Framing Sustainability in Language and Communication

This collection brings together established and emerging scholars for a critical framing of sustainability through the lens of language and communication, social semiotics, and media studies.

List of contents

Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Introduction
Framing Sustainability
Maida Kosatica & Sean P. Smith
1. Visual Essay: "Banal Sustainability"
Sean P. Smith
SECTION I: Reframing sustainability in a colonial world
2. Rethinking Sustainability through Indigenous Language Futures
Bernard C. Perley
3. Chronotopes of Sustainability and the Coloniality of Corporate Initiatives
Jessica Pouchet
4. Climate Crisis and Animal Exploitation: Historical Materialism and The Reformulation of Industrial Discourses
Diego L. Forte
SECTION II: The semiotics of sustainability
5. The semiotics of "the unfinished": The lost highway and other signifiers of unsustainable development
Anders Björkvall & Arlene Archer
6. Creating shared value: A Social Semiotic Analysis of ESG Discourse on Social Media
Esterina Nervino, Karen C. K. Choi & Jiaying Wang
7. Signs of sustainability? The semiotic dimension of urban plants
Laura Imhoff
SECTION III: Communicating sustainability in everyday life
8. Responding to lifestyle discourses in climate conversations
Julia Coombs Fine
9. . Sustainable Architecture Studio Discourse: When the decoupling of communication, intentions, and outcomes presents aspirations for alternative futures
Sherif Goubran
10. Reclaiming Sustainability for the Anthropocene
Gavin Lamb
SECTION IV: Sustainability communication in the arts
11. 'Sustainability' in the Arts and Culture Sector: A Discourse Analytic Appreciative Inquiry
Kate Power
12. Climate In the Club: Conveying Sustainable Futures Through Eco Grime and Solarpunk Music
Morgan Sleeper & Jessica Love-Nichols
13. Staying away from Cthulhu rather than Embracing the Cthulhucene: Human and Non-Human Relations in Netflix's The Sea Beast
Emelie Fälton & Polina Ignatova
Epilogue
14. Seeing Through Sustainability and the Wasteful Rhetorics of (un)knowing
Crispin Thurlow
Index

About the author

Maida Kosatica is Professor of Urban Semiotics and Semantics in the Department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Her research interests include semiotic landscapes, multimodal critical discourse analysis, environmental communication and displacement, and discourses on ecosystem services.
Sean P. Smith is Assistant Professor in the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His research examines how discourse and (social) media shape development and practice within the contexts of the environment and tourism, informed by field research in Myanmar (Burma) and the Arabian Gulf.

Summary

This collection brings together established and emerging scholars for a critical framing of sustainability through the lens of language and communication, social semiotics, and media studies.

Product details

• Authors: Maida Smith Kosatica
• Assisted by: Maida Kosatica (Editor), Sean P. Smith (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 14.03.2025
• EAN: 9781032719160
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3271916-0
• No. of pages: 276
• Series: Routledge Research in Language and Communication
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Development / Sustainable Development, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Communication Studies, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Sociolinguistics, The environment, Social and cultural anthropology, Semiotics / semiology