An Ecolinguistic Perspective in CDA and Critical News Analysis

The growing awareness of media's impact on societal attitudes towards environmental degradation and climate change has led to a surge of research examining the intersections between media and climate change. While the influence of language on environmental communication is well-known, this understanding is underutilized in understanding how ecological discourses may help or prevent response to climate change. Research on ecological discourses concerning climate change has both theoretical and practical significance. An increasing body of research has examined media discourses from an Ecolinguistic perspective, focusing on corporate-centric discourses of neoliberal economics and financial growth. The paper based on Social Constructionist Theory and Discourse Analysis Model and it provides a background on discourse and its relevance to discussions of climate change, energy crisis as a contextual factor and the societal role of media and language in discussing environmental issues. Ecolinguistics is introduced as a paradigm and rationale for researchers taking an ecolinguistics approach to discourse analysis, and linguistic concepts of word frequency, lexical cohesion, and modality are introduced. The methodology of this study is detailed in section three, describing the research aim, data gathering method and the process of applying an Ecolinguistic perspective. The analysis and findings are also mentioned in section four, followed by a discussion of the findings. The study concludes with a reference to the limitations, and suggestions for future research.