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Title CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES AND ECOLINGUISTICS: A STUDY OF CHANGING LINGUISTIC SPECTRUM

Author(s) Sabeen Hayat

Abstract Title: Contemporary Environmental Discourses and Ecolinguistics: A Study of Changing Linguistic Spectrum The recent global ecological crisis has sparked environmental concerns in a variety of discourses. Environmental discourses are generally intended to raise ecological awareness and to educate people about the devastating effects of human policies and actions that harm life and the ecosystems that life depends upon. As a nation that has been largely on the receiving end of global environmental degradation, Pakistan has always raised alarm bells on all international forums raising voices about the environmental especially through its English newspapers. The current study intends to ecocritically analyse linguistic features in environmental texts as published in Pakistani English newspapers to expose the stories we-live-by. To identify and analyse stories underlying, two of the important linguistic features i.e. linguistic metaphor and novel compounds, the current study invokes Stibbe’s (2015) theory of ecolinguistics as a framework and uses a mix of corpus and manual techniques to extract data and analyse it. Further, semi-automatic methods are used to build a specialized corpus that suits the requirements of this study. The corpus contains texts from three leading Pakistani English newspapers from January 2011 to December 2020. For metaphors, Pragglejaz Group’s (2007) method of metaphor identification procedure (MIP) has been adopted for the identification of conceptual metaphors and Stibbe’s four-step methodology of critical analysis of conceptual metaphors is used for the ecocritical analysis of the identified conceptual metaphors. The prevailing stories in discourses affect human treatment of other more vulnerable humans, other life forms and the physical environment. The results show that most of the stories analysed are harmful to life, and wider ecosystems that life depends upon. Three of the most dominant stories are found to be malevolent. They are: consumerism is good, technology can fix environmental issues, and humans are the centre of the ecosystem. Hence, by exposing the stories for their camouflaged malevolent discourses, the researcher expects the writers as well as the public at large to develop a deeper understanding of human discourses about the environment, and decide whether a linguistic feature should be used, improved or rejected.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2023-12-13

Subject PhD English Linguistics

Publisher Department of English (GS)

Contributor(s) Dr. Zawar Hussain Hashmi

Format As per departmental guidelines

Identifier Dr. Muhammad Haseeb Nasir (PhD English Program Coordinator)

Source PhD

Relation PhD

Coverage PhD

Rights PhD

Category PhD English Linguistics Thesis

Description PhD English Linguistics