Environmental discourses

Abstract

Discourses concerned with the perceived global environmental crisis have increased dramatically over the past couple of decades. This review consists of an ethnographic analysis of the principal components of environmental discourses as well as a discussion of the approaches employed to analyze them. These include linguistic discourses (ecolinguistics, ecocritical linguistics, discourse analysis) as well as approaches developed within other disciplines (anthropology, literary studies, philosophy, and psychology). Over the years, the structural properties of environmental discourses have developed into a distinct discourse category. It remains unclear to what extent the numerous environmental discourses and metadiscourses significantly contribute to improving the health of the natural environment.