate to them as thinking, feeling beings that
 Ecojustice in Education 179

have inner lives and their own ends in the same way that we do. In addition to
hyponymy, in portraying the nature around her, Astrid also employs a series of
nouns and verbs that correspond to notions and actions that could also relate to
humans:

A family of foxes have made camp a few feet away. The mother seems to have her
hands full taking care of the little ones, that are bickering just like most siblings
does.

The foxes are part of a ‘family’, they have ‘made camp’, the mother ‘seems to have
her hands full taking care of the little ones’ and the young foxes ‘are bickering just
like most siblings’ do. While the mother fox projects ‘protectiveness’, ‘playfulness’
can be noticed in the eyes of the cubs. While for some, this might be considered
as venturing into sentimental anthropomorphism, one can also argue the case
that the cultural metanarratives of human supremacy and anthropocentrism
bolstered by an enduring Cartesian influence act as diffracting apparatus
through which we view the non-human as well as having a dominant effect on
the mental models and habits of mind that we develop regarding it. Thus, there
is a case for selecting language forms that emphasize the very real connections
and continuities that exist between us and other animals rather than using
language in order to maintain an outdated and inaccurate Cartesian view of the
world. Indeed, within ecocriticism, the subfield of ‘critical anthropomorphism’
(Morton et al. 1990) emphasizes what human and non-human animals share
rather than highlighting differences (ibid.: 154–6). Aspects of the human
which might be either acknowledged or denied in other animals are both
our ability to experience our surroundings as well as our agency. The fields of
‘critical anthropomorphism’ and ‘animal-centred’ writing on animal behaviour
(Timberlake 1997) see importance in finding alternatives to accounts of animals
that deny such characteristics that they share with humans, such as their ability
to experience (Cook and Sealy 2017: 315).
In this vein, Astrid relates to an ant by using the gendered personal pronoun
‘he’ and indicates a degree of intentionality in the ant’s activities by using the
phrasal verb ‘set out’ together with the preposition of purpose ‘for’. The ant has
‘work’ to do and also has a ‘family’. The ant is constructed as having an associative
relationship with the queen of the ant colony, indicated through the use of the
personal possessive determiner ‘his’:

I open my eyes and follow an ant that has set out for today’s work. He is carrying
a small stick, probably bringing it home to his family and his queen.
180 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

All in all, the animals are deeply imagined as perceiving, feeling and thinking
entities that have a stake in their lives and sometimes the lives of others. This is
in stark contrast to environmental and wildlife management discourses, with
their tendency to refer to aspects of nature and animals as resources, general
categories or other abstractions. However, Astrid has intentionally, through
her choices of language, imbued the natural world she has written about with
characteristics that suggest a form of continuity with humans.
Astrid’s imagining of her local wood is significantly mediated and therefore
facilitated and enhanced through the action of pondering on and selecting
specific words and language structures that increase the salience of the different
aspects of her chosen place. She represents it accurately as dynamic and
agential while also avoiding the deadening and abstracting language of so many
intentionally pro-environmental texts promoting environmental management
or sustainable development.
For example, animals are portrayed as sayers in verbal processes and
experiencers in mental processes. Thus, they are represented as communicating,
experiencing and thinking.

the little ones, that are bickering just like most siblings.
Above me birds are chirping and welcoming the new day.
Until they decide the early spring is over and disappear until next year.
The mother fox hears the crack and looks up.

Astrid also uses a combination of a nominalization of the verb ‘to gaze’ and the
adjectives ‘worrisome’ and ‘suspicious’ to show the female fox as experiencing
and feeling emotions.

Her gaze, worrisome and suspicious

Animals are represented in material processes and noun phrases that, through
lexical presupposition, suggest intentionality:

I can see that he is struggling carrying it,

The ant has finally reached its goal
an ant that has set out for today’s work.

Through her writing, Astrid vividly imagines her wild place by describing the
materiality of her experience and interactions with the non-human natural
world. She creates highly granular depictions through her use of behavioural
and material processes that indicate what she does and how she was impacted
by other entities and processes. Adjectives, present participle and comparative
 Ecojustice in Education 181

clauses are employed in order to paint a detailed picture of the materiality of her
experience:

I breathe in the cold spring air. The air is pure and I inhale it like it is my last
day on earth.
The sun has finally decided to appear, creating a golden glow that touches me.
The forest still smells like rain, a smell I can’t quite describe since it’s so specific
to this particular forest and its inhabitants.
No other forest would smell the same. It’s created by the forest itself, its animals
and plants growing here.

Sensuous Relationality
A key feature within both a pedagogy of responsibility but also material ecocriticism
is a celebration rather than rejection of an awareness of the perceptual, sensuous
and material ways in which we are touched by the non-human in our interactions
as members of multispecies ecological communities. Martuseivicz (2018) argues
that such perceptions and understandings are difficult to measure and do not
fit into clearly defined categories or degrees of valuation. They are considered
feminine and subjective and are devalued in modern society (ibid.). Throughout
her piece of writing, Astrid conveys her material connections and interactions
with the natural environment she is visiting. Her use of descriptive adjectives
such as ‘pure’ to describe how the environment feels to her, hypothetical language
such as ‘like it is my last day on earth’, but also her tendency to situate herself as
an experiencer perceiving a dynamic world of agential beings all help to vividly
convey the sensuous materiality and relationality of her embodied experiences.
We can conclude by noting that Astrid imagines a particular natural place
and her material, sensuous, and affective connections to it and its inhabitants.
From an ecolinguistic perspective, one can take into consideration a number
of factors. In terms of larger pedagogical effects, we can contemplate the effects
that texts such as this might have on the reader. However, in terms of classroom
practices, students can be tasked with co-writing texts. Learners might have
their own special places in nature that they like to visit. Alternatively, they might
be encouraged to visit nature reserves or other natural areas together and make
notes of what they see, hear, feel (both physically and mentally) and experience.
Another possibility is that they embellish their texts and introduce an element
of fiction in their depictions while staying within the genre of nature writing
rather than straying into fantasy and fantastical representations of animals.
182 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Learners can be provided with examples of good-nature writing and examples

of stylistic elements and discursive features that create particular affects and
representations. These can be contrasted with examples of language from the
discourses of animal agriculture, or environmental or wildlife management so
that they can notice differences in terms of how wild animals and other natural
entities are portrayed in language. The discourses of the Natural Capital Agenda
(Monbiot 2014b) are also a good source of language that arguably deadens,
objectifies and instrumentalizes nature. Teachers can engage learners in problem-
posing around the potential portrayals and consequences of the use of particular
discourses and forms of representation. After learners have written their texts,
they can compare or present their productions to others, or offer them up to
other learners who can write short reflection papers on them. Such activities can
open up further discussions about stylistic choices and how language can not
only represent and construct but also stimulate in the reader certain emotions
and feelings, such as sadness, empathy, enchantment or loss.
Thus, rather than presenting learners with facts about forms of language that
are ecologically positive or benign, learners can engage in open discussions
about the relative efficacy and ethics of using certain forms of language to
present nature in different ways. An important aspect to the use of such
sensitizing and consciousness-raising activities is that, in line with the principles
of transformative learning, through the increased awareness that arises through
discussion and posing and solving problems, learners reflect on their own
mental models and habits of mind.
However, if such activities are viewed in relation to a pedagogy of responsibility,
we must also consider the ways in which they can be seen as an example of
dialogism, but also as the use of language and the material world as mediators
for thinking. In this case, this cognition can be understood in terms of a deep
imagining of place. Thus, in the context of a pedagogy of responsibility and the
writings of Wendell Berry, language as a mediating tool and a resource that
provides a set of affordances for meaning-making can facilitate and intensify the
process of imagining our natural places and allow us to enhance our awareness
of their vulnerabilities.
 8

Creating Tasks for Ecocritical

Language Awareness

Knowledge about Language and Critical

Language Awareness in Teaching Practices

Fairclough (1992: 1–2) distinguishes between approaches to education that

focus on knowledge about language and critical language awareness (CLA).
The former, suggests Fairclough, is an educational movement that sees value
in teaching learners about the features of language. According to this view,
knowing how a language works and how its internal structures construct
different meanings is viewed as an essential element in what it is to ‘know’ a
language and can function as the foundational conditions for the development
of a critical language awareness. However, it can also be carried out for its own
sake or to facilitate other aspects of language education or content learning. For
example, Moore and Schleppegrell (2014) researched the use of grammatical
metalanguage from Systemic Functional Linguistics in supporting primary level
English language learners’ engagement with the learning of academic English.
Specifically, these researchers analysed how SFL metalanguage was used in
classroom conversations. They were able to show that SFL metalanguage can
support and facilitate the learning of academic content through language by
scaffolding the elaboration of meanings and enabling learners to connect themes
to their own lives. Jones, Myhill and Bailey (2013) investigated the effects on
student writing of the quality of teachers’ knowledge of the structural system
of English and the provision of extra contexualized grammar teaching that
relates grammatical structure to meanings that are realized in texts rather than
grammar for grammar’s sake as taught as a system of rules. The study found that
both factors improved the complexity of learners’ writing, with the effect being
more pronounced in more competent writers. The researchers suggest that a
certain threshold of knowledge regarding the grammar of a language might be
necessary for learners to be able to make full use of extra grammar tuition.
184 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

However, what both these studies show is that a knowledge of language brought
about by grammar teaching and a focus on metalanguage and the structural
aspects of language taught in context and which is related to the construction
of meanings, as opposed to grammar taught as a system of rules, can confer
significant benefits on students’ ability to write and learn content through
language. Fairclough, however, sees a rather different reason for teaching about
language. Critical language awareness as conceptualized by Fairclough (1992)
builds on the concept of knowledge about language in order to apply a critical
perspective to how it relates to societal structures and cultural issues.

Teaching Knowledge about Language

Teaching knowledge about language can be carried out either deductively or
inductively. Deductive teaching is that which springs to mind when many of us
think about the very act of teaching someone something. It is characterized by
someone taking the role of teacher and presenting and explaining new content to
others. In terms of language teaching, this learned content can then be solidified
and practised by having learners use the rules or theories and so on that they
have understood by applying them to examples of language use. This could
be anything from the traditional gap-fill activity to transformation sentences,
translation or the production of a longer piece of writing. One way to think about
this form of teaching is that learners start out with a theory, an idea, rules and so
on and then apply them to actual examples. This can involve the manipulation or
production of language or the receptive skills of analysing language.
The converse to this rather traditional view of teaching and learning is an
inductive approach. If deductive teaching is the presentation and development
of a theory or rule and the subsequent application of that to examples of
language, then an inductive approach turns that on its head so that learners
are first provided with examples of the target aspect of the language they are
learning and are then tasked with noticing and matching patterns of language
with contextual cues so that form-to-meaning associations can be made.
Learners are then asked to formulate a rule based on these observations.
Such activities are, therefore, interpretive and exploratory. Ellis suggests
some general principles for the creation of such interpretive and inductive
(rather than productive and deductive) activities, which he refers to here as
interpretation tasks:

(a) An interpretation task consists of a stimulus to which learners must make

some kind of response.
 Critical Language Awareness 185

(b) The stimulus can take the form of spoken or written input.
(c) The response can take various forms, for example, indicate true–false,
check a box, select the correct picture, draw a diagram, perform an action,
but in each case the response will be completely non-verbal or minimally
verbal.
(d) The activities in the task can be sequenced to require first attention
to meaning, then noticing the form and function of the grammatical
structure, and finally error identification.
(e) Learners should have the opportunity to make some kind of personal
response, i.e. relate the input to their own lives (Ellis 1995: 98–9, 2003:
160).

Awareness/Consciousness-Raising Activities
Ellis advances the use of consciousness-raising interpretive activities, which are
directed at developing in learners a conscious awareness of form-to-meaning
relationships rather than that which might occur at the more subconscious level
of implicit or subconscious noticing (Ellis 2003: 162–3). Awareness in this sense
relates to pushing learners to develop conscious understandings and tentative
theories on how the targeted language structure works. Thus, consciousness-
raising relates to conscious rather than unconscious cognitive processes that are
recruited in receptive, interpretive language learning activities (ibid.).
Ellis suggests that consciousness-raising activities can be constructed on the
basis of the following points:

1. There is an attempt to isolate a specific linguistic feature for focused

attention.
2. The learners are provided with data that illustrate the targeted feature.
3. The learners are expected to utilize intellectual effort to understand the
targeted feature.
4. Learners may be optionally required to verbalize a rule describing the
grammatical structure (Ellis 1991: 234, 2003: 163).

