How to take care of the earth: a sociopragmatic analysis of cultural identity and contextualized meaning in Canadian environmentalist discourse

Abstract

This thesis uses current sociopragmatic theory to investigate the effects of cultural identity and related contextualizing elements (e.g., knowledge of relevant history) on linguistic meaning in environmentalist discourse, as well as framing theory for an interdisciplinary interpretation and additional support of its findings. More specifically, this entails the application of Acton (2014)’s Sociopragmatic Framework to speech data from a documentary film about environmental racism in Canada, which simultaneously provides an instance of substantiated use and validation for the underutilized framework. In order to test the framework’s hypothesized predictive capabilities, the project additionally includes a short survey designed to probe the perception and interpretation of speaker identity and motivation in correlation with linguistic and contextual variables, based on predictions derived from data analysis with the framework. Survey results indicate mixed potential of and the need for further research on the framework’s predictive capabilities, but clearly demonstrate its immense usefulness and versatility as an analytic tool for applied sociopragmatics. The main analysis illustrates the extensive pragmatic influence of cultural identity on environmentalist discourse, particularly with respect to its role as an effective contextualizing element. The thesis concludes that future research on the topic likely needs to focus more specifically on the effects of individual sociocultural background and ideology.