Ecological Stylistics

Book excerpt: This book reflects the cutting edge in ecostylistic approaches to nature, the environment and sustainability as represented in contemporary non-literary discourse. Firstly, the book presents the ecolinguistic and stylistic terms and theories applied in this ecostylistic analysis (ecosophy, beneficial, ambivalent and destructive discourses; and foregrounding, point of view, metaphor), and reviews the most recent literature in the field of ecostylistics. Secondly, the book examines the occurrences of five marker words (nature, environment, ecosystem, ecology, sustainability) on the websites of five environmental organisations and agencies (Forestry England, Greenpeace International, National Park Service, Navdanya International, World Wide Fund for Nature). The main research purpose of this study is to identify beneficial discourses in the environet and to investigate the beneficial ecostylistic strategies utilised to produce them. Above all, this book reminds us humans that we do not stand apart from nature: we are a part of it. The book will be of interest to scholars of stylistics, ecolinguistics and ecocriticism, as well as scholars of discourse analysis, environmental communication and environmental humanities.