Decoding ‘Environmental’ Discourse: a Linguistic Approach to Improving Education for Sustainable Development

Michał Stefan Rutkowski; Agnieszka Klimska

doi:10.21697/fp.2025.2.18

Published: 2025-12-30

Vol. 15 No. 2 (2025)

Decoding ‘Environmental’ Discourse: a Linguistic Approach to Improving Education for Sustainable Development

Michał Stefan Rutkowski , Agnieszka Klimska

Pedagogical Forum

Section: Colloquia

https://doi.org/10.21697/fp.2025.2.18

Abstract

In the face of accelerating ecological degradation, and in line with interdisciplinary efforts to enhance the quality of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), we propose that this field ought to evolve not only in content but also in language. This article explores the hypothesis that linguistic framing—specifically semantic prosody—significantly shapes environmental awareness and action. Drawing on cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis, we first establish the theoretical basis for the claim that language influences public perception and behavioral intent in the environmental domain. We then review how semantic prosody has been applied in ecological discourse studies, beginning with Partington's (1998) analysis of the term GREEN FUNDAMENTALIST, which exposes how frequent negative collocates can taint even ideologically neutral concepts, and continuing through Hardiman & Nuraniwati's (2023) corpus-based study of the lexical item SUSTAINABILITY, which demonstrates the term's positive semantic aura within contemporary news discourse. These foundational works set the stage for our original analysis of the term ENVIRONMENTAL using the WebCorp tool. Our corpus inquiry reveals a dual linguistic pattern: ENVIRONMENTAL exhibits a negative semantic prosody, collocating with terms of harm and risk, while simultaneously being framed within a neutral, technocratic discourse of governance and science. This semantic environment may contribute to emotional distancing, disengagement, or a technocratic framing of ecological crises. We argue that such patterns have direct implications for environmental education: if ESD is to foster hope, empowerment, and action, it must attend not only to what is taught, but how it is linguistically encoded. Semantic prosody offers educators and communicators a powerful lens for reshaping ecological and climate discourse in ways that resonate emotionally and ethically with learners.

Keywords:

environmental discourse, semantic prosody, environmental education, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), corpus linguistics

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Rutkowski, M. S., & Klimska, A. (2025). Decoding ‘Environmental’ Discourse: a Linguistic Approach to Improving Education for Sustainable Development . Pedagogical Forum, 15(2). https://doi.org/10.21697/fp.2025.2.18

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