Whereas many forms of receptive and interpretive activities involve learners

processing them primarily for meaning while at the same time being unable
to avoid attending to the target feature, consciousness-raising activities involve
learners thinking consciously about the structure itself and its meaning potential
– in other words, the form-to-meaning relationships. Crucially, consciousness-
raising activities require ‘intellectual effort’ on the part of learners in order to
understand the targeted forms explicitly.
186 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

In teaching activity 6, we have an example of a consciousness-raising activity

for the teaching of the English second conditional. The establishment of the
meaning potentials of the two conditionals actually supports the development of
metalinguistic knowledge about the way the structures work, how they are formed
but also, crucially, how their form relates to the communication of particular
meanings. The activity also encourages the formation of form-to-meaning
mappings by the learner. As mentioned above, at this stage, this is seen to come
at a relatively implicit level of awareness. However, although understandings are
only at the level of implicit noticing, such activities can act as a springboard for
the recruitment of higher levels of consciousness towards the formation of more
explicit understandings of how particular items of language work. This level
of thinking and understanding is required by exercise 2, which asks learners
questions about the particular verb forms used by different conditional structures
that relay different meanings. In fact, in this exercise, learners are forced into
relating different language forms to the different meanings they communicate.
This prepares learners for exercise 3, where they are required to formulate a rule
for how the two conditional forms work. Such a rule, or what is most likely at
this stage, a tentative or running theory, needs to relate differences in form to the
different meanings communicated by the second and third conditionals in English.

Teaching Activity 6

John is talking about different aspects of his life in the past and in the present.
First of all, read the following situations carefully, paying close attention to all
of the contextual information given. First, complete the true or false questions.
When you have done that, answer all the questions in the sections 1–4.

1.
(a) If I won the lottery, I would buy a house in Italy. Anyway, one can dream,
can’t they?
(b) If I had won the lottery when I was younger, I would have bought a
house in Italy. Trouble is, I never bought lottery tickets often enough to
give myself a chance.

2.
(a) If I were rich, I would travel the world. As it is, however, I am stuck in
this dead-end job.
 Critical Language Awareness 187

(b) If I had been rich when I was younger, I would have travelled the world.
It didn’t help that my parents were poor.

True or false?

(a) John has won the lottery.

(b) John will most likely win the lottery.
(c) John wants a house in Italy.
(d) John won the lottery when he was younger.
(e) John bought a house in Italy when he was younger.
(f) John is rich.
(g) John was not rich when he was younger.

2.
(a) Which verb forms do we use in the ‘if ’ clause and main clause of a
conditional when we talk about an unlikely but possible event in the
future?
(b) Which verb forms do we use in the ‘if ’ clause and main clause of a
conditional when we talk about a hypothetical or imaginary situation in
the present?
(c) Which verb forms do we use in the ‘if ’ and main clause of a conditional
when we talk about a hypothetical or imaginary situation or event in the
past?

3. On the basis of your answers to the above three questions, formulate a rule
for the two different sorts of conditional forms in English that are featured in
this activity.

4. Read the following sentences and correct any errors in the conditional forms
that you find.

1. If I had bought those trousers, I would not have ended up wearing them
that much.
2. If I was in the car, I would have been hurt in the accident.
3. If I hadn’t taken the medicine, I would have been sick for a long time.
4. If I didn’t eat all the cake, I wouldn’t have been so sick.
5. If I looked after my car better, I wouldn’t have had to pay so much money
to get it repaired.
188 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Relevance to Ecolinguistics in Education

The goal of interpretive consciousness-raising activities is the development of
knowledge and understanding about language items in second or other languages.
They were developed and have been used within the field of second language
acquisition and language teaching. Therefore, the main goal is the mastery of
another language. The application of ecolinguistics to the field of education is
done primarily for somewhat different reasons. However, as explained at the
beginning of this book, there are several very pertinent reasons for trying to
incorporate ecolinguistics within educational settings.

Inductive Skills in Text and Language Analysis

Textual analysis as carried out within the fields of critical discourse studies and
ecolinguistics relies on inductive techniques and skills that seek to derive abstract
meanings, theories or rules from actual examples of language in use. In addition
to this, fields of education such as critical language awareness can use interpretive
and receptive activities in order to highlight the form-to-meaning affordances
that particular forms of language carry as well as develop in learners an awareness
of how language can be used covertly in order to portray and construct states
of affairs in particular ways. Therefore, activities such as that we have looked at
above can be employed as part of an ecolinguistics approach within education that
aims to develop a heightened awareness of the myriad ways in which language
and other forms of symbolism normalize and naturalize destructive attitudes and
actions towards the natural world and distance us from the rest of nature. They
are also useful for sensitizing learners to ways in which the use of language and
other forms of semiosis can dull our perceptions and understandings of the actual
agencies of ecological destruction. These types of activities can be extremely
useful in laying the foundational aspects of knowledge that will allow learners
to gradually progress to larger examples of texts and authentic language in use.
Consciousness-raising activities promote language learning at the level of
conscious awareness. As proposed by Fairclough, the overall goal of language
mastery is complemented by the development of explicit knowledge about how
language works, as opposed to merely learning and practising how to use it.
As we have seen, Fairclough also makes the case that what has been lacking
in forms of learning about language (as opposed to learning a language, which
can involve a degree of implicit mastery and a focus on developing fluency)
 Critical Language Awareness 189

is the application of language to aspects of social life. Thus, a goal for critical
language awareness and the implementation of interpretive, analytical activities
within an ecolinguistics approach to education can be the development and
use of consciousness-raising activities that can encourage the development of
knowledge about how language mediates how we understand, experience and
engage with our social as well as natural environments.

Critical Awareness of Language versus Language Awareness

The following example of a consciousness-raising activity (teaching activity 7)
features several examples of euphemistic language that either linguistically
background or omit responsible human agency in ecological damage. In
line with Ellis’ definition, a specific linguistic feature has been isolated for
focused attention, the feature is present within material that is provided to
learners, learners are tasked with engaging inductive reasoning skills in order
to try to understand how the language feature works and they are expected to
formulate a rule that describes how the structure’s form relates to its meaning
potentials (Ellis 1991: 234, 2003: 163). What learners are specifically tasked
with in this activity is to compare the pairs of sentences. In each, one is the
original and one has been re-written. The original, real example of language
relating to the natural world, uses euphemisms in order to obfuscate and hide
the human-caused mechanisms of ecological harm. The second re-written
sentence avoids euphemism and clearly signals the agency and causal
relationships that lead to ecological destruction. Therefore, in this activity,
learners are to analyse the euphemistic language and the more direct use of
language in version two and describe how each represents human-caused
ecological harm in different ways.

Teaching Activity 7: Euphemistic Language Analysis

1.
(a) Globally, between 1990 and 2015, we lost the equivalent of 1,000 football
fields’ worth of forest per hour. (The Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC), December 13, 2017)
(b) Globally, between 1990 and 2015, we destroyed the equivalent of 1,000
football fields’ worth of forest per hour.
190 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

2.
(a) In addition to destroying some of the earth’s most precious ecosystems,
deforestation and forest degradation are together the second-largest
source of global carbon emissions (after the burning of fossil fuels) – at a
time when the planet can least afford to exacerbate the problem (ibid.).
(b) In addition to destroying some of the earth’s most precious ecosystems,
both the human-caused degradation and cutting down of forests are
together the second-largest source of global carbon emissions (after the
burning of fossil fuels) – at a time when the planet can least afford to
exacerbate the problem.
3.
(a) In some areas, particularly in the tropics and developing countries, crops
and cattle take over the scarred landscape (ibid.).
(b) In some areas, particularly in the tropics and developing countries, farmers
give over the scarred landscape to the growing of crops and grazing of cattle.
4.
(a) A clearcut’s footprint is vast, fragmenting and degrading entire swaths
of forest (ibid.).
(b) When people cut down forests they fragment and degrade entire
swaths of forest.
5.
(a) The result? Some species disappear altogether (ibid.).
(b) The result? Some species are driven into extinction (as a result of
human actions).
6.
(a) The most vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, people
with pre-existing health conditions, outdoor workers, people of colour,
and people with low income, are at an even higher risk because of the
compounding factors from climate change. (National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, n.d.)
(b) The most vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, people
with pre-existing health conditions, outdoor workers, people of colour,
and people with low income, are at an even higher risk because of the
compounding factors from human-induced climate change.
(c) The most vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, people
with pre-existing health conditions, outdoor workers, people of colour,
and people with low income, are at an even higher risk because of the
compounding factors from climate breakdown (emphasis by author).
 Critical Language Awareness 191

In order to avoid ‘banking’ forms of education, learners should, to some extent,

be encouraged to come to their own interpretations of the texts and uses of
language. At the same time, an ecolinguistics approach will make certain claims
about the meaning potentials of particular language features and patterns.
Therefore, I provide guides to possible interpretations, which teachers can use at
their own discretion.

Possible Learner Responses to Teaching Activity 7

In question 1, learners might notice that the sentence features a material process
and that the subject is the agent of the sentence and also the verb. They might
notice that what is impacted by this verb (or lost) is 1,000 football fields’ worth
of forest. Humans are, then, very much connected linguistically or to be more
specific, syntactically, to the loss of huge swathes of forest.
However, the main focus here should be the semantics of the verb ‘to lose’.
Despite the sentence being constructed in terms of a material process with a
human subject agent, the verb denotes the meaning of unintentional rather
than planned consequences of human actions. The use of the plural subject
pronoun ‘we’ here is used to refer to humanity rather than the humans who
are responsible for the cutting down of the forests. In addition, the semantic
meaning of ‘to lose’ here is of course in line with how it is used when we lose
someone we love. Crucially, it relates to the loss of someone or something dear
or precious to us rather than the notion of mislaying something. Semantically,
then, this statement functions to construct the situation as relating to the impact
of an event on humans rather than destructive human impacts on nature. The
main semantic focus is on what human society is left without rather than what
humans have done to the natural world.
Even though the syntax of the sentence, that is, the material process with a
transitive verb impacting an object that signifies an aspect of nature, indicates the
natural world as the affected entity of human actions, no actual cause-and-effect
relationship is constructed and therefore the sentence functions as a form of
euphemistic language, hiding human agency and actions in ecological damage.
What is also interesting here is that the semantic meaning denoted by the verb
‘to lose’ to some extent obfuscates responsible agency in the disappearance of
the forests. Moreover, through creating the impression that no agency played a
role in the ‘disappearance’ of the forests, the statement constructs this as an act
of God, as something that just happens.
192 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Another way of looking at how the verb ‘to lose’ is being used here is as a form
of eventuation. Van Leeuwen uses this concept to describe situations in which
actions or reactions are linguistically portrayed as events or situations that are
not initiated by human agency (2015: 149–50). Van Leeuwen gives the example
of the verbs ‘to happen’ and ‘to occur’. In the case of ‘to lose’ as it is being used
here, it does not refer to an action that we, as a species have carried out, but rather
a situation that has simply ‘occurred’ and which has no indicated initiator or
agent. For van Leeuwen, this is a form of de-agentialization, a linguistic strategy
for playing down the perception of human agency that is involved in actions and
processes, but also the de-emphasizing of actions and reactions themselves, often
constructing them as concepts, processes, events or situations. By de-emphasizing
agency and actions, certain agents become de-agentialized too. For example,
forests around the world are cut down by people on the basis of political and
economic forces and decisions. Therefore, at various layers of agency, the finger
of blame can very clearly point at our species and the social systems that we create
and which influence our actions. However, in this sentence, the human agents
of ecological destruction are de-agentialized through the process of eventuation
that occurs by de-emphasizing agency through the use of the verb ‘to lose’.

1.

(a) Globally, between 1990 and 2015, we lost the equivalent of 1,000 football
fields’ worth of forest per hour. (emphasis added by author).

Learners can be made aware that such euphemistic uses of language can
encourage a level of acceptance of ecological destruction as an inevitable aspect
of modern life. Thus, we are also discouraged from paying attention to the chains
of causality that connect the human destruction of the natural world, in what
are sometimes, faraway lands to our own consumption patterns. For example,
the destruction of orangutan habitat by logging companies in Indonesia is
driven by the global demand for palm oil in a wide range of products. Likewise,
large areas of forest in South America have been cut down and cleared to make
way for the growing of soya as animal feed. This soya is then transported great
distances around the world to supplement the wintertime feed of farm animals
that produce dairy products or will themselves be slaughtered and eaten.
In stark contrast, the alternative main clause or sentence provided makes this
agency clear. Again, a material process clause is used whereby the subject of
the sentence is also the agent of the verb or action. This action or process is
also indicated as impacting a natural entity (forests). However, the meaning of
the sentence is transformed through the addition of a standard transitive verb
 Critical Language Awareness 193

(destroyed), which in this case, clearly semantically signals the application of

negative agency from the subject agent to the object goal of the sentence:

agent process g o a l
. . . we destroyed the equivalent of 1,000 football fields’ worth of forest per hour.
subject verb d i r e c t o b j e c t
p r e d i c a t e

2.

(a) In addition to destroying some of the earth’s most precious ecosystems,

deforestation and forest degradation are together the second-largest
source of global carbon emissions (after the burning of fossil fuels) – at a
time when the planet can least afford to exacerbate the problem.
(b) In addition to destroying some of the earth’s most precious ecosystems,
both the human-caused degradation and cutting down of forests are
together the second-largest source of global carbon emissions (after the
burning of fossil fuels) – at a time when the planet can least afford to
exacerbate the problem.

