Environmental Discourse
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Environmental Discourse
The environmental crisis has given birth to a common environmental discourse and according to Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006) discourse is a shared way for a group of people to understand the world around them. This understands is rooted in the language being used to explain that particular crisis. Language is used to interpret the world around us and then those interpretations will lead to a final decision. The environmental crisis could also be solved by this habit of discourse building. Mühlhäusler and Adrian Peace (2006) further say that environmental discourse could occur because the environmental issue is a social problem and it is not an issue of a single person.
There are various stakeholders who are facing this issue who could have a different perception of the problem and could have different ways to solve this issue.
Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006) discussed the concept of environmental discourse and they also declared language as a binding force between human beings and the environment. They analyzed that environment has an impact on the health and overall wellbeing of a human so it needs to be studied under a common discourse.
Maarten and Versteeg (2005) define discourse that it is used in various meaning and for them, it is the analysis of the regularities of linguistics and they have related it with environmental politics. According to them, it is the set of ideas which are necessary to describe a social phenomenon. They further discuss discourse analyses and said that it is the study of a specific language in use and this language is used to identify the common phenomenon.
Both of the papers of Maarten and Versteeg (2005) and that of the Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006) refer to designing common environmental discourse as to mitigate the current environmental risks and to lessen down the current environmental issues.
The research paper of Maarten and Versteeg (2005) has highlighted three strengths of discourse analysis and these are the role of language in politics, it emboldens in practices and its ability to answer the question starts with how. The write up also reveals some challenges to the discourse analyses and says that the nature of policymaking is changing and discourse analyses will identify a totally new version of politics and it will help to analyze the dynamics of politics as well.
The contribution of discourse analyses to the study of environmental politics
Maarten and Versteeg (2005) that nature is a very important cultural object for human beings. The relationship of human with nature is a social connection. They said that nature is not something that is there by default but it is a norm, a memory, and an image and thus discourse analysis has a focus on the rhetoric of nature. Considering nature as an external entity has left the responsibilities of nature on some human beings like the poet, laymen or the architects. But if nature is considered as a cultural artifact then it would be considered a duty of the whole human population to take care of it.
Discourse analyses in an environmental policy filed will help to identify the role of environmental politics and will help to include the environment in the objectives of the policymakers. It will be a pioneer of policy outcomes. Maarten and Versteeg (2005) explain the worth of language and say that language can make politics; it will design signs and symbols that will shift the power to create harmless events in order to have less political conflicts.
Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006) say that green economic policies, green advertising, and green consumerism are all discussed under environmental politics and have suggested four categories along with the political discourse in order to solve the challenges of environmental crisis. These are problem-solving, sustainability, survivalism, and green radicalism. Their study also highlights the significant features of the environmental discourse and they have explained it interim of ethnography like,
The communications tools in an ethnographic study are used for observation and this ethnographic study includes those study that has not yet been given any attention.
The environmental moments have transferred to social moments. And this issue has been transformed from a cultural phenomenon and became the concept of environmental politics emerged in response to the realist way of tackling the environmental issues. As said by Hajer (2005) that the explanation of the environmental crisis was based on power of the parties involved in the decision makings group. The method of analyzing the environmental issues used by the realists have kept the government apart from these issues and they were of the opinion that the government was taking steps too little and too late.
The Hajer (2005) further says that British government was not willing to accept the fact of the sculpture dioxide and the nitrogen oxide emitted by the power stations of coal were creating the incident of acid raining in Europe. The study says that a conflict of interest was not allowing the government to tackle this issue. The study had tried to analyze the acid rain controversy by using discourse analysis. The approaches to pollution that compete for dominance in the land of British environmental politics. To solve this issue the study has suggested an approach of “traditional pragmatist in order to better design the Institutions arrangements for pollution control in the country.
The environmental crisis like the acid- rain issue cannot be solved by relating it to a particular identity but rather the perspective of the local people will be taken into consideration while designing environmental policies. In politics, various elements are drawn from a various group of people so there is no central discourse to focus on in a political set up. But natural science plays an important role in environmental politics and it makes a very accurate form of discourse. The discourse made by natural science makes a centralized discourse but again people with diverse backgrounds have various ideas that are being neglected in policy analysis (Howarth & Torfing, 2004).
The discourse not only pays attention to the content being communicated but to the form of the linguistics used as well. Both of these factors need the socio-political and economic conditions of society (Weingart, Engels, & Pansegrau, 2000).
