Linguistic Representation of Climate Change in National and International Newspaper

Abstract

This paper examines the linguistic manifestations of the issue of climate change by looking at its coverage in both national (Dawn, The Express Tribune) and international (The Guardian, Reuters) newspapers in a corpus-based ecolinguistic approach. Based on the Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday,2004) and the narratives explored in (Stibbe,2015) in the book known as The Stories We Live By, the study examines the idea of disclosing underlying ideologies towards the environment in the use of grammatical and lexical patterns. Analysis through the AntConc software at the nominalization and passive constructions, collocational and frequency analysis using key climate words was conducted. Results show the national corpus is inclined towards the use of nominalization (adaptation, pollution, degradation, and development) and passive voice constructions that hide human agency and responsibility. The language pattern would build an anthropocentric and bureaucratic mode of discourse, shaping the problem of environmental degradation as a technical or institutional problem, instead of a moral crisis. Conversely, it is possible to note that in the international corpus, we have nominalizations, which include emissions, cooperation, litigation, and action that pre-empt global responsibility and ethical obligation. These options reflect ecocentric decision-making, focusing on collective will and the moral action of climate problems. The paper using the prism of SFG and ecolinguistic indicates that language not only mirrors but also solidifies ecological world views. The results indicate the influence of seemingly neutral grammatical forms regarding the perceptions of the population regarding environmental responsibility. It is concluded that sustainable discourse can be encouraged through reconfiguring the language of the media in a way that focuses on existing agencies, empathy, and ethical responsibility towards the planet. The contribution that the study makes to the area of critical ecolinguistic is in highlighting the way in which grammatical analysis of corpora will reveal the ideological background of climate communication. Future researchers can conduct diachronic study.