In the second sentence learners will hopefully notice how human agency in the
cutting down and destruction of forests is omitted and essentially hidden through
replacing them with the processes of deforestation and forest degradation. These
processes are nominalizations, or, in other words, noun phrases that can be
formed from the verbs to deforest and to degrade, which as transitive verbs would
otherwise act upon a semantic goal. They have, therefore, undergone a degree of
‘thingification’ that can represent actions as objects or concepts. In this way, the
actions denoted by the verbs are backgrounded when portrayed as noun phrases.
In addition, by turning a material process clause into a noun phrase, the agent
of the action is omitted. It is often the case that the semantic goal of the clause
is also omitted; however, sometimes the goal or affected entity of the action is
present within the nominalization, as is the case here in ‘forest degradation’, in
which case the element playing the role of goal in a transitive clause or material
process features as the pre-modifier within the noun phrase created from it.
Nominalizations such as deforestation are often used as subjects in English
sentences taking the role of semantic agent that would otherwise be occupied by
a human agent. In this particular case, however, these nominalizations feature
in a relational process as subjects to the noun phrase subject complements ‘the
second-largest source of global carbon emissions’. As the semantic meaning of
194 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

the head of the noun phrase ‘source’ denotes an entity acting as a generator or
origin of another entity, a process or action is suggested though not syntactically
indicated. In other words, despite the lack of a material process clause, the
semantic meaning of the sentences suggests the meaning that would be indicated
in such a clausal pattern, whereby deforestation and forest degradation produce
‘the second-largest source of global carbon emissions’ and ‘destroy’ ‘some of the
Earth’s most precious ecosystems’:

token token value

deforestation and forest degradation are together the second-largest source of
compound subject subject complement

global carbon emissions

This last discussion about the clause pattern and how the semantics of the noun
‘source’ shifts the meaning of a relational process to that which is more akin to
a material process is a rather advanced analysis of how this sentence creates its
meanings and is by no means the bar at which learners’ analyses must be judged.
Indeed, this is also the case with all of these analyses. Individual teachers can make
their own judgements about the level of linguistic detail they feel is appropriate
and even useful for their learners to achieve in their analyses and discussions. In
this example, for instance, interesting insights can be gleaned by simply noting
the way the nominalizations allow the writer to avoid any sort of indication of
an ecological agent in the cutting down and degradation of the forests. Learners
might also react to a questionable representation within the adverbial prepositional
phrase and its embedded subordinate clause at the end of the sentence.

agent process goal

at a time when the planet can least afford to exacerbate the problem.
subject verb complex direct object

Here, planet Earth is given agency in ‘exacerbating the problem’ of producing

global carbon emissions through positioning it as subject agent to a complex of
verbs including the non-finite verb ‘to exacerbate’, which itself is positioned as
acting upon the noun phrase ‘the problem’ as its direct object.
The alternate sentence contains the simple addition of the compound
participle adjective ‘human-induced’ to the noun ‘deforestation’ and gerund
noun ‘cutting down of forests’ to indicate human agency. Another possibility
here would be to reproduce this meaning through the use of a subordinate clause
fronted with the time conjunction ‘when’.
 Critical Language Awareness 195

In number three, the most important aspect we want learners to pick up on is

how it is ‘crops and cattle’ rather than humans that are given maximum agency
for the ecologically destructive action of ‘taking over the scarred landscape’.
Learners may notice how this is done through the use of a material process
within which the crops and cattle are featured as the subject agents of the
transitive phrasal verb ‘to take over’, which impacts the direct object ‘the scarred
landscape’. Of course, we can always say that we know that it is actually people
who plant the crops and breed the cattle into existence and then release them
onto the land. However, the ecolinguistic point to be made here is the possible
numbing effect of the repeated and conventional use of euphemistic language to
talk about environmental and ecological destruction at human hands and how
this can encourage a degree of fatalism regarding the ecological crises:

(a) In some areas, particularly in the tropics and developing countries, crops
and cattle take over the scarred landscape.
(b) In some areas, particularly in the tropics and developing countries,
farmers give over the scarred landscape to the growing of crops and
grazing of cattle.

The alternate construction (b) provides a more realistic representation of the

situation by placing farmers as the subject of the sentence with agency in ‘giving
over the scarred landscape to the growing of crops and grazing of cattle’. In this
representation, the direct object ‘the scarred landscape’ as a goal and the direct
object of the clause is ‘given over’ to the prepositional phrase indirect object
‘to the growing of crops and the grazing of cattle’. Thus, the land is devoted to
a purpose that is centred around producing utility for humankind rather than
caring for or facilitating the conditions needed by nature so that it can sustain
us in the long term:

agent process goal recipient

. . . farmers give over the scarred landscape to the growing of crops
subject verb direct object indirect object

In number four, learners should notice the vague agency attributed to a clearcut;
in other words, the area of land on which the extensive cutting down of trees
has been carried out. In this example of euphemistic language use, learners will
hopefully be able to see that this is an example of attributing agency to humans
that occurs through several levels of abstraction. It is not the decisions or actions
of humans that are represented as the cause of the ‘fragmenting and degrading
entire swathes of forest’. Rather, this agency is euphemistically abstracted to the
196 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

result of destructive human actions, in other words the clearcut itself. Again, one
could argue that readers can of course make the connection between humans,
the clearcut and then the further fragmentation and degradation of swathes of
forest. However, one can equally make the case to learners that when they become
conventionalized, such portrayals of ecological destruction might prevent the
formation of clear mental models of direct causal relationships between human
decision-making and subsequent actions and the very real impacts they have on
the natural world:

(a) A clearcut’s footprint is vast, fragmenting and degrading entire swathes of

forest.
(b) When people cut down forests, they fragment and degrade entire swathes
of forest.

Learners might struggle here to identify the sort of clear agency that would
normally be portrayed in material process clauses whereby the subject is the
clear agent, which then acts on a goal through the action indicated by a transitive
verb or complex of verbs. Instead, learners need to see beyond the relational
process that attributes the clearcut’s footprint as being ‘vast’ and notice how the
clearcut’s agency is instead indicated through the transitive present participle
verbs ‘fragmenting and degrading’ that act upon the direct object ‘entire swathes
of forest’ in a present participle subordinate clause placed at the end of the
preceding main clause as an adverbial. Although learners may not necessarily
know about or be able to identify the range of different subordinate clauses that
a language allows, they should be encouraged to be able to take on a flexible
position that can identify representations of agency in syntactic structures that
fall outside the classic subject–verb –object pattern:

carrier attribute
A clearcut’s footprint is vast
subject subject complement

fragmenting and degrading entire swaths of forest.

adverbial

Although less elegant, learners will hopefully see that the alternate sentence
makes a clear connection between human actions and the fragmentation
and degradation of the forests by constructing human agency clearly within
a subordinate clause that fronts the sentence. Learners may notice that this
subordinate clause is finite in its structure, which allows for the use of a material
 Critical Language Awareness 197

process within which the subject agent is ‘people’. The destruction of the forests
is clearly represented through the use of the transitive phrasal verb ‘to cut down’,
and this verb acts upon the direct object goal, ‘forests’. This alternate sentence
uses the main clause in order to situate the destruction and fragmentation of the
forests as a knock-on result of the initial ‘cutting down’ of the forests.
In the fifth sentence, learners should notice how the species do not take a
clear position as direct object goal in a material clause in which they are being
driven to extinction due to the actions of humankind:

(a) The result? Some species disappear altogether.

(b) The result? Some species are driven into extinction (as a result of
human actions).

Instead, they are placed as the subject of a clause, and the verb that is applied
to them is intransitive. It is difficult, therefore, to see any direct agency in
their extinction. The structure of this clause is the same as that featuring
ergative verbs, as the subject is the goal, even though the clause is set out in the
active rather than passive voice. However, we can think of the subject here as
taking on the role of goal as ‘some species’ undergo the change of state that is
indicated by the verb. Thus, the disappearing in this case is not volitional but
instead is something that happens to the species of wildlife. As this material
process indicates a situation rather than an action, it is virtually impossible
with this construction to assign blame to any human cause to the ecological
harm:
goal process
Some species disappear altogether.
subject verb adverbial

We can also think of this as an example of van Leeuwen’s eventuation (2015:

149–50). The verb ‘to disappear’ here can be considered to occupy the same
category and work in the same way as the verbs ‘to happen’ and ‘to occur’. Species
disappearing here is portrayed as something that simply happens. It is a natural
process that has no instigator or agent.
Thus, what learners should notice here is that we expect this type of clause
structure to indicate the volitional agency of a subject agent. Moreover, the use of
the intransitive verb does not allow for the clear portrayal of agency enacted by
one entity on another. The construction, therefore, not only hides human agency
in wiping out wild animal species but also suggests that their ‘disappearance’ is
an agentless, natural process.
198 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Learners might notice that in the alternate sentence the fact that ‘some
species’ is the semantic goal of the clause and therefore the affected entity of an
action performed by another entity is signalled clearly through the use of the
passive voice. The passive voice clause used is actually agentless, with the ‘by’
prepositional phrase not included. However, human agency is indicated through
the verbless clause ‘as a result of human actions’, which in its function as an
adverbial also provides information about the action of the main clause.
The sixth example of euphemistic language is taken from a different source
and relates not to the cutting down of forests by logging companies but instead
to the human impact on the planet’s climate. The targeted example of language
here can be quite difficult for learners to spot due to its ubiquitous use in the
media and everyday English. However, learners who have previously been made
aware of the linguistic effects of nominalization might notice how the compound
noun and noun phrase ‘climate change’ linguistically erases the role that humans
play in the production of emissions. Some learners can notice that this positions
the climate as an entity that undergoes its own change, which can give the
impression that the particular changes to our climate that we are experiencing
now are the result of natural climatic shifts that go through cycles of change over
thousands of years.
As previously mentioned, the portrayal of processes as things or objects
through the linguistic construction of them as noun phrases can in some cases
include the representation of the affected entity. In this particular case, this is
the ‘climate’, which, as the phrase indicates, undergoes the process of ‘change’:

(a) The most vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, people
with pre-existing health conditions, outdoor workers, people of colour,
and people with low income, are at an even higher risk because of the
compounding factors from climate change.
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, no date)

The first alternate construction offered does not address the problem of
representing the issue as a neutral change rather than a negative shift to a
much warmer and unstable climate. Learners should notice that what it does
rectify, however, is the issue of human agency and culpability and the notion
that we are not talking about a natural event, but instead a process caused by
human actions.
In a similar fashion to sentence (2) (b), the issue of the obfuscation of
agency is rather easily addressed through adding a compound adjective
 Critical Language Awareness 199

(‘human-induced’) before the compound noun ‘climate change’. To address

the problem with representing this situation as just a process of change that is
neither particularly positive nor negative, the second alternate sentence uses
the suggestion made by the The Guardian newspaper and the environmental
campaigner, writer and Guardian columnist George Monbiot. They have
pledged to employ language that does not euphemize, obfuscate or play down
the effects of human impacts on the natural world. Two examples of such
language are the noun phrases climate breakdown or climate heating rather than
climate change. Climate heating clearly shifts away from the notion that what
we will experience amounts to mere change and instead more clearly indicates
the overall rise in global temperatures projected by climate scientists. Climate
breakdown, on the other hand, conveys the notion that the climate is not only
being changed to a warmer state but also one that will no longer function
according to the relatively stable norms of the Holocene epoch and that some
changes that we will experience will not simply relate to a warming planet. We
can include the term biodiversity loss in this list, a phrase that suggests that it
is somehow a natural process and that our actions are not directly implicated
in eradicating nature. Instead, we might feel that the destruction of biodiversity
is more accurate and therefore useful. The different aspects of reality that are
highlighted by the alternative examples of language given here can stimulate
learners to engage in interesting pedagogical discussions about the implications
of using euphemistic language versus language that risks accusations of
hyperbole by climate sceptics.
The activity below combines the use of reception and a targeted focus on
particular language forms as well as a production stage where learners re-write
sentences in order to represent damaging human activities more clearly. In
this case, a productive activity following a receptive focus on language features
provides an opportunity for further consciousness-raising.

Teaching Activity 8

The sentences below contain euphemistic uses of language that linguistically

background and sometimes hide human impact on nature. The sections
containing euphemistic language are highlighted in bold. Your task is twofold: 1.
Analyze the highlighted sections in order to determine how the language used
plays down or hides human agency in environmental damage. 2. Re-write the
200 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

highlighted section so that it represents more clearly and realistically human

agency in causing harm to nature.

i. Globally, between 1990 and 2015, we lost the equivalent of 1,000 football
fields’ worth of forest per hour.

…………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………

ii. In addition to destroying some of the earth’s most precious ecosystems,

deforestation and forest degradation are together the second-largest
source of global carbon emissions (after the burning of fossil fuels) – at a
time when the planet can least afford to exacerbate the problem.

…………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………..

iii. In some areas, particularly in the tropics and developing countries, crops
and cattle take over the scarred landscape.

