Eco-friendly language, sustainability claims, and power relations in green advertising discourse


Abstract


As the global quest for sustainability and environmental commitment becomes more and more urgent, many consumers are now opting for products and brands aligned with their values (Mintel 2021). Indeed, according to a survey by the European Commission, 56% of average European consumers declared that “environmental concerns influenced their purchasing decisions” (EC 2021). Consequently, companies are now revising their marketing and advertising strategies in order to focus on eco-friendly claims, thus reversing the traditional image of passive consumers manipulated by advertisers (Wilke et al. 2021). In this context, the present paper investigates eco-friendly discourse and sustainability claims in a dataset of Italian food and drinks television commercials. The study considers 15 commercials recently aired in Italy for a qualitative manual analysis of textual and language features, in line with traditional CDA methods (Huckin 1997); a critical evaluation of environmental claims through a framework for greenwashing detection (Carlson et al. 1993) is also included. While attention is placed on critical aspects such as power relations between businesses and consumers, results suggest that environmental and sustainability topics are exploited in advertising to provide evidence of companies’ sustainability commitment, and to please conscious consumers asking for more responsible production.

DOI Code: 10.1285/i22390359v58p173

Keywords: CDA; eco-friendly language; food and drinks advertising; green advertising; sustainability claims

References


Akenji L. 2014, Consumer Scapegoatism and Limits to Green Consumerism, in “Journal of Cleaner Production” 63, pp. 13-23.

Alexander R. 2010, Framing Discourse on the Environment: A Critical Discourse Approach, Routledge, London.

Alexander R. 2017, Investigating texts about environmental degradation using Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistic techniques, in Fill A.F. and Penz H. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics, Routledge, London, pp. 196-210.

Amatulli C., De Angelis M., Peluso A. M., Soscia I. and Guido G. 2019, The effect of negative message framing on green consumption: An investigation of the role of shame, in “Journal of Business Ethics” 157, pp. 1111-1132.

Asghar J. 2014, Language power and ideology in commercial discourse: A prologue to Critical Discourse Analysis for neophyte analysts, in “Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies” 3 [4], pp. 225-232.

Atkinson L. 2014, Green moms: The social construction of a green mothering identity via environmental advertising appeals, in “Consumption Markets & Culture” 17 [6], pp. 553-572.

Baek T.H. and Yoon S. 2017, Guilt and shame: Environmental message framing effects, in “Journal of Advertising” 46 [3], pp. 440-453.

Banerjee S.B., Iyer E.S. and Kashyap R.H. 2003, Corporate environmentalism: Antecedents and influence of industry type, in “Journal of Marketing” 67 [2], pp. 106-122.

Barnard M. 2017, Advertising: The rhetorical imperative, in Jenks C. (ed.), Visual Culture. Routledge, London, pp. 26-41.

Bednarek M. and Caple H. 2010, Playing with environmental stories in the news – Good or bad practice?, in “Discourse & Communication” 4 [1], pp. 5-31.

Benz B. 2000, Let it green: The ecoization of the lexicon, in “American Speech” 75 [2], pp. 215-221.

Bevitori C. 2011, ‘Jumping on the green bandwagon’: The discursive construction of GREEN across ‘old’ and ‘new’ media genres at the intersection between corpora and discourse, in Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference 2011 - Discourse and Corpus Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, pp. 1-19.

Boncinelli F., Gerini F., Piracci G., Bellia R. and Casini L. 2023, Effect of executional greenwashing on market share of food products: An empirical study on green-coloured packaging, in “Journal of Cleaner Production” 391, pp. 136258.

Budinsky J. and Bryant S. 2013, ‘It’s not easy being green’: The greenwashing of environmental discourses in advertising, in “Canadian Journal of Communication” 38[2], pp. 207-226.

Caimotto M. C. and Molino A. 2011, Anglicisms in Italian as alerts to greenwashing: A case study, in “Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines” 5[1], pp. 1-16.

Carlson L., Grove S.J. and Kangun N. 1993, A content analysis of environmental advertising claims: A matrix method approach, in “Journal of Advertising” 22[3], pp. 27-39.

Chen S. 2016, Selling the environment: Green marketing discourse in China׳ s automobile advertising, in “Discourse, Context & Media” 12, pp. 11-19.

Collins L.C. and Nerlich B. 2016, Uncertainty discourses in the context of climate change: A corpus-assisted analysis of UK national newspaper articles, in “Communications” 41[3], pp. 291-313.

