36.34, Engaging Communities in Environmental and Climate In/Action: Narratives, Discursive Practices, and Transdisciplinary Approaches

Thu Jan 9 00:05:02 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-34. Thu Jan 09 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.34, Engaging Communities in Environmental and Climate In/Action: Narratives, Discursive Practices, and Transdisciplinary Approaches

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Date: 08-Jan-2025
From: Denise Milizia [denise.milizia at uniba.it]
Subject: Engaging Communities in Environmental and Climate In/Action: Narratives, Discursive Practices, and Transdisciplinary Approaches

Full Title: Engaging Communities in Environmental and Climate
In/Action: Narratives, Discursive Practices, and Transdisciplinary
Approaches
Short Title: Dis4Change

Date: 23-Jun-2025 - 25-Jun-2025
Location: Bari, Italy, Italy
Contact Person: Denise Milizia
Meeting Email: denise.milizia at uniba.it

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics;
Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Call Deadline: 30-Jan-2025

Meeting Description:
The Conference aims to explore the dynamics of community engagement in
the face of environmental and climate challenges, highlighting the
ways storytelling, discourses, and collaborative efforts shape both
action and inaction. We invite scholars to contribute their insights
on how communities engage with (or disengage from) pressing
environmental and climate issues, what narratives drive their
responses, and how transdisciplinary strategies can foster
transformative action.
As Fløttum (2017) notes in “Willingness of Action”, the public opinion
debate on the environmental and climate change crisis has, to a large
extent, shifted its focus from causes attribution to the measures that
must be taken to meet its many predicted challenges at different
levels (local, national, and global). Yet, mobilizing action entails
knowledge about how social actors and the public view climate change
solutions and what they think needs to be done. Action/inaction
necessarily involves different beliefs, values and ideologies which
lie at the basis of the discursive struggle inherent in communication,
engagement and dis/alignment. Hence, we believe that the investigation
of engagement and in/action needs to be critical as it may involve
antagonistic calls for action, manipulation, the silencing of
alternative courses of action, perpetuation of underlying ideologies
of global growth and development etc.
As several studies have found, social actors involved in communicative
events are actively engaged in the production of frames to legitimize
their interpretations of knowledge, circumstances and events
(Charteris Black 2005) which may influence reception, ground decisions
and provide reasons for/against action (Fairclough and Fairclough
2012). For instance, the use of climate change crisis frames has
recently been discussed in terms of problem definition and
argumentation strategies (Cap 2017; Chilton 2004; Augè 2023; Russo and
Bevitori 2024). Yet, strategies of legitimation invoke publicly shared
and publicly justifiable, even highly formalized, codified,
institutional systems of beliefs, values and norms, in virtue of which
the action proposed is considered legitimate (Fairclough and
Fairclough 2012). Moreover, engagement strategies in narrative may be
a fruitful point of departure for studies interested in claims of
truth (Reisigl 2021), epistemic and deontic perspectives,
perspectivization, etc. (Cap 2017; Chilton 2004; Reisigl and Wodak
2016). Most of all, they may propel action and social movements (Van
Dijk 2024) guided by alternative and counter-discourses and
imaginaries shaping new ways of being and identities (Iovino and
Oppermann 2012; Haraway 2016), together with new ways of
conceptualizing the present and future (Russo 2019).
Action and inaction are critical in understanding how communication,
narratives and language shape, maintain, and challenge social
structures, and in turn how social structures determine language and
narrative choices (Buell 2005; Zapf 2016). Action may refer to the
ways in which language is used to accomplish tasks, assert power, or
influence social dynamics. In contrast, inaction may reflect silence,
omission, or hesitation, which can also carry significant meaning,
revealing implicit biases, power imbalances, or resistance. Studies
have highlighted that action-oriented language is used to rally
support or legitimize authority, while inaction or ambiguous language
may be strategically employed to avoid accountability or maintain the
new capitalist and neocolonial status quo (Fairclough 2002; Jessop
2000; Huggan and Tiffin 2010). Moreover, critical thinkers such as
Butler (1997) have examined how language acts may injure and
perpetuate marginalization by rendering certain voices invisible. This
may lead to a discussion of the nuanced interplay between action and
inaction in discourse, suggesting that inaction can be just as
powerful as explicit language in constructing societal narratives.
We are pleased to announce a call for papers for the First Biennial
DIS-4Change Conference on Engaging Communities in Environmental and
Climate In/Action: Narratives, Discursive Practices, and
Transdisciplinary Approaches.
We look forward to your contributions to this critical conversation on
how communities can be meaningfully engaged to address the challenges
posed by environmental and climate issues. We welcome submissions
across a spectrum of themes, including but not limited to:
 ● Discursive strategies and their impact on public engagement.
 ● The role of storytelling in environmental and climate
action/inaction.
 ● Integrative strategies and collaborative approaches combining
social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences in climate
communication.
 ● Intersectionality and cross-cultural perspectives in climate
engagement.
 ● The role of silence, omission, and inaction in perpetuating power
imbalances.
 ● Community-driven narratives and social movements discourse.
 ● Manipulation and conspiracy discourse.
 ● Strategic ambiguity and its role in climate communication.
 ● Claims of truth, epistemic authority, and their impact on public
opinion.
 ● Ethical considerations in climate discourse and engagement.
 ● Post-humanist and ecocritical approaches to climate narratives.
 ● Alternative imaginaries and speculative futures in environmental
discourse.
 ● The impact of discourse on local, national, and global
environmental policies.
 ● The role of communication in fostering or hindering policy
alignment.
 ● Power dynamics and governance in climate action narratives.
 ● Social media as a tool for climate activism and engagement.
 ● The role of AI and technology in shaping environmental discourses.
 ● The role of art, literature, and films in shaping climate
imaginaries.

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