…………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………

iv. A clearcut’s footprint is vast, fragmenting and degrading entire swaths

of forest.

…………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………

v. The result? Some species disappear altogether.

…………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………

vi. The most vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, people
with pre-existing health conditions, outdoor workers, people of colour,
and people with low income, are at an even higher risk because of the
compounding factors from climate change.

…………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………
 Critical Language Awareness 201

Applying Problem-Posing Consciousness-Raising

Tasks to the Teaching of Ecolinguistics

Consciousness-raising tasks that are designed around the concept of Freirean

problem-posing, with a series of prompts that push the learner to notice aspects
of the targeted language feature can be used in applications of ecolinguistics
to education. The following activity can be considered deductive to some
degree as it assumes a good foundation in the linguistics of participant roles
in clauses and how agency is indicated syntactically. However, it also has a
considerable inductive aspect as learners must react to what they are provided
with and work out how agency is being expressed in the sentences and who
is impacted and how. Moreover, as is the case with many activities based on
the analysis of language, they take the form of problem-posing rather than
requiring learners to complete an activity in a way that has been clearly and
rigidly defined beforehand. In such activities, learners can often demonstrate
insightful perspectives and reflections, which emerge through the process of
carrying out analyses.

Teaching Activity 9

The sentence provided below as number 1 talks about a particular type of

ecological destruction. For this sentence, carry out a linguistic analysis of human
agency. Answer the questions below:

(a) Does this situation involve human agency acting against the natural
world?
(b) If so, is this human agency clearly signalled or linguistically hidden? In
either case, how is this done?
(c) Is it possible to identify a process type here?
(d) Is it possible to identify the syntactic sentence functions? If so, please
do this.
(e) Is it possible to identify any participant roles? If so, please do this.
(f) Does the language use linguistically signal a clear agent of action?
1. D
 eforestation is the clearing, destroying, or otherwise removal of
trees through deliberate, natural, or accidental means (Pachamama
Alliance, no date).
202 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Possible Key to Teaching Activity 9

token value
Deforestation is the clearing, destroying, or otherwise removal of trees
through . . . .
subject verb s u b j e c t c o m p l e m e n t
Process type = Relational

Teaching Activity 9 – Discussion

What is worth pointing out to learners and discussing here is that this is a
relational process constructed by using the noun phrase deforestation as the
subject that is being related to a complex and coordinated noun phrase subject
complement. Human agency is linguistically hidden in two ways. First, we
have a relational process rather than a material process; therefore, the sentence
indicates the attributes that the subject has by relating it to other concepts
rather than indicating any actions that it is performing. Second, while the
subject itself suggests an action, this action and the agent are backgrounded and
de-emphasized as it is constructed as a noun phrase that omits any mention of
an agent. Likewise, the subject complement, that is, the entity in the sentence
that the subject is related to is formed by one complex noun phrase consisting
of two gerund nouns and a complex noun phrase that can stand on its own.
Neither the gerund nouns (clearing and destroying) nor the standard noun
phrase (removal of trees) include any representation of the actual agent of this
destruction.
However, learners might notice, and it is indeed worth pointing out that
gerund nouns quite clearly indicate agency through the fact that they take the
same form as participle verbs in continuous verb tenses. It is also interesting
to note here that the ‘clearing’, ‘destroying’ and ‘removal’ are all indicated as
impacting the affected entity of ‘the trees’ despite the fact that the trees do not
feature within a clause or as the goal of a transitive verb. As we have seen, van
Leeuwen (2008) advances his social action and actor networks, an analytical
framework that details how agency can be indicated through the use of a wide
range of structures and not merely through material processes that feature
subject agents performing actions in the form of transitive verbs against direct
object goals. Van Leeuwen shows how either pre- or post-modification can
indicate agential force in noun phrases between the concept represented by the
head of the phrase towards the entity indicated by the modifier. Therefore, we
can clearly understand the actions of the ‘clearing’, ‘destroying’ and ‘removal’
 Critical Language Awareness 203

as enacting agential force upon the trees. Nonetheless, the human agents are
omitted and therefore the sense of agency is played down to some extent.
More advanced learners might be asked to take on the role of an ecolinguist
working for an environmental protection organization. In this role, they are, for
example, tasked with re-writing the original sentence so that it better indicates
the human source of ecological harm, or put another way, human agency.

Teaching Activity 10

(a) Re-write sentence 1 (from activity 9) so that it defines the noun

deforestation but importantly does not omit human agents. Write your
new version so that it is also constructed as a relational process.

Key to Teaching Activity 10: Possible Re-Written Version

Deforestation refers to the destruction and loss of forest that happens through
natural processes or when humans cut down large numbers of trees.

Such activities can stimulate useful discussions with learners about the nature of
relational processes and how their main focus relates one entity to another or to
particular characteristics. Thus, while it is easy to make comparisons or parallels
between concepts and things, it is rather difficult to represent actions or agency.
Relational processes also encourage the construction of actions, which might
otherwise be represented as full finite clauses, as noun phrases or nominalizations
of the actions and participating entities represented in those clauses, thus
downplaying agency. However, nominal groups can feature many different sorts
of grammatical structures contained within them. In fact, the re-written sentence
in this activity contains two material process clauses but is particularly complex as
one material process clause is embedded within another and both are embedded
within a nominal group that is acting as the value or subject complement to the
subject of the sentence. Therefore, although the overall structure of the sentence
corresponds to a relational process, within the value participant we see ‘destruction
happening’ and ‘humans cutting down trees’.
Consciousness-raising activities can be designed to be compatible with both
the fields of knowledge about language or critical language awareness. As we have
seen, with an approach based on the development of knowledge about language
learners are tasked with inductively making crucial connections between forms
of language and how changes in forms and choices of language structure and
204 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

lexis affect meaning. When applied to critical language awareness, teachers will
want to design tasks that allow the social, cultural and societal implications
to become tangible. When introducing linguistic analyses of the relationship
between the form of language and meaning affordances, it can be useful to
provide learners with short and focused examples of language. As we have seen,
in order to do this, it might be necessary to either modify example clauses and
sentences from authentic sources or to create one’s own examples. When learners
have developed a degree of proficiency with being able to analyse and identify
both language features and their possible meanings, more expansive examples of
language can be provided. These more extensive texts can also come from more
authentic sources.
We have seen in this chapter that an interesting area to look at with
more focused examples of language is that of transitivity and agency. Some
environmentally relevant discourses such as that of shallow environmentalism can
tend to treat environmental problems in ways that avoid deeper investigations
and discussions about the root causes and underlying societal and cultural
sources of ecological destruction. They can, therefore, gloss over the particular
cultural narratives or social or economic structures that threaten ecological
systems in systematic ways. Thus, as a result, such discourses can, for example,
laud woefully inadequate and piecemeal solutions or background or omit human
agency in environmental problems. Therefore, teaching learners about how
agency is represented and constructed in clauses and helping them to identify
how entities are being portrayed and construed in language, in general, can
provide a strong foundation for further ecolinguistic investigations of language
in use. In this chapter, I have applied the linguistic areas of Systemic Functional
Linguistics and transitivity theory, the concept of the active and passive voice,
eventuation as well as the semantics of different verbs. It is important, however,
that the examples used here are treated as exactly that, examples of what can be
done with a variety of discursive features and strategies.
This section has centred on the use of inductive, consciousness-raising
activities for the development of ecolinguistic awareness and knowledge.
However, all inductive activities rely to varying degrees on the presence of pre-
existing knowledge. When learners use their inductive powers to work out an
underlying rule or theory of the examples of language they are engaging with,
they construct this knowledge on the basis of what exists in their symbolic,
material and mental worlds. Some of this pre-existing knowledge, which makes
up their mental models, may have been developed through the more traditional
channels of being taught deductively. Therefore, the inductive/deductive
 Critical Language Awareness 205

distinction should not be thought of as a binary relationship between the two

forms of obtaining knowledge. Rather, learning activities sit at different positions
on a spectrum of varying degrees of deduction or induction. Therefore, when
we construct an inductive activity with the intention that learners will engage
intellectual effort in order to solve a problem and build knowledge, we must
acknowledge that they will not only be relying on the examples of language and
extra context that we provide them with but that they will also be engaging with
any background knowledge that they have.
 9

Setting Out the Conceptual and Pedagogical

Foundations for Working with Critical
Language Awareness and Ecolinguistics
in the Classroom

Ecolinguists, ecocritics, ecofeminists and ecocentric scholars among others

tend to think and talk about our species’ relationship with the natural world in
ways that are not always aligned to those of general society. Scholars from these
fields have become well versed in stepping outside of the positivistic scientific
and rationalist paradigm that dominates contemporary discussions about the
natural world and instead relate to nature in terms of the concepts of culture,
ethics, meaning and inherent worth. By being able to conceptualize the living
world in this way, it becomes possible to use language to bestow upon nature
certain notions that have traditionally been the preserve of the humanities.
Indeed, language and philosophy, and therefore environmental philosophy,
are seen as being intimately connected. It can therefore be easy to fall into
the trap of assuming that our students will not only share our perspectives on
environmental philosophy and human–nature relations but will also be versed
in applying notions of ethics and meaning to nature. Moreover, the idea of taking
a critical perspective on language and the natural world is likely to be very new
to them. Indeed, the reality is that many of our students and indeed readers
of this book have not been immersed in this field and therefore are likely to
need some help adjusting to this way of thinking about language and the natural
world. This chapter, therefore, attempts to set out how ecolinguistic analyses and
discussions in the classroom can be facilitated by establishing some important
concepts related to content as well as pedagogy.
 Setting Out the Foundations 207

Declarative and Functioning Knowledge in

Consciousness-Raising Activities

Indeed, there is some background or foundational knowledge that is a prerequisite

for the sorts of linguistic analyses that we want learners to be able to carry out.
Biggs and Tang (2007) distinguish between two forms of knowledge. On the one
hand, there is declarative knowledge, which Biggs and Tang relate to the notion of
‘knowing about things’, or ‘knowing-what’ (ibid.: 72). It is what we learn when we
memorize facts or theories. It is the academic knowledge which we might glean
from reading a book or sitting in a lecture. It is a form of knowledge that is subject to
particular theories or ways in which fields understand phenomena and is therefore
reproducible and standardized. Declarative knowledge is necessary for action or
praxis, in other words, applications of knowledge or creative uses of it (ibid.).
On the other hand, there is functioning knowledge. Functioning knowledge
is that which is drawn on for performances of various kinds. This knowledge
exists within the experience of the individual and manifests through the solving
of problems, such as designing buildings, planning, teaching or performing
surgery. These actions are underpinned by certain understandings of the
world. However, functioning knowledge is not autonomous or self-standing as
it requires a solid foundation of declarative knowledge (ibid.). Biggs and Tang
refer to Leinhardt et al. (1995) whose own distinctions between ‘professional
knowledge’ and ‘university knowledge’ align strongly with the concepts of
declarative and functioning knowledge:
● Professional knowledge is functioning, specific and pragmatic. It deals with
executing, applying and making priorities (ibid.; cited in Biggs and Tang
2009: 73).
● University knowledge is declarative, abstract and conceptual. It deals with
labelling, differentiating, elaborating and justifying (ibid.).

Therefore, the abstract, rule-based academic knowledge that lends itself to declaring
and reproducing facts and information, identifying, labelling, differentiating
and justifying is needed for the application of the more actionable and practical
functioning knowledge that facilitates tasks such as analysing situations, finding
solutions and producing and creating. Likewise, linguistic analyses of texts
and examples of language in use, which can be thought of as problem-solving
activities that require the higher-order thinking skills of induction, hypothesizing
and theory building, require a foundation of declarative knowledge concerning
factors such as the structural properties of the language in question.
208 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Simple identification and labelling activities like the one below based on
Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen 2013) can help
develop a declarative base for many of the concepts that facilitate learners’
ability to engage in the higher forms of thinking that enable them to carry out
more autonomous comprehensive analyses of authentic uses of language. Such
analyses can relate to those carried out in the classroom but also as part of
research projects accompanying the writing of essays and dissertations.

Teaching Activity 11: Participant Roles

Using the information given to you below, identify the clause participants
underlined in each sentence and match the process types to each sentence. The
first one has been done for you.

(a) The man bit the dog. (Agent / Material process clause – transitive)

(b) The man heard the dog.

(c) That snake is harmless.

(d) The wild boar snorted.

(e) The stream flowed through the forest.

(f) 100 000 tons of plastic was pulled up from the North Sea last year.

(g) The man bit the dog.

(h) The huge oak tree blew over.

(i) Anders suggested that they should leave.

(j) 100 000 tons of plastic was pulled up from the North Sea last year.

(k) There was a black dog outside the house.

(l) This dog was friendly.

(m) The man heard the dog.