Dai S., Chen K. and Jin R. 2022, The effect of message framing and language intensity on green consumption behavior willingness, in “Environment, Development and Sustainability” 24 [2], pp. 2432-2452.

de los Ríos Cortès M.E. and Alousque Negro I. 2022, Cognitive operations in eco-friendly car advertising, in “International Journal of English Studies” 22 [1], pp. 81-99.

Deloitte 2021, 2021 Global Marketing Trends, https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/insights/topics/marketing-and-sales-operations/global-marketing-trends/2021.html (15.4.2023).

EC 2021, European Commission, Consumer Conditions Survey: Consumers at home in the single market – 2021 edition. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2021-07/Relatório%20Global%20-%20Total%20Consumer%20Conditions%20Survey.pdf (1.8.2022).

Fairclough N. 2001, Language and Power, Routledge, London.

Fairclough N. 2009, A dialectical-relational approach to critical discourse analysis in social research, in Wodak R. and Meyer M. (eds.), “Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis”, Sage, London, pp. 162-187.

Federici E. 2018, Translation Theory and Practice. Cultural Differences in Tourism and Advertising, Paolo Loffredo Editore, Napoli.

Freitas E. S. L. 2013, Advertising and discourse analysis, in Gee J. P. and Handford M. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Routledge, London, pp. 427-440.

Gräuler M. and Teuteberg F. 2014, Greenwashing in Online Marketing – Investigating Trust-Building Factors Influencing Greenwashing Detection, Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik 2014, pp. 1-7.

Grundmann R. and Krishnamurthy R. 2010, The discourse of climate change: A corpus-based approach, in “Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines” 4 [2], pp. 125-146.

Hansen A. 2018, Environment, Media and Communication, Routledge, London.

Hansen A. and Machin D. 2008, Visually branding the environment: Climate change as a marketing opportunity, in “Discourse Studies” 10 [6], pp. 777-794.

Hansen A. and Cox J.R. (eds.) 2015, The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication, Routledge, London.

Huckin T.N. 1997, Critical Discourse Analysis, in Miller T. (ed.), Functional Approaches to Written Text: Classroom Applications, Eric, Washington (D.C.).

Hunston S. 2007, Semantic prosody revisited, in “International Journal of Corpus Linguistics” 12 [2], pp. 249-268

Kenalemang-Palm L.M. and Eriksson G. 2021, The scientifization of “green” anti-ageing cosmetics in online marketing: a multimodal critical discourse analysis, in “Social Semiotics”, pp. 1-20.

Koch M.A. and Compton C.A. 2015, Discursive closures and the greenwashing of food discourse, in Boerboom S. (ed.) The Political Language of Food, Lexington Books, London, pp. 227-250.

Lakoff G. 2010, Why it matters how we frame the environment, in “Environmental communication” 4 [1], pp. 70-81.

Liu M. and Huang J. 2022, “Climate change” vs.“global warming”: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of two popular terms in The New York Times, in “Journal of World Languages” 8 [1], pp. 34-55.

Liu S. 2015, Advertising greenness in China: a critical discourse analysis of the corporate online advertising discourse, doctoral thesis, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.

Menon A. and Menon A. 1997, Enviropreneurial marketing strategy: the emergence of corporate environmentalism as market strategy, in “Journal of marketing” 61 [1], pp. 51-67.

Mintel 2021, Global Consumer Trends 2021, https://www.mintel.com/global-consumer-trends (15.4.2023).

Nerlich B., Koteyko N. and Brown B. 2010, Theory and Language of Climate Change communication, in “Climate Change” 1 [1], pp. 97-110.

Niceforo M. 2021, Quite Like Before: The Power of Emotional Storytelling in Coca-Cola's Campaign Open Like Never Before, “I-Land Journal” 1, 88-108.

Novikau A. 2016, The evolution of the concept of environmental dsiscourses: Is environmental ideologies a useful concept?, Western Political Science Association 2016 Annual Meeting Paper.

Olausson U. 2011, “We’re the ones to blame”: Citizens’ representations of climate change and the role of the media, in “Environmental Communication” 5 [3], pp. 281-299.

Ottman, J.A. 2011, The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools, and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding, Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield.

Partington A. 2004, “Utterly content in each other’s company”: Semantic prosody and semantic preference, in “International Journal of Corpus Linguistics” 9 [1], pp. 131-156.

Peattie K. and Crane A. 2005, Green marketing: legend, myth, farce or prophesy?, in “Qualitative Market Research: