The values of trees and woodland: a discourse-based cross-disciplinary perspective on integrating ‘revealed’ evaluations of nature into environmental agendas

Pounds, Gabrina (2021) The values of trees and woodland: a discourse-based cross-disciplinary perspective on integrating ‘revealed’ evaluations of nature into environmental agendas. Critical Discourse Studies, 18 (4). pp. 461-480. ISSN 1740-5904

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Abstract

Discourse analysis has been widely applied to the study of environmental communication, highlighting how language is used to reflect and affect our attitudes towards the natural world. The potential of discourse analysis to ‘reveal’ the values that people attribute to nature has recently been recognized in the context of environmental debates. This paper takes a new cross-disciplinary approach to the analysis of evaluation, combining a discourse approach (specifically Appraisal analysis) and insights from environmental philosophy and environmental policy to address the following main questions: (1) Which values of nature may be embedded in discourse about nature? (2) To what extent are these values represented in people’s narratives about trees and woodland in the U.K.? (3) What are the implications of the findings for the critical analysis of evaluative discourse? (4) What are the implications of the findings for environmental organizations? The analysis is applied to a sample of 514 woodland narratives collected by the U.K. charitable environmental organization Woodland Trust in 2016. The study highlights new critical perspectives that may be gained from the analysis of evaluative discourse and the importance of considering and fostering people’s affective relationship with the natural world in building a strong basis for environmental action.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Gabrina Pounds is Senior Lecturer in Discourse Studies at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Her research focuses on the expression of attitude, subjectivity and emotion in news, advertising and environmental discourse and the communication of empathy and person-centeredness in online support forums, medical consultations and other professional contexts. She has published extensively on these topics in Discourse and Society (2010), the Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (2011), Text and Talk (2011), Applied Linguistics (2016), Discourse Context and Media (2012 and 2018), Functions of Language and Communication and Medicine (2017 and 2018).
Uncontrolled Keywords: discourse,evaluation,appraisal,values of nature,environmental philosophy,environmental policy,woodland,trees,stories,environmental organizations.
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Migration Research Network
Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Language and Communication Studies
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 20 Dec 2019 03:14
Last Modified: 21 Jul 2023 09:53
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/73407
DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2020.1752757

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