Process Type

Material process clause (transitive)

Material process clause (intransitive)
 Setting Out the Foundations 209

Material process clause (ergative – intransitive)

Behavioural process clause
Verbal process clause
Mental process clause
Relational process clause
Existential process clause

Clause Participants
1. Circumstance (temporal)
2. Circumstance (location)
3. Agent
4. Medium
5. Experiencer
6. Sayer
7. Existent
8. Experience
9. Carrier
10. Behaver
11. Attribute
12. Goal

Key to Teaching Activity 11

(a) Agent / Material process clause (transitive)
The man bit the dog.
(b) Experiencer / Mental process clause
The man heard the dog.
(c) Carrier / Relational process clause
That snake is harmless.
(d) Behaver / Behavioural process clause
The wild boar snorted.
(e) Agent / Material process clause (intransitive)
The stream flowed through the forest.
(f) Circumstance (location) / Material process clause (transitive)
100 000 tons of plastic was pulled up from the North Sea last year.
(g) Goal / Material process clause (transitive)
The man bit the dog.
(h) Medium / Material process clause (ergative intransitive)
The huge oak tree blew over.
210 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

(i) Sayer / Verbal process clause

Anders suggested that they should leave.
(j) Circumstance (temporal) / Material process clause (transitive)
100 000 tons of plastic was pulled up from the North Sea last year.
(k) Existent / Existential process clause
There was a black dog outside the house.
(l) Attribute / Relational process clause
This dog was friendly.
(m) Experience /Mental process clause
The man heard the dog

Learners can then graduate to tasks and activities that also build declarative
knowledge but place greater cognitive demands on them, such as those
demonstrated by the consciousness-raising activity below. In this case, learners are
required to answer a range of different questions at different levels of complexity
but also scope. For example, questions can relate purely to structural aspects of
the targeted language feature but can also push learners to connect language use
to meaning affordances that have social implications and consequences.
Taking an ecolinguistic perspective, learners need to be able to relate the
meaning potential of language features and discourses to ecological and
environmental issues and the potential effect that those messages might have
upon our orientations towards the natural world. These latter types of question
take an interpretive, consciousness-raising activity beyond the scope of
language awareness and into the area of critical language awareness. Even more
sophisticated analyses such as these are only possible if learners already possess
the necessary foundation of declarative knowledge about language.
However, as we have seen, it is not always intuitive to apply the humanities
concepts of culture, philosophy, ethics, morals, meaning, worth and also
language to discussions about the natural world and our relationship with it.
The development of declarative knowledge is hugely facilitative of what we
want to achieve when working with ecolinguistics educationally, as it sets
in place much of the foundational knowledge upon which the theorizing
and hypothesizing that happens in the analyses of language can occur.
However, without the benefit of having worked in this way before, it is not
always obvious to learners that we can apply a critical stance on language to
the representation of nature and ecology. It is not after all, how the public
pedagogy of Western society encourages us to think. Learners, therefore,
may also not necessarily be initially aligned with many of the concepts that
 Setting Out the Foundations 211

we deal with in ecolinguistic analyses and discussions. However, as we have

seen, many fields, such as ecofeminism and pedagogical movements such as
ecojustice education or a pedagogy of responsibility highlight how forms of
oppression and their sources often line up together. Thus, by first establishing
a conceptual base that includes the notion of the linguistic and semiotic
representation of humans, learners can be sensitized to important concepts
that are initially more relatable because they can apply them to themselves. If
learners are for example first taught and allowed to explore how language can
portray and construct human animals in ways that are less than favourable and
might therefore encourage poor treatment, it is an easy conceptual step to take
in then applying those concepts to the non-human natural world. In doing
so, important connections are made and similarities highlighted between the
plight of all sentient beings.

A More Complex Analysis of Structure,

Syntax and Semantics

In the awareness/consciousness-raising activity below, learners are tasked with

analysing a range of news headlines that relate to the human-related concept of
war. Only one of these headlines is real. The other three are invented but all refer
to the same situation and use different syntax and sometimes lexis. Learners are
required to put into action their declarative knowledge about sentence structure,
syntax and semantics. However, this activity represents a step-up in complexity
from the previous simple labelling activity based on process types and clause
participants. The following activity, however, both tests and raises awareness of
a wider range of linguistic features that relate to a knowledge of how entities (in
this case, people) and their actions are represented in clauses. For example, for
this activity, learners need to both know about and how to identify examples of
the following linguistic concepts:

● Process types.
● Transitivity and active and passive voice sentence structure.
● Transitive verbs and intransitive verbs.
● Knowledge of the meaning potentials involved with choices of voice and
inclusion or omission of the ‘by’ agent in the passive voice.
● Sentence functions/clause functions and the grammatical forms that take them.
● Semantic/participant roles.
212 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Declarative knowledge is needed for the labelling of process type, the different
syntactic and semantic elements, as well as determining whether the sentences
are in the active or passive voice, and understanding the forms of verbs used
and how this influences meaning and semantic roles.
Once this declarative knowledge has been put to work, learners will have
a good foundation upon which to put into play their functioning knowledge
incorporating the higher-order thinking skills of making decisions, prioritizing,
hypothesizing and theorizing. This functioning knowledge is particularly
necessary for the final stage in consciousness-raising activities, which requires
learners to formulate a rule or theory about how the targeted features work
and influence meaning. The activity as it is presented below would take a
considerable length of time to carry out and would therefore be best broken
down into separate sections carried out in different lessons, with each separate
activity providing progression through the increased complexity and cognitive
demands made on learners.

Teaching Activity 12

Below you will see one real news headline and three fake or made-up headlines
pertaining to the same situation. The real headline is (a). The other three
made-up headlines represent the same situation that is reported on in the real
headline; however, they feature different sentence structures and choices of
vocabulary.
For each of these four headlines, you have a number of different tasks. Analyse
all four headlines and determine the following:

1. Which process type does each headline use?

2. What are the syntactic functions of each of the main grammatical
elements in each?
3. What are the semantic roles of each of the main grammatical elements in
each?
4. On the basis of your analysis so far, to what extent does each headline
portray the U.S. troops as having responsible agency in the deaths of the
Iraqis? How can you know this?
 Setting Out the Foundations 213

5. Which of the headlines casts the U.S. troops in the best light and which
places most blame on them for their actions?
6. Why do you think this?
7. Place the headlines in the following order. Least blame directed at the U.S.
troops to most blame.
8. Be ready to justify your decision and theory using what you know of how
the language is being used.

(a) 26 Iraqi insurgents have been shot dead in clashes with U.S. troops
(Traci, Carl, Associated Press, Wilmington Star-News 2005)
(b) U.S. troops have shot dead 26 Iraqi insurgents
(c) U.S. troops have shot dead 26 Iraqis
(d) 26 Iraqi insurgents die in firefight with U.S. troops

Key to Teaching Activity 12

When placed in order in terms of least to most blame put on the U.S. troops, the
following order can be justified from the linguistic ‘evidence’:

(d) 26 Iraqi insurgents die in firefight with U.S. troops.

(a) 26 Iraqi insurgents have been shot dead in clashes with U.S. troops.
(Traci, Carl, Associated Press, Wilmington Star-News 2005)
(b) U.S. troops have shot dead 26 Iraqi insurgents
(c) U.S. troops have shot dead 26 Iraqis

As mentioned above, the first step for the learners is to label and analyse the
sentences in terms of their syntactic functions/clause elements and semantic roles.

goal process circumstance (location)

(a) 26 Iraqi insurgents have been shot dead in clashes with U.S. troops

subject verb subject complement adverbial

Process type = material process

agent process goal

(b) U.S. troops have shot dead 26 Iraqi insurgents

subject verbs object complement direct object

Process type = material process

214 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

agent process goal

(c) U.S. troops have shot dead 26 Iraqis

subject verbs object complement direct object

Process type = material process

experiencer process Circumstance (location)

(d) 26 Iraqi insurgents die in firefight with U.S. troops

subject verb adverbial

Process type = material process

The next stage is for learners to use the syntactic and semantic frameworks
they have applied to the headlines in order to determine the relative degree
of responsible agency that is linguistically applied to the U.S. troops in each
headline.

goal process circumstance (location)

(a) 26 Iraqi insurgents have been shot dead in clashes with U.S. troops
subject verbs subject complement adverbial

In headline (a), the subject of the clause is not the agent of the action of
shooting but instead the goal, in other words, the affected entity or the entity
that undergoes the impact of the actions of the agent and its verb. This is,
therefore, a passive voice sentence structure. By situating the goal of the action
as the subject of the sentence, the 26 Iraqi insurgents are placed in a prominent
position – what happens to them is seen as being of importance. Also of note
here is the choice of lexis. Although it might be considered difficult to omit
the noun ‘insurgents’ as this has become an accepted term used for those who
take up force of arms to try to rid their country of occupying forces, this term
can still be understood as portraying the dead Iraqis in this case as armed
fighters, which paints their deaths in a very particular light and goes at least
some way to contextualizing their deaths. The main verb in the verb complex
is transitive and is not disguised or played down with euphemistic language.
Likewise, their fate and the result of being shot are clearly indicated through
the use of the subject complement ‘dead’. However, no agent is provided in this
sentence. Learners might have identified that this is a passive voice sentence in
English and also understand that passive voice sentences allow the language
user to either include or leave out the agent, depending on what they want to
 Setting Out the Foundations 215

communicate and whether or not they want to implicate the agent in a negative
action. What might confuse some learners, however, is the presence of the
noun phrase ‘U.S. troops’ in the structure at the end of the clause. They may,
however, have correctly identified that this noun phrase is embedded within
a prepositional phrase structure, which itself is acting as the adverbial of the
sentence.
Moreover, the noun phrase U.S. troops, is itself embedded within the noun
phrase ‘clashes with U.S. troops’ as part of a post-modifier. Therefore, the
prepositional phrase within its embedded noun phrase represents the situation
as ‘clashes’, which simultaneously establishes the agency of deadly force as being
reciprocal and therefore equal while also hiding any indication of the side that
initiated the fighting. This headline, therefore, does not linguistically attribute
the U.S. troops with much agency in the deaths of the Iraqis.

agent process goal

(b) U.S. troops have shot dead 26 Iraqi insurgents
subject verbs object complement direct object

Headline (b) uses a material process in the active voice and features the U.S.
troops as the subject agents of the action of shooting dead 26 Iraqis. This, then,
attributes maximum agency to them for the markedly negative action of shooting
people dead. The only mitigating factor for the U.S. troops here is the use of the
noun ‘insurgents’ as the head noun of the noun phrase to describe the Iraqis as
armed fighters, and therefore using force to rid their land of foreign forces. It can
be argued, therefore, that this headline portrays the U.S. troops as the agents of
deadly force and the killers of 26 insurgents.

agent process goal

(c) U.S. troops have shot dead 26 Iraqis
subject verbs object complement direct object

In headline (c), the sentence is constructed in exactly the same way apart from
the use of ‘Iraqis’ rather than ‘Iraqi insurgents’. This is an important difference,
as choosing not to use the noun insurgents as the signifier that stands in for
Iraqis in this case would construct them as unarmed civilians, which therefore
simultaneously portrays the U.S. troops as firing on and killing innocent people
who were going about their everyday lives. This invented headline therefore
represents the U.S. troops as having a very high degree of agency and therefore
responsibility in the killing of unarmed civilians.
216 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

experiencer process circumstance (location)

(d) 26 Iraqi insurgents die in firefight with U.S. troops
subject verb adverbial

For headline (d), the 26 Iraqi insurgents are again featured as the subject of the
clause. However, they are neither the agent nor the goal in this case. They are given
the semantic role of experiencer. If learners investigate the clause further, they
might notice that the verb that follows the subject is intransitive. The verb ‘to die’
represents death in a different way to the transitive verb ‘to kill’. With the former,
dying is seen as a process that the body goes through. People experience the
process of dying. In addition, the verb is intransitive in the sense that the process
is not initiated from an external source, which also allows for the possibility
that the deaths were less intentional. Killing, on the other hand, as a transitive
verb, involves an external action that both causes death and suggests that this
death is the intended outcome of actions taken. However, what is of particular
importance here is the cumulative linguistic impressions that occur across and
between texts, which contribute to the formation of individuals’ mental models
that are formed through exposure to language that either signals responsible
agency and cause-and-effect relationships clearly or that which obfuscates and
backgrounds agency and culpability.
In the consciousness-raising activity below, learners are assumed to already
have quite an advanced knowledge of English syntax in terms of features such as
transitivity patterns, active and passive voice, the use of transitive and intransitive
verbs, but also different process types and how these create affordances for
representing entities in particular ways. There are also clear differences in terms
of how the vocabulary chosen portrays the different sexes. It is worth pointing
out to learners that this selection of headlines from one newspaper is a small
sample of linguistic data and therefore one must be extremely careful in drawing
any hard and fast conclusions about how men and women are represented
by this newspaper or this genre of newspapers in general. However, this is a
consciousness-raising activity, and in this role, it can be used to sensitize learners
to linguistic patterns of representation so that they can carry out their own
critical discourse analyses, and then once these concepts have been internalized
go on to apply these ideas to the ecolinguistic analyses of representations of the
natural world and our relationships with it.
 Setting Out the Foundations 217

Representation of Men and Women in Tabloid Headlines

Teaching Activity 13
Below you will see 12 headlines that have been chosen at random from the
online website of the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail. Your task is to
determine whether men and women are represented differently according to
what is present in this sample of headlines.
Use your knowledge of English syntax and also pay close attention to the
vocabulary items that have been chosen to represent the men and women. Do
you notice any patterns? Are there any consistent differences in terms of how
language is used to portray men and women?

