Net zero and protection: Framing environmental action in Corporate Social Responsibility reports of rail companies

Transport companies face the dual challenge of addressing transparency issues in communicating their potential role in environmental disasters while cultivating trust with stakeholders. Set against this background, this paper explores how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports showcase companies’ awareness of both their role as social actors and their impact on the planet and the community. More specifically, it aims to investigate how environmental issues have been framed and described by companies operating in the rail sector from a linguistic and discursive perspective. From an eco-linguistics perspective, this paper examines trigger words that are used to frame issues related to the environment in CSR reports of rail companies. Specifically, we avail ourselves of a corpus consisting of CSR reports published in English between 2021 and 2022 by rail companies of both English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. An analysis of our corpus highlights recurrent phraseological units related to zero and protection, suggesting some basic frames of corporate environmental action. A close study of the lexico-grammatical patterns linked to such words shows different trends in the disclosure of reports from both a linguistic and discursive perspective. Results shed light not only on how companies represent themselves through the genre of CSR reports, but also on cross-cultural differences. Specifically, countries using net zero as their main objective present themselves as efficient while those preferring climate protection as caring. The study contributes to the further understanding of the role of corporate social responsibility in environmental action. By framing environmental protection and net zero not only as a mission but also as a corporate strategy, rail companies seem to reinforce their public image in an increasingly eco-conscious market.