Framing Sustainability in Language and Communication

This collection brings together established and emerging scholars for a critical framing of sustainability through the lens of language and communication, social semiotics, and media studies. The volume underscores the importance of re-envisioning sustainability around not only climate change and biodiversity loss but in broader systems of ecological, social, and economic imbalances on a global scale.

The book begins with a visual essay which provides a semiotic foundation for understandings of sustainability across disciplinary approaches in the chapters that follow. Subsequent chapters are organized around four thematic parts: reframing sustainability in a colonial world; the semiotics of sustainability; communicating sustainability in everyday life; and sustainability communication in the arts. A closing commentary by Crispin Thurlow offers critical reflections on sustainability within language and communication research and beyond.

This book will be of interest to scholars addressing sustainability across diverse disciplines, including language and communication, social semiotics, linguistic anthropology, environmental communication, media studies, and development studies.