1. Dylan McDermott signs on as the new lead actor for CBS’ FBI: Most
Wanted . . . just after Julian McMahon announced he’s leaving after three
seasons.
(Gallagher 2022)

2. Wedding bells? The Bachelor’s Jimmy Nicholson hints he’s going to marry
Holly Kingston in a sweet birthday post.
(Hyland and Mrad 2022)

3. Salma Hayek, 55, wows in blue bikini as waves crash over her on sandy
shore in new Instagram post.
(McGreal 2022)

4. Incredible moment Canadian tennis star Denis Shapovalov accuses

Australian Open umpire of being ‘CORRUPT’ – as he crashes out in match
with Rafael Nadal .
(Stevens and Prentice 2022)

5. Making a comeback? Nikki Webster, 34, turns heads in a red jumpsuit and
sky-high heels in Sydney following a TV appearance.
(Longhetti 2022)

6. She has expensive taste! Married At First Sight star Elizabeth Sobinoff shows
off designer jewellery – including three Cartier bracelets worth $23K.
(Moustafa 2022)
218 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

7. Rita Ora puts on an eye-popping display as she leaves the gym in Sydney in
VERY revealing activewear.
(Longhetti 2022b)

8. Braless Amanda Holden, 50, showcases her incredible figure in Barbie doll
pink latex dress for Grease skit at Britain’s Got Talent auditions.
(Buckland 2022)

9. Simon Cowell grins as he leaves Britain’s Got Talent auditions with David
Walliams . . . after the comedian ‘was given a talking to’ for making crude
jokes on set.
(Rose 2022)

10. Love Island’s Cally Jane Beech flaunts her incredible beach body in a blue
Dior bikini during sizzling photoshoot . . . before posing with a sombrero-
clad Iguana on her head during Mexico getaway.
(Wells 2022)

11. ‘Missing you Lake Como’: Pixie Lott flaunts her enviable figure in a
turquoise bikini as she poses up a storm on a boat for throwback snap.
(Veitch 2022)

12. Khloe Kardashian sends temperatures soaring in animal print catsuit as

she and sister Kylie Jenner attend dinner for Corey Gamble’s Dolce &
Gabbana collaboration.
(O’Grady 2023)

Possible Learner Responses to Teaching Activity 13

In this activity, learners should be able to notice the asymmetry in terms of how
both the syntax and the vocabulary represent men and women in the headlines.
In terms of the syntax, a goal of the activity is that learners can notice how
material, behavioural and verbal processes as well as different sorts of verbs
are used to differing degrees in the portrayal of men and women. Learners will
manage to produce analyses at different levels of complexity, noticing different
features and theorizing to varying degrees about how these language features
influence meaning by representing men and women in different ways. Some
learners will see overall patterns and be able to apply these to the representation
 Setting Out the Foundations 219

of each gender. More advanced learners will be able to notice subcategories

within the overall categorical representations in order to see small variations in
the overall linguistic strategies used that affect the construal of individual men or
women in ways that might be different to the overall patterns of representation.
This will become clearer as we analyse the headlines. For example, through the
use of material processes, one of the men is represented as performing an action
that makes changes in the world:

1. Dylan McDermott SIGNS ON as the new lead actor for CBS’ FBI: Most
Wanted

However, in another of the examples, a different process type represents two

rather different scenarios. For example, the behavioural process verb of ‘grinning’
represents another of the men as having an opinion and being able to reflect on
events, thus suggesting an underlying mental process. In the same headline, by
representing someone as ‘reprimanding’ someone, it suggests a verbal process
and indicates the man as performing actions in the world that affect others.

2. Simon Cowell GRINS as he leaves Britain’s Got Talent auditions with

David Walliams . . . after the comedian ‘was given a talking to’ for making
crude jokes on set

However, in another example, a verbal process is used to represent a man as

being mindful and able to communicate subtly in dropping a hint about a
possible marriage. Marrying someone is, of course, also a material process. A
verbal process type is also used to portray a tennis player as accusing an umpire
of being ‘corrupt’:

3. Wedding bells? The Bachelor’s Jimmy Nicholson HINTS he’s going to

marry Holly Kingston
4. Shapovalov ACCUSES Australian Open umpire of being ‘CORRUPT’ – as
he crashes out in match with Rafael Nadal

In this small sample of language, learners should notice that men are shown to
have agency in carrying out actions in the world through what they do as well
as how and what they communicate to others. They are portrayed as thinking
and being able to reflect on situations. Thus, men are portrayed as having ‘real’
agency by being featured as the agents of verbal and material processes, but also
as people who think and have opinions and ethical stances about the situations
they are in:
220 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

● Men sign on (or get contracts) for TV shows.

● Men hint about possible future events (such as getting married)
● Men marry people.
● Men accuse people of doing things.
● They grin (due to mental activity) and give their opinions on issues and
reprimand people.

Women, on the other hand, are represented as engaging in actions that are
associated with their appearance and which are intended to highlight this to
attract the attention of others. To ‘show off ’, ‘to flaunt’ (which appears twice), ‘to
showcase’ and ‘to pose’, when following a subject agent, are all verbs that indicate
material processes.
Some learners might see the distinction in the semantics between simply
wearing something and ‘flaunting’ or ‘showcasing’ or ‘posing’ for example. They
might notice that in the majority of these cases, there is a high likelihood that
these women were simply wearing clothes and going about their lives, rather
than actively showing off. According to Halliday’s theory of transitivity, we might
classify ‘wearing’ something as a state or a situation rather than an action. In fact,
situations and actions are two different types of meaning indicated by material
processes. On the basis of such declarative knowledge, learners might be able to
see that what seems to have happened here is that the news headline writers at this
newspaper have represented a situation involving women simply wearing clothes
and going about their business as the actions of flaunting and attention seeking.
However, in these examples, both of these possible meanings contrast strongly
with those used to represent the actions of men. As we have seen, the men ‘sign
on’ to projects, they ‘tell jokes’, and they ‘reprimand’ and ‘accuse’ people. In other
words, they perform actual actions and communicate things that impact others
directly. The women, however, are portrayed as enacting agency only through
presenting themselves in particular ways. It might be argued, therefore, that
women are represented as needing attention, being narcissistic, superficial and
interested only in the sort of agency that comes from dressing and posing in
ways that attract the attention of others:

1. She has expensive taste! Married At First Sight star Elizabeth Sobinoff
SHOWS OFF designer jewellery – including three Cartier bracelets worth
$23K
2. Love Island’s Cally Jane Beech FLAUNTS her incredible beach body in
a blue Dior bikini during sizzling photoshoot . . . before POSING with a
sombrero-clad Iguana on her head during Mexico getaway
 Setting Out the Foundations 221

3. Pixie Lott FLAUNTS her enviable figure

4. Braless Amanda Holden, 50, SHOWCASES her incredible figure

However, women are also represented through the use of another sort of material
process. For example, in some of the example headlines, women ‘turn heads’,
they ‘put on an eye-popping display’ and they ‘send temperatures soaring’. In
each of these cases, the sentences used in the headlines are formed according to
a formulaic structure that consists of subject, dynamic verb and direct object,
all followed by a prepositional phrase adverbial fronted with the preposition ‘in’,
which is used to indicate the clothes they are wearing. In two of the examples, a
subordinate clause using the subordinating conjunction ‘as’ is used to indicate
the background action that is taking place at the same time. However, interesting
here is that although the women are placed as the clear subject agents of each
clause, the verbs and the content of the adverbials in each headline indicate that
these are not actions that are performed by the women themselves. Rather, it is
their appearance that is given a figurative form of agency in these sentences. ‘To
wow’, ‘to turn heads’ or to ‘send temperatures soaring’ are not actions that people
can perform, such as ‘posing’ for example.
Material processes in general are seen to represent entities as acting in the
world. When transitive verbs are used, entities are shown to impact the world
in some way. In two of these sentences, the transitive verbs ‘turn’ and ‘send’
are being used in expressions that feature figurative objects. For example,
‘heads’ are turned and ‘temperatures’ are sent ‘soaring’. However, they are only
metaphorical objects. The women are not represented as impacting anything
real. We do not know if any actual heads were turned and the act of ‘sending
temperatures soaring’ is a metaphorical way to refer to attracting the attention
of others. Therefore, the actual ‘real-life’ agential force here is not the women but
their appearance, and the sentences only symbolically relate to the impact that
their appearance has on others.

● Nikki Webster, 34, TURNS HEADS in a red jumpsuit and sky-high heels in
Sydney following a TV appearance
● Khloe Kardashian sends temperatures soaring in animal print catsuit as she
and sister Kylie Jenner attend dinner for Corey Gamble’s Dolce & Gabbana
collaboration

Some learners might become side tracked by the part of the sentence that features
two women attending a dinner, a material process within which the women as
the clear subject agents carrying out the action of ‘attending’ ‘dinner’ are clearly
222 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

represented as performing physical actions in the world that impact or interact

with others. However, others might notice that this material process forms the
overall structure of the subordinate clause in the sentence, while the action and
main event of ‘sending temperatures soaring’, is featured within the main clause,
which in this case, is also given prominence by being placed first in the sentence.
In fact, one could argue that the act of attending the dinner merely performs the
function of creating the contextual backdrop against which the women garnered
the attention of others.
In one of the headlines, a woman ‘puts on an eye-popping display’. In this
sense, ‘put on’ can be understood to mean ‘does’ or ‘performs’. The ‘display’ in
this sense is not impacted by the action but is instead a product of it, and can
therefore be considered a range participant rather than a goal:

● Rita Ora PUTS ON an eye-popping display as she leaves the gym in Sydney
in very revealing activewear

Another apparent material process that doesn’t signal actual actions or impacts
in the world can be seen in the following headline:

● Salma Hayek, 55, WOWS in blue bikini

In this example, ‘Salma Hayek’ ‘wows’ while wearing a ‘blue bikini’. The verb ‘to
wow’ in this case is being used as an intransitive verb; therefore, anyone who
was affected in some way by her appearance is linguistically omitted. We are left,
therefore, to wonder if anyone was actually ‘wowed’ and what this might mean
in practice.
Van Leeuwen (2015: 148) refers to two different forms of material processes
as either transactive or non-transactive. In the case of the former, a clear agent
is represented as acting on a goal. A non-transactive material process on the
other hand is portrayed as involving only one participant, the agent of the action
(ibid.). Thus, as is the case in the use of the intransitive verb ‘to wow’ no one is
affected by any actions carried out by the agent of the clause.
Learners might also notice how three of the women are presented in terms of
their age, which is included in apposition to their names in each case. In these
samples at least, we do not see any mention of the men’s ages. Thus, learners
might come to the conclusion that, according to the syntax of the headlines and
what is included, women are not primarily defined by what they do or think, but
instead by how they look, and how sexy they are in relation to their age. Women
are not linguistically constructed as having their own, ‘real’ agency. Instead,
 Setting Out the Foundations 223

any agency they have that affects others comes from their appearance. In other
words, their appearance has agency; they do not.
In terms of a semantic analysis, learners might have noticed how the
vocabulary used to represent the women often relates to their bodies and how
sexually attractive they are. For example, the headlines use adjectives such as
incredible or enviable as pre-modifiers to head nouns denoting their ‘bodies’ or
‘figures’. In another example, the fact that one of the women is not wearing a bra
is treated as noteworthy through the use of the adjective ‘braless’ used to pre-
modifier her name. She, therefore, becomes defined according to her choice not
to wear an item of underwear.

● her incredible figure

● her incredible beach body
● her enviable figure
● Braless Amanda Holden, 50

Similarly, learners might make note of the consistent use of vocabulary to denote
clothing when describing the women. They might also notice that this way of
representing people is not used when the men are featured.

● animal print catsuit

● blue bikini
● a red jumpsuit and sky-high heels
● designer jewellery – including three Cartier bracelets worth $23K
● VERY revealing activewear
● in Barbie doll pink latex dress

Thus, women are also represented in terms of their appearance through the use
of adjectives that relate to their bodies, and the choices they make about how
to present themselves. They are also represented through the use of nouns (as
modifiers and direct objects) that relate to their bodies, and to a great extent,
their clothing.
As mentioned above, showing learners how language choices influence
meanings and representations of human groups can act as a primer for the
subsequent application of these ideas to the natural world and how we use
language and other forms of semiosis in order to represent and construct it.
It is intuitive to most that racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination
have often been supported and propagated through the linguistic and symbolic
representation of particular groups as ‘the other’. In recent years, language and
224 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

representation have become an important site of contestation in debates about

social justice and identity. Therefore, equipping learners with linguistic and
theoretical tools can enable them to approach and understand language use in a
more linguistically informed and nuanced way than that seen in the mainstream
media and social commentary more broadly. Teaching learners the principles
of critical language awareness but first applying these ideas to human society is
not only important in and of itself but also performs an important pedagogical
role in establishing an intuitive conceptual base regarding the importance and
functioning of language in forms of representation as well as the connection
between language, discourses and belief systems and habits of mind. Once this
foundation has been set in place, it is then a relatively small step to introduce
the idea that how we construct nature and our relationship with it in language
and other forms of semiosis have ethical implications and can have a potential
impact on how we behave towards it.

