Corpus-Aided Ecolinguistics

de Robert Poole, Arran Stibbe, Mariana Roccia

"Corpus-Assisted Ecolinguistics introduces key research concepts, principles and techniques in ecolinguistics and corpus-aided discourse study, answering foundational questions for researchers new to the discipline and asserting the urgent need to expand its scope. Breaking new ground, the book analyzes under-explored environmental discourses that have a tangible impact on ecological wellbeing and sustainability by perpetuating harmful attitudes, practices and ideologies. Chapters present in-depth case studies, including the perceptions of single-use disposable products in contemporary consumer culture, the semantic prosody of the word 'water' in national contexts and the use of humor in reports on animal escapes from slaughterhouses. They draw on techniques such as concordances, collocations, n-grams and keyword analysis to show in each case that ecological degradation and crisis have become normalized, and even trivialized, in popular discourse. By applying the most effective tools from corpus linguistics to a diverse range of environmental discourses, this book makes a significant contribution to advancing the field of ecolinguistics."--