Instrumentalism in Environmental discourse:
As said by Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006) environmental discourse has various speech forms and various channels. Due to the involvement of many groups in developing an environmental discourse this phenomenon has widened its approach. It has now included media as well to reach to the massive and to grip their ideas in order to make policies against environmental issues.
Media:
Researcher shows that media plays an important role in developing information and shaping the awareness of the public regarding environmental issues so media should be included in the public agenda (Carvalho, 2010).
The concept of globalization and the emerging power of media has to boost up the development of environmental discourse. The multimedia structure of the globe fully embeds the environmental discourse. Media helps to capture some ecological changes but the relevant factors cannot be understood by everyone around the globe. Due to a lack of common language and this type of linguistic restriction mostly creates stereotyping and gives birth to information not entailing proper facts and figures. The connection between the message given by the media and its audience should be strengthened by the help of media ecology. An eco-advocacy text should be sent to make the concern of the audience clear to make them a party of the discourse (Mühlhäusler & Peace, 2006).
Form of Speeches:
Little attention was given to all the dialects and accents used in the speeches and the environmental discourse is also in the English language. Although environmental issues affect the middle class more and those people have various forms of languages so a common standard of writing and speech should be identified in order to discuss the issue of environmental crisis (Mühlhäusler & Peace, 2006).
Genre:
The traditional genres like the myth, narrative, and sermon are replaced with new ones like the Environmental Impact Assessment. But Narratives have always been considered as a source to reduce the complexities in a text. The study of Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006) has included narrative as a framework and the idea of folk tales, stories give a set value that can be used to understand the history of environmental crisis and can be helpful to develop new. Likewise, Environmental history has been an important genre from decades.
Norms of interaction:
Western experts have explained the environmental matters in respect to their eco-missionaries and their imperialistic mindsets. The western specialists are ignoring the fact that scientific knowledge could be bound to culture and those findings could not be right about another culture. So the western assumptions of environmental crisis could not be applicable in a different country with a different culture.
There are two opposing communication models that could help to understand the interaction of environmental matters. One is the model used in the scientist, economic and political discourse to communicate the message of the experts to the common people. In such a model the developed part of the society make policies that are then communicated and applied to the developing world. This model could create a crisis between the two classes because of the norm. Language and the overall culture of developing countries are different from developed countries.
The study of Maarten and Versteeg (2005) says that different communities have different interactive norms and lack of a common norm makes it impossible to implement the policies of the developed world to the rest of the world. The norms that have shaped the environmental discourse are also following the belief system of the developed world by focusing more on the developed world. Thus people in the west belief in scientific discoveries more than the political thoughts over the green discourse.
corporate bodies have also included the scientific explanation of green discourse while displaying their products. The products that are out in the market are showing environmental claims and such acts make the decision process regarding environmental crisis even more difficult.
Role of Metaphor studies:
The limitation of environmental understanding could also be drawn from the fact that the scholars of the field pay huge attention to environmental myths. The different sorts of environment discourse are being understood on the bases of metaphors. Root metaphors are used either to distinguish various sort of environmental discourse or it can be targeted for criticism.
Conclusion
The relationship between discourse and environment could be considered by the help of the linguistic devices, who are helpful to explain environmental crisis. Most of the discourse focuses on pleasing human and have been used to examine environmental politics.
However, the political filed s are changing but the solutions to the various environmental issue can no more be found within the limits of the nation-state where environmental debates take place in institutes that are driven by power. So the middle class should be made the part of policymaking in order to tackle environmental issues.
References
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[["http://zotero.org/users/local/LY9XXHSK/items/R4RYCDKP"],["http://zotero.org/users/local/LY9XXHSK/items/E58DNWW5"]],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Carvalho, A. (2010). Media (ted) discourses and climate change: a focus on political subjectivity and (dis) engagement. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 1(2), 172–179.
Hajer, M. A. (2005). Coalitions, practices, and meaning in environmental politics: From acid rain to BSE. In Discourse theory in European politics (pp. 297–315). Springer.
Hajer, M., & Versteeg, W. (2005). A decade of discourse analysis of environmental politics: Achievements, challenges, perspectives. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 7(3), 175–184.
Howarth, D., & Torfing, J. (2004). Discourse theory in European politics: Identity, policy and governance. Springer.
Mühlhäusler, P., & Peace, A. (2006). Environmental discourses. Annu. Rev. Anthropol., 35, 457–479.
Weingart, P., Engels, A., & Pansegrau, P. (2000). Risks of communication: discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media. Public Understanding of Science, 9(3), 261–284.
