Seminar on Discourse and Climate Change

Climate at critical junctures: Discursive framings and the language of legitimation

Cinzia Bevitori (University of Bologna)

This seminar presents current research on the discursive construction of the climate–health nexus in EU policy-making and public communication. It forms part of a broader project investigating how intersecting crises - particularly those related to climate change and health - are framed and legitimized in EU discourse (Bevitori & Russo, 2023, 2025), and more generally, in institutional settings (Bevitori, forthcoming 2026). Grounded in critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics (e.g., Baker 2023 [2006]; Baker & McEnery 2015; Mautner 2015), the study draws on a specialized corpus compiled to represent EU institutional and public communication. The analysis explores how the EU has framed both the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change not simply as parallel crises, but as interconnected challenges requiring coordinated and politically legitimized responses. The research builds on work in legitimation theory (van Leeuwen 1996, 2007, 2008; van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999) and the politics of crisis (Lipscy, 2020; Wodak, 2021, 2022), examining how crisis narratives function as strategic tools for legitimation and consensus-building in contexts of heightened uncertainty.

Biophilia and common-ground: Relational transitivity in nature writing

Ben Clarke

Scholars in the field of ecolinguistics explore the role of language relating to the environment, which includes how language use may aggravate environmental problems but also how it may alleviate such problems (Fill, 2018: 3). The latter focus has also been taken up in the agnate tradition of positive discourse analysis (e.g. Martin, 2004). Stibbe (e.g. 2021), a key scholar in the field, has proposed that ecolinguists should consider asserting a personal ecosophy (see also Næss, 1994), a normative ecological philosophy reflecting a value system. Such a personal ecosophy then becomes the basis for classifying attested uses of language (e.g. specific texts or wider discourses) as either ecologically-beneficial (communication that is consistent with pro-environmental values and behaviours), ecologically-destructive (communication that is in opposition with pro-environmental values and behaviours), or some mix of the two (‘ecologically-ambivalent’). Many scholars in the field indeed adopt such an approach (e.g. Poole, 2022; Vardis, 2022).

Here, I critically examine this approach. I argue that there are two potential problems. First, the variation in such personal ecosophies are largely minimal to the point of becoming arguably moot. Second, despite the claim that ecosophies “must be scientifically possible” (Stibbe, 2021: 14) – no clear elaboration of what is meant by such feasibility is to be found in Stibbe’s work, nor other key protagonists in the field. In relation to the first point, I argue that existing theoretical impetuses could be more helpful, of which sociobiologist Wilson’s (1984; 1993) writings on biophilia have been largely under-considered in ecolinguistics. In relation to the second critique, I argue broadly in favour of Bartlett’s (e.g. 2012, 2018) proposals for an ‘imminent’ type of positive discourse analysis; that is, a necessary pre-condition for articulating alternative, more ecologically-positive discourses is that they offer realistic promise of uptake in discourse communities. 

As a small empirical step in this direction and so as to illustrate, I present the results of a contrastive analysis of two small corpora of texts about nature, depicting opposing ideologies concerning human-nature relations – one abstracting humans from nature, with the other viewing humans as intricately entwined with nature. Analysing these in terms of Hallidayan (e.g. Halliday, 1994) semanticised transitivity, both texts sets depict nature notably frequently as being, and across the full relational spectrum: existing (e.g. There are even White Storks nesting in the trees; there is a chance to bridge the divide between ourselves, one another, and the natural world), evaluated positively in attributive terms (e.g. Knepp is indeed glorious; The time and effort it takes… for that… place to open up to you can be an enigmatic and uncertain process), located in space and time; etc. Making sense of this finding, I suggest that humans inherently find in nature a reassuring sense of context and belonging (Wilson, 1984; 1993) and, by extension, propose that communication achieving such an end could be ecologically valuable (Piff et al., 2015).