Discourse and Sustainability

The Seminar Series "Discourse and Sustainability" is an international forum for presenting and discussing new, cutting edge, research on discourse and issues of sustainability, environment, climate change and ecology.

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Next Talk

16 October 2026 (12 noon-1 pm UK time): Nina Venkataraman (National University of Singapore), Sustaining What, Erasing Whom? Climate-Altered Bodies and the Burden of Adaptation, Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a14572bc-ed5a-4e8d-9edd-b98a860fb6ca@4a5378f9-29f4-4d3e-be89-669d03ada9d8 

Every image of transformation is already a decision about distribution. Sustainability narratives decide what remains continuous, what must change, who bears the cost of adjustment, and whether they do so while preserving the subject of the future as something recognizable. This exploratory talk extends erasure analysis to where such decisions hide best, in images in which transformation is hypervisible, yet its structural causes, responsible actors, uneven burdens, and possible alternatives remain unavailable for scrutiny.

At present, gradual population-level transformations lack a stable culturally conventional visual grammar of agency and cost. This representational vacancy is filled by established archives of transformation, each importing its own grammar of agency, temporality and the burden of cost.

This talk stress-tests a developing account of how sustainability communication allocates continuity, transformation, and the burden of adaptation across two artifacts chosen for maximal distance in genre and production logic. WWF Belgium’s 2008 campaign, Stop Climate Change Before It Changes You, depicts a human with a fish head; the other is a 2021 visual accompanying a Gizmodo Australia article on climate-related changes in animal morphology that repurposes a horse-human transformation sequence from Scholastic’s Animorphs. A multimodal discourse analysis, drawing on visual grammar, transitivity, social actor representation and intersemiotic recontextualization (Bezemer & Kress, 2008; Kress and van Leeuwen, 2021; Machin and Mayr, 2023; van Leeuwen, 2008,), examines what each artifact seeks to sustain, where it locates the necessity for change, and how it connects bodily transformation to future continuity.

In these two images, bodily transformation is allocated in opposite directions. WWF presents a preventive-continuity logic where bodily transformation is an intolerable future, and conduct must change for the bodily form to remain. The Gizmodo visual presents an adaptive-continuity logic. Its graded sequence gives the change a functional, progressive visual trajectory, despite the article’s warning that morphological change does not necessarily signify successful coping (Ryding et al., 2021). Institutional logics of advocacy and science journalism are treated as conditions that make these allocations intelligible.

I name this mechanism continuity allocation. Sustainability communication distributes persistence, assigns transformation, and decides which bodies absorb the cost of adjustment. Reading for allocation therefore extends erasure analysis to hypervisibility itself where transformation saturates its frame while the systems producing it , the actors responsible for it, the unequal burdens it imposes  and  the alternatives it forecloses remain unavailable for scrutiny.  The question is not simply what sustainability sustains, but what must be erased for that continuity to remain imaginable.

Programme for 2026-27

20 November 2026 (12 noon-1 pm UK time):Anjali Venketram and Hannah Teresa, TITLE TBC, Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/79e70500-e613-4e18-8ea9-5c71b9e8020b@4a5378f9-29f4-4d3e-be89-669d03ada9d8

22 January 2027  (12 noon-1 pm UK time): READING GROUP: Naess (1995) - The shallow and the long range , Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/b45f5fa2-e565-40c2-8500-3b87be1a6f5e@4a5378f9-29f4-4d3e-be89-669d03ada9d8 

19 February 2027 (12 noon-1 pm UK time): Franzisca Weder (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Sustainability as Discursive Guidepost for Creating Transformative Agency in Professional Communication Education , Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/d1a528dc-8362-4183-8ee1-1560ac506eca@4a5378f9-29f4-4d3e-be89-669d03ada9d8

19 March 2027 (12 noon-1 pm UK time): TBC, TITLE TBC, Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/4d000bd0-c546-493a-9e67-a651377203f6@4a5378f9-29f4-4d3e-be89-669d03ada9d8

23 April 2027 (12 noon-1 pm UK time): READING GROUP: Remling 2018 Depoliticizing adaptation, Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/d59d94e5-4dab-4080-95d7-f210f992ac98@4a5378f9-29f4-4d3e-be89-669d03ada9d8

21 May 2027 (12 noon-1 pm UK time): TBC, TITLE TBC, Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/08bfe775-b125-4344-8376-203d001aa56d@4a5378f9-29f4-4d3e-be89-669d03ada9d8

18 June 2027 (12 noon-1 pm UK time): READING Group, Title TBC, Please register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/06fe28fb-d881-4fd0-a566-1a648da50251@4a5378f9-29f4-4d3e-be89-669d03ada9d8

