A Meeting Point of Culture, Royalty, and the Environment: Analyzing the Discourse on Sustainability by the Royal Ballet and Opera in London

Abstract Whilst there is a growing line of research that examines sustainability by the leading ballet and opera houses, currently, however, there are insufficient studies that shed light on sustainable practices by the Royal Ballet and Opera in London (the United Kingdom). Furthermore, there is no published research examining the Royal Ballet and Opera’s discourse on sustainability through a linguistic lens. The present paper aims to bridge the research gap by means of identifying and analyzing frequently occurring words and word clusters in a corpus of texts on sustainability written by the Royal Ballet and Opera’s staff. The rationale for using a quantitative approach to examine sustainability discourse is to highlight frequently occurring words and word clusters that may point to discursive patterns characterizing the Royal Ballet and Opera’s sustainability discourse. The analysis reveals that the often occurring words and word clusters in the Royal Ballet and Opera’s discourse on sustainability reflect discursive patterns such as organizational identity, environmental sustainability, and climate change. These findings are discussed in relation to the existing body of literature on sustainability in the ballet and opera sector. In terms of the paper’s added value, it is argued that it offers an objective, data-driven insight into the language of institutional environmental commitment, contributing to the examination of how the Royal Ballet and Opera construe their sustainability discourse. Additionally, the paper’s added value highlights specific lexical patterns and self-referential strategies that reveal how sustainability is framed as a collective organizational identity.