The Implementation of Ecolinguistic

Consciousness-Raising Activities

The following consciousness-raising activities can help with this process by

pushing learners to notice how different discourses can utilize particular
process types, transitivity patterns and a range of other strategies to represent
wildlife in ways that correspond to particular communicative and ideological
goals.

Environmental Discourse Comparison

Teaching Activity 14
In this activity, you are presented with examples of language use taken from two
different texts. These different texts draw on two discourses that construct two
very different relationships with wildlife. The overall language patterns that each
discourse employs to represent nature in particular ways are marked in bold font.
Your task is to carry out an ecolinguistic analysis by answering the following
questions:

(a) Do the two discourses draw on and use the same syntactic and lexical
resources in order to represent nature?
 Setting Out the Foundations 225

(b) If your answer to the above question is yes, what formulations and
language choices do the two discourses share?
(c) If on the other hand your answer to the above question is no, what
particular formulations and choices of discourse features does each
discourse utilize?

• How do they differ?

• What is the overall effect on the representation of nature of these
language choices – in essence, how do they represent nature and our
relationship with it?

(d) Taking into consideration the patterns that you have found, speculate as
to what these discourses are.

• What overall ideological position do they take regarding the natural world?

An alternative way to help learners approach ecolinguistic analyses is through

the application of an analytical framework that connects different levels of
analysis. As we have seen, patterns of language features can form particular ways
of representing nature or our relationship with it. These can also be indicative
of particular discourses. In turn, discourses carry many of the themes present
within cultural narratives.

The four different levels of analysis within the framework.

● Cultural narrative identification
● Discourse identification
● Forms of Representation
● Language features

Learners can be encouraged to identify the ways in which the use of language
represents nature. For example, there might be a tendency to background nature’s
agency and contributions or to objectify and instrumentalize. Alternatively, there
may be attempts to activate nature, to perspectivize, or even reproduce unhelpful
forms of anthropomorphism. Learners can analyse and identify the language
features that contribute to these representations. These patterns of language and
the forms of representation they produce can then be connected to particular
discourses, such as the discourses of environmental management or animal rights.
The underlying messages present within these discourses can then be seen in terms
of the overall cultural narratives that they correspond to, such as anthropocentrism
or the cultural narrative of never-ending progress on a finite planet.
226 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Text 1

A hairy beast that keeps landscapes open

Contrary to popular belief, it is really an animal of the open and semi-open

lands, but it also likes forests or woods nearby, for shelter and food during parts
of the year. The bison primarily is a grass eater, but an important part of their
diet also comes from browsing of bushes, bramble and trees. Bison eat up to 60
kg per day and have real impact on the vegetation, keeping open lands open and
creating a mosaic landscape. Besides grazing in the front end, it tramples in the
middle, wallows in mud holes, rolls in sandpits that it has kicked up, and then
fertilizes from its rear end. All of which has great importance to the variety of
ecosystems.
(Rewilding Europe, n.d.)

Text 2

They represent a resource that is used to the benefit and enjoyment of many
people, (Line 5)

Wildlife is a shared resource that needs to be managed jointly. (Line 21)

Game meat, which is considered a natural resource, should be handled in a

simple and safe way (Lines 73–74)

Our wildlife populations are a renewable natural resource with considerable

potential to contribute to both quality of life for many people and to regional
development. (Lines 12–13)

Society needs to find ways to both make use of the resource that wildlife
represents, (Lines 19–20)

We want to develop acceptance thresholds for damages caused by wildlife to rural

enterprises and industries and to simplify the assessment of damages caused by
ungulates and large birds. (Lines 343–345)

[T]he presence of large carnivores affects the prerequisites for hunting and rural
life (Lines 17–18)

Wildlife causes damages to reindeer husbandry (Lines 15–16)

(Naturvårdsverket 2018) (emphasis by author)
 Setting Out the Foundations 227

Possible Learner Responses to Teaching Activity 14

Text 1
What we would like learners to notice about the first text is the frequency of
material processes and active verbs, and therefore actions attributed to European
bison. For example, they:

Keep landscapes open

Browse bushes, brambles and trees
Eat up to 60kg per day
Have a real impact on the vegetation
Keep open lands open
Create mosaic landscapes
Graze
Trample
Wallow in mud holes
Roll in sandpits that they have created
Fertilize

Many of the active verbs comprise material processes. In addition to these,

the text also features a noun phrase formed from a gerund (browsing). Here,
the notion that bison browse bushes, bramble and trees is conveyed through a
form of nominalization that represents ideas that might otherwise be expressed
in clauses as concepts, grammatically configured as noun phrases. However,
although backgrounded to some extent, this structure still indicates the species’
ecological agency.

but an important part of their diet also comes from browsing of bushes, bramble
and trees.

The text also features one mental process that refers to the European bison’s
preference for woods or forest. A significant proportion of the verbs used in
the material processes are used intransitively and therefore do not linguistically
signal a clear and concrete impact on the world. Nonetheless, technically, they
can also function transitively and in each case the direct object and affected
entity can be inferred.

They graze
(They) trample
(They) fertilize
228 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

Bison graze and trample vegetation, and they fertilize the land. In the other
examples, an entity that is affected or interacted with is signalled instead through
positioning it within an adverbial prepositional phrase.

(They) wallow in mud holes

(They) roll in sandpits that they have created

In effect, then, the overall representation is of a species of animal that

has a real impact on its environment. What’s more, all of the actions that
it engages in are represented as being ecologically beneficial and which
facilitate benefits to the habitats that many species depend on. Bison are
attributed with ecologically beneficial agency. They are therefore activated
as ecological agents.
Learners might identify this as the discourse of rewilding or as drawing on
a discourse of ecology. In rewilding discourses, abundant populations of wild
animals in natural settings are seen as bringing aesthetic and psychological
benefits to people. Furthermore, the benefits that wild animals bring to
more practical areas of life are also emphasized. For example, beavers are
often referred to as ecosystem engineers and their ability to slow the flow of
rivers and reduce flood damage is often highlighted. Thus, one could argue
that there exists a degree of anthropocentrism in the underlying philosophy.
After all, the actions that are highlighted refer to ecosystem services that
ultimately benefit humanity by establishing a flourishing nature upon which
we all depend.

Text 2
While the first text is a whole and intact paragraph taken from Rewilding
Europe’s website, the second text to analyse comes in the form of a selection
of sentences taken from another text. These separate sentences are, however,
representative of the way this text employs certain process types to represent
nature in particular ways. For pedagogical purposes, it is sometimes necessary
to provide learners with shorter, more focused texts to work with. They should,
however, as far as is possible, be representative of the way in which language is
used in the source text.
The first aspect that learners might notice in the second text is that just like
in the first, there is the presence of material processes in which wild animals
are featured as the clear subject agent impacting an entity featured as the
 Setting Out the Foundations 229

direct object of each clause. What will also be apparent is the predominant
use of the verb ‘to cause’. This verb has a negative prosody, that is, because
it is used to an overwhelming degree in negative contexts, it has, over time,
become imbued with negative associations. Thus, the declaration that a person
‘caused’ someone great happiness is much less likely than suggesting that a
person ‘caused’ someone great pain or unhappiness or that reckless driving
‘caused’ an accident. Therefore, the use of this verb in material processes
instantly represents wild animals as engaging in negative actions. This negative
framing of the actions of wild animals continues through the use of a rather
formal register that represents wild animals as ‘causing’ ‘damages’ to various
human enterprises. Learners might also find it interesting that in the ninth
sentence, wild animals are not directly implicated in actions that damage
human affairs. Rather, in this example, the mere presence of large predatory
animals is constructed as ‘affecting’ ‘the prerequisites for hunting and rural life’.
What this rather vague and euphemistic construction refers to is the fear that
some people have of large predatory animals. It also refers to the competition
for ‘game’ animals that hunters face from predators. In addition, the wounds
and deaths inflicted on hunting dogs through interactions with large predators
when engaging in hunts provide another reason why predatory animals are
constructed as problematic.
Learners might also note that there is an absence of balance in the
representations of wild animals; wild animal agency in ecological processes is
not mentioned in the sample sentences provided. Learners might also make the
point that these material process sentences construct wild animals as problematic
with no attempt to mention the responsibility that humans have to both take on
a stance of tolerance and also create conditions whereby human–wild animal
conflicts are mitigated.
Van Dijk (1993) refers to the concept of ideological squaring. For van Dijk,
this concept denotes the use of vocabulary and forms of lexis to represent two
groups of entities very differently. In this sample, we can see a form of ideological
squaring in that linguistic resources are utilized in order to construct wild
animals in a very particular way. This construction is produced through the
uniformity of the representations of wild animals. As we have seen, through
the use of material processes, with wild animals featured as the clear subject
agent, and the overwhelming use of the verb ‘to cause’ they are activated and
portrayed as the agents of the action of causing damage to forms of human
recreation and economic activity. This portrayal problematizes wild animals and
230 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

represents them as a hindrance to human flourishing. Rhetorically, this framing

is important in terms of its material implications as it contributes to arguments
made for the expansion of the legal hunting of wild animals, whose actions
contribute to ecological functioning.
Therefore, one of the key characterizing features of the text from which
these sentences were taken is the systematic nature of the language used. It
is very standardized and repetitive in terms of the discursive features that
it employs to construct wild animals and our relationships with them in
various ways. When prevalent forms of representation from an original text
are taken out and presented to learners, this repetition of language forms
used becomes even more pronounced. This can, for some, appear contrived.
However, as I mentioned above, this should be done so that it mirrors the
overall patterns exhibited in the original text. It is also worth repeating here,
that such activities are created and used in order to sensitize learners to
particular ways in which language forms can construct the natural world.
Once they have developed the skills and knowledge necessary for carrying
out ecolinguistic analyses on smaller samples, they can apply these to their
own analyses of larger texts.
In addition to the repetitive and uniform use of material process clauses,
transitivity patterns and vocabulary used, learners should also be able to
notice and discuss both the prevalence of relational process types but also the
repetition of some of the wordings used in order to construct a very specific
way of understanding wild animals. The verb ‘to be’ as well as ‘to represent’
are used, while the overall clause structure follows the subject–verb–subject
complement pattern that is often a feature of relational processes. In this
way, each relational process clause relates the concept of ‘resource’ to wild
animals.
Learners might struggle, however, to understand another two syntactic
patterns that also represent wild animals as a resource. The first of these comes
in a sentence that constructs wild animals in this way by featuring the concept of
resource as the object complement of a passive voice sentence:

experience omitted agent

Game meat, which is considered a natural resource (by people in general)
subject object complement adverbial
predicate

This is a difficult syntactic pattern for learners to understand for several reasons,
not least as the clause itself exists as a subordinate clause embedded within a
 Setting Out the Foundations 231

larger sentence, but also because the noun phrase containing the concept and
noun ‘resource’ is the object complement that relates back to animal body parts
that are the subject goal of the clause. In active voice sentences, it is much easier
to see that the subject agent is attributing a particular characteristic to the
direct object through the placement of the linguistic entity that relates to this
characteristic after the direct object and in a sentence terminal position. For
example:

experiencer process experience value

I consider you a good friend.

subject verb direct object object complement

predicate

In this active voice sentence, because of the intuitive subject–verb–object–

object complement structure, the attribution of the quality of being a good
friend upon the direct object is relatively clearly signalled. However, in our
clause relating the concept of being a resource to wild animal body parts or
‘game meat’, the passive voice is used. In addition, the agent of the mental
process of considering is omitted. These factors all contribute to a relatively
unclear picture of who is attributing what characteristics to whom. However,
when analysed carefully, we can see that suggesting that wild animals are
generally considered to be a resource is yet another way to create this
representation.
Another questionable linguistic strategy here is the aforementioned omission
of the agent in this passive voice sentence. The use of the passive voice in this
way in combination with the use of a reporting verb of mental activity or belief
(a mental process) results in a rather vague claim about unspecified people.
One might legitimately ask who these people are who consider game meat
to be a resource. The insinuation here is that people in general consider wild
animals to be a resource for human consumption. The second difficult syntactic
representation of wild animals as a resource can be found in the following
sentence:

Society needs to find ways to both make use of the resource that wildlife
represent. (Lines 19–20)