Previous Talks

29 May 2026 (1-2 UK pm time): Salla-Riikka Kuusalu (University of Turku), Linguistic constructions of clearcutting in an online forum:  Learning from polarised views on forestry and forest conservation in Finland

20 March 2026 (1-2 UK pm time): Stephan Pühringer and Lukas Bäuerle Johannes (Kepler Universität Linz) , Socio-Ecological Transformation (SET) and Economic Reasoning (ER): A conceptual framework to assess the defining relationship of our times, catch up here: https://youtu.be/9PzJY5s1iNI

20 February 2026 (1-2 UK pm time): Matteo Fuoli (University of Birmingham), The language of net zero: A corpus-assisted analysis of corporate climate pledges, catch up here:https://youtu.be/COwluKfSyow

23 January 2026 (1-2 UK pm time): Teresa Fidélis (University of Aveiro), One Concert, Multiple Tunes: Evidence from the Circular Economy Narratives Across EU Member States’ Action Plans, catch up here: https://youtu.be/pyXc_NB8Sgc

21 November 2025 (1-2 pm UK time): Gerard O'Grady (University of Cardiff), Degrowth in the UK press: covert climate change denial and techno optimism, catch up here: https://youtu.be/aZ_PA1j36GY

23 May 2025 (1-2 UK pm time): Arran Stibbe (University of Gloucestershire, UK), The emerging discourse of the bioeconomy

21 March 2025 (1-2 UK pm time):Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska (University of Opole, Poland), Imagining sustainable futures: Critical multimodal analyses of policy discourse, activist discourse and science popularization discourse  - catch up here: https://youtu.be/otiXeOlsmzY

21 February 2025 (1-2 pm UK time): Katherine E. Russo (Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale, Italy): Negative Solidarity in Environmental Crisis Contexts: A Corpus-based Online News and Social Media Critical Discourse Analysis of the Australian Black Summer. - catch up here: https://youtu.be/hwrpkT4VLeU

24 January 2025 (1-2 pm UK time): Peter Mayeso Jiyajiya (University of Glasgow, UK): Recounting The Socio-Structural Realities in NGO-Community Engagement and their Implications On Sustainability in Malawi: The Researcher’s Experience,- catch up here: https://youtu.be/UB1neI9TqC8

15 November (1-2 pm UK time): Anders Horsbøl and Anne Grethe Julius Pedersen (Aalborg Universitet, Denmark): Reorganising citizen participation in green energy transition: first insights from an ongoing study of municipality, civil society and industry discourses in a Danish context., Catch up here: https://youtu.be/PX11yg6jz6g

Programme Summer Term 2024

9th February 2024, 11 am UK time (note the different time): Rescheduled talk, Ben Clarke (University of Gothenburg) Wanting for a better climate of discussion on the environment: Patterns of impoliteness, transitivity and Engagement in online newsreader comments that receive uncivil replies - catch up here: https://youtu.be/4oAxX0OCdco

16th February 2024, 12 noon UK TIME, Jonathan Joseph (University of Bristol): Resilience, sustainability and the crisis of the Liberal International Order - catch up here: https://youtu.be/0NQniwwGZR4

15th March 2024, 12 noon UK TIME, Kelsey Campolong (Ulster University): Neoliberalism in the Glasgow Climate Pact: Interdiscursivity and Faux-Sustainability at COP26  - catch up here: https://youtu.be/4DJsghVbWBk

19th April 2024, 12 noon UK TIME, Robert Poole (University of Alabama): Investigating ecological change and climate crisis through diachronic corpus-assisted ecolinguistics - catch up here: https://youtu.be/Tz3ilma3qWY

17th May 2024, 12 noon UK TIME, Nicolina Montesano Montessori (HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht): Towards a systemic, social ecological justice: ways forward for Critical Policy Discourse Analysis. catch up here: https://youtu.be/mpZw_opqY0g

7th June 2024, 12 noon UK TIME, Bernhard Forchtner (University of Leicester): Sustainability and the far right? The case of degrowth’

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The programme Winter Term 2023-2024:

20 October 2023, 12noon-1pm (note the different time) John Dryzek (University of Canberra) 'The Rise (and Fall?) of Grey Radicalism'

17 November 2023, 1-2pm, Tom Bartlett (University of Glasgow),  Just Transitions to sustainable practice - Is there a role for discourse analysts?

15 December 2023, 1-2pm, Anabella Carvalho (University of Minho), Political imaginaries and climate change

****POSTPONED**** Ben Clarke, (Göteborgs universitet), TBC