Steering towards seastainability : conflicting discourses of water in the cruise industry

With a constant size growth, the cruise industry has become the fastest developing sector in modern tourism over the last decades. To satisfy growing demand from a broad and varied demographic, including families, couples, solo travelers, and retirees, cruise lines have been improving cruise ships' capacity and facilities at an impressively fast rate. Such a remarkable development has brought about an equally dramatic environmental impact, with the main problems regarding air, water and noise pollution, waste generation and disposal, invasive species in ballast water, as well as pressures exerted on fragile environments and host communities. The increasing popularity of cruise tourism has also drawn the attention of environmental groups and organisations that closely scrutinise the sector, urging for greater and more authentic sustainability. With water pollution being one of the major issues facing the booming ocean cruise industry, this paper investigates how the leading cruise companies discursively frame their impact on the water and sea conservation issue and legitimise their resulting social practices. A specialised corpus of twenty sustainability reports published from 2019 to 2023 on the companies' corporate websites is examined from a Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) perspective to explore the narratives they use to frame their environmental efforts, legitimise their operations, while minimising criticism. The research aims to contribute to scholarly CDS discussions on corporate legitimisation discourses, exemplified by the particular genre of sustainability reports, and to the recent ecolinguistic debates about the critical role of language in either promoting or hindering sustainability. The findings suggest that cruise companies adopt a strategic communication downplaying their environmental impact while discursively construing a self-legitimating corporate image.