In this particular sentence, it is asserted that it is important that people

investigate different ways in which wild animals can be used as a resource. The
way that it does this is to embed the noun ‘resource’ within the larger noun
232 Ecolinguistics and Environment in Education

phrase ‘the resource that wildlife represent’. Advanced learners might identify
the existential presupposition here and how it objectifies and instrumentalizes
wildlife by establishing as a given the status of wild animals as nothing more
than a resource for humans.
The discourse present in this sample of sentences corresponds to that of
environmental and wildlife management. In such discourses, wild animals can
be represented in terms of the problems that they bring. In this case, they
are portrayed as being agential in their ability to damage and hinder human
enterprises. However, they are rarely portrayed as exercising ecologically
beneficial agency that benefits ecosystems. Where this is the case, it is often
done by using the anthropocentric language of ecosystem services and the
Natural Capital Agenda (Monbiot 2014b), which discursively position wild
animals and ecosystems as needing to benefit humans in order to justify
their existence. In environmental and wildlife management discourses, the
emphasis can be on the management of wildlife as a potential problem but
also as a resource for human recreation and the procurement of ‘game’ meat.
The cultural narrative that underlies this discourse is, therefore, strongly
anthropocentric and views wild animals as needing to justify their existence
within a human-dominated world in which immediate and tangible human
utility is strongly prioritized.
When it comes to text number one, however, one can on the one hand
identify in the rewilding discourse a form of ecocentric pragmatism in
that, despite the anthropocentric strands running through it, there is an
understanding of the interconnected and interdependent nature of the
ecological systems upon which we depend. We are seen as a part of and very
much in need of a healthy and functioning nature. In stark contrast, in the
wildlife management text, any mention of wild animals’ beneficial agency in
structuring the very conditions upon which all life depends is backgrounded,
while at the same time the more immediate and tangible ways in which we
can benefit from wild animals as a resource are linguistically foregrounded
in a range of different ways.
To reiterate then, in terms of the goal of this interpretive, consciousness-raising
activity, we want the learners to be able to identify the linguistic means by which
euphemistic language can function to dull our perceptions and understandings
of human-caused ecological damage and destruction. To varying degrees, we
want them to be able to understand and demonstrate understandings of how
language can both intentionally and unintentionally highlight, downplay and
 Setting Out the Foundations 233

even hide human causation and agency in ecological destruction. In addition,

we want them to see how language can be used in order to naturalize human-
caused ecological harm as just the way things are. By the same token, we would
also like our students to be sensitive to the use of language and discourses that
advance ecologically beneficial perspectives so that we can strive for a healthier
and more just planet for all its inhabitants.
234
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 Index

Abram, David 77 Berry, Wendell 104, 117, 150, 157–60,

abstraction (linguistic) 55, 76, 80, 168, 162–3, 168–70, 176
170, 173, 180, 195 Best, Steve 32
activation/agentialization 60–1, 84–5,
91–3, 98–9 Carson, Rachel 49
ad hominem 69, 137 cartesianism
agency 21–2, 29–31, 35–7, 41, 60–1, neo- 161
84–8, 90–1, 95, 97–8, 219–23, 225, circumstance participant 21–2, 94, 178,
227–8, 232–3 209–10
destructive 72–3, 118–19, 121, 189, collocation 64–6
191–4, 216 commodification 38, 77, 152–3
agent (ecological) 118, 194, 228 conscientização 129, 131
agent participant (transitive) 21–2, 61, consciousness-raising 182, 185, 186,
68, 86–8, 92, 94, 97, 202–15, 222, 188–9, 201, 203–4, 207, 210–12,
228–9 216, 224
intransitive 89–91, 93, 95, 208–9, Crist, Eileen 72
214, 216, 222, 228 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 56–7,
agential realism 162, 164–5 73–4, 81, 121, 130, see also critical
Alaimo, Stacy 33, 113, 162 discourse studies
Alexander, Richard 25 critical discourse studies (CDS) 57–74,
animation 86–100 80, 188, see also critical discourse
Anthropocene, the 9, 33–4, 36, 157 analysis
anthropocentrism 28–9, 32, 34, 49, 100, critical language awareness (CLA) 183–4,
104, 132, 136, 153, 155, 158–9, 179, 188–91, 203–4, 206–7, 210, 224
225, 228 critical linguistics 52–3, 57, 74
anthropomorphism 84, 86, 179, 225 critical pedagogy 110–11
antonymy 70 critical theory 52, 56–7, 74, 130
assimilation 115 cultural narratives 5, 17, 19, 20, 23,
assumption (linguistic) 147–8, 153 25–46
attribute participant 93, 196, 202, culture 3–5, 17–19, 22–5, 28–9, 33–4,
209–10 38, 48–9, 109, 114, 136, 160, 168,
206, 210
backgrounding
linguistic 156, 170 deactivation of agency 88
Plumwood 114 de-agentialization 192
banking education 125–8, 130, 142, 144, declarative knowledge 207, 210–12, 220
147, 191 deductive teaching 184, 201, 204
Barad, Karen 53–5, 162, 164–7 deep ecology 17, 82, 101–3, 161
Bateson, Jeremy 50–2, 164 denial of the contributions of nature 40,
behaver participant 209 115
behavioural process 22, 209, 219 Descartes, René 37, 160–1
Bennett, Jane 35–6 descriptivization 61
 Index 249

determinism, see linguistic determinism Gaia 49

dialogism 122–5, 127–8, 156, 164, 171, Gavriely-Nuri, Dalia 102
182 Giroux, Henry 15, 109–10
dichotomization 7, 38 Glotfelty, Cheryll 48, 50, 52, 176
difference that makes a difference 51 goal participant 21, 61, 68–9, 88–9, 92,
diffraction 164, 166–7 94, 121, 193–8, 209, 213–16, 222
diffractive reading 166–7 Goatly, Andrew 83, 85–99
discourses 66–8 Gupta, Anthea 85
identification of 68, 225
interactions between 71–4 habits of mind 22–3, 31, 46, 120–1,
discursive knot 72 167–8, 179, 182, 224
dysphemism 137 Halliday, Michael 21, 68, 76–9, 85, 87–8,
92, 119, 141, 154, 220
ecocriticism 9, 17–18, 24, 33, 48–50, 52, Haraway, Donna 42
114, 179 Haugen, Einar 75, 80
ecocriticism (material) 50, 52, 164, 181 Heise, Ursula 49
ecofeminism 17–18, 39–40, 114–15, homogenization 114–15
160–2, see also Plumwood hunting 59–61, 66, 68, 70–4, 85, 88,
ecojustice education 150–7, 211 226–30
ecolinguistics 75–105 hyper-consumerism 152–3
ecology of mind 50–2, 164 hyperseparation 29, 32, 33, 136, 176
ecopedagogy 132–50, 152–3, 157–8 hyponymy 70–1, 177
ecosophy, ecological philosophy 6, 44,
82, 102–4, 167 ideational meaning 76–7
environmental humanities 4–7, 17–18, imaginaries 42, 46, 170
24–5, 33–4, 39, 133 inductive teaching 184, 188–9, 201,
ergative verbs 90–1, 95, 197, 209 204–5
essentialization 138 instigator participant 90–1, 196
ethics of care 41, 103, 158, 160–2 instrumental verbs 65
euphemism 189–90 instrumentalization 40, 115, 152
eventuation 192, 197, 204 interactive verbs 65
existent participant 93–4, 97, 178, interpretation task 184
209–10 interpretative repertoires 69
existential process 21, 94, 97–8, 178, intransitive verbs, intransitivity 89–91,
209–10 94–5, 197, 208–9, 211, 216, 222,
experience participant 89–92, 95, 97, 227
180, 209–10 IPCC 2

Fairclough, Norman 28, 54, 56–60, Kahn, Richard 136–7, 144–7

66–71, 82, 87, 130, 153, 183–4, Katz, Eric 39, 103
188
Foucault, Michel 23–4, 30–1, 117–18, Lakoff, George 61, 63
163 lexical relations 69, 70, see also
frames of reference 18–19, 22, 26 antonymy; metonymy; and
Frankfurt school 52 hyponymy
Fredengren, Christina 33 Linell, Per 122–5, 130, 156, 164
Freire, Paulo 109, 122, 125, 131–5, 142, linguistic determinism 54, 79
146–7, 164–5, 201 literary critique 46, 48, 50, 52
functioning knowledge 207, 212 Lovelock, James 49
250 Index

Martusevicz, Rebecca 39–40, 56–7, oppression 10–11, 82, 110–12, 117–18,

73–4, 117–18, 152, 155–9, 162–4, 125, 131–6, 144, 147, 152, 211
167–8, 171–2, 181 othering 144
Mason, Jim 77 over-lexicalization 65, 70
material ecocriticism 50, 52, 164, 181
material process 21, 65, 87–8, 92, 94, passive voice (the) 197–8, 204, 211–14,
97–8, 141–2, 178, 180, 191–6, 216, 230–1
202–3, 208–10, 213–15, 219–22, omitting the agent in the passive
227–30 voice 214, 230
non-transactive 95, 222 passivity of nature 32–4
transactive 86, 88, 98, 178, 222 passivization 60–1, 72, 87, 89, 97, 99,
meaning-making 24, 53, 67, 117, 119, 129, 170
122–3, 125, 182 pedagogy of responsibility 117, 157–82
mechanistic view of nature, see pedagogy of the oppressed 110–17, 122,
mechanistic metaphor 125
mediation 24, 79 personification 86
medium participant 90–1, 209 perspectivization 178–9
mental models 20–2, 26, 125, 163, phenomenon participant, see experience
167, 170, 172, 179, 182, 196, 204, participant
216 Plumwood, Val 15–18, 27, 29, 32–3,
Merchant, Carolyn 37–8, 40, 103 38–40, 103, 114–15, 160–1,
metaphor 61–5 176
cultural (see cultural narratives) points of view 22–3, 31
root (see cultural narratives) Ponton, Douglas 84
grammatical 68, 87–8 positive discourse analysis 43–6, 82–3,
mechanistic 36–41, 103–4, 148, 153 121–2
metonymy 138 predatory wild animals 72, 74, 229
Mezirow, Jack 22–3 presupposition
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment existential 58, 143, 232
Report 2005 83 factive 58
mirror metaphor 53–4 lexical 59, 180
Misiaszek, Greg William 110–11, 132–6, problematization 69
144–5 problem-posing 127–8, 130, 142, 144,
monologism 123–4, 126 146–7, 201–2
progress 153, 155
Naess, Arne 17–18, 82, 100–3 public pedagogy 15, 109–10, 118, 126,
nature writing 49, 95–100, 173–82 168
nature-culture dichotomy 4, 5, 24, 29, Purser, Ronald 103
32–4, 38
Naturvårdsverket, see Swedish relational ethics 159, 162, 165, 168,
environmental protection agency 177
new materialism 17–18, 35–6, 115, 162 relational process 21, 93–4, 97–8, 136,
nominalizations 46, 60, 88–90, 121, 180, 193–4, 196
193–4, 198, 203, 227 representationalism 53–4, 166
normalization 5, 43, 46, 48, 50, 116, 118, resource (nature as) 5, 25, 28, 31–5, 39,
135, 147, 163, 188 44, 49, 50, 58, 60, 72, 73, 86–8, 93,
95, 103, 113, 115, 156, 168, 180,
objectification 40, 63, 69, 115–16, 152 226, 230–2
ontology 49, 81–2, 165–6 rewilding 42–4, 226–8, 232
 Index 251

salience 170, 173, 180 target domain 61–3, 98–9, 155

Saussure, Ferdinand 54–5 theme participant, see goal
Schön, Donald 166 token participant 93, 199, 202
second-language acquisition 40, 188 traces (discursive) 5, 22, 46, 57, 68, 78,
semantic prosody 65, 154, 229 148
semantics 21, 151, 191, 194, 204, 211, 220 transfer model of communication,
shallow environmentalism 100, 204 the 123–4
silent spring 49 transformative learning 26–7, 121, 167,
social action network 60–1, 92 182
social actor network 60–1, 92 transitive verbs, transitivity 61, 87–9,
social constructivism 54–5 91, 191–3, 195–7, 202, 208–11,
source domain 61–3, 98–9, 155 221
squaring (ideological) 229–30 transitivity theory (Halliday), see systemic
Stibbe, Arran 5, 25–7, 41, 81–3, 119, functional linguistics
134, 148, 167, 169–70
structuralism, see Saussure value assumption 59–60
subjectivity 28–35, 38–40, 46, 49, 172 van Dijk, Teun 19–20, 22–4, 53, 57–8,
Sunderland, Jane 28, 66–8, 78 62–3, 80, 229
sustainable development 8, 68, 112–13, van Leeuwen, Theo 60–1, 65, 88–9, 92,
144–6, 150, 154–5, 180 170, 192, 197, 202–3, 222
Swedish environmental protection
agency 58–61, 65–6, 68, 70–1, Whorf, Benjamin Lee 54, 79–80
87–8, 226 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 54
synonymy 70–1 Wordsworth, William 85
systemic functional linguistics (SFL) 85,
100, 183, 204, 208 Yule, George 21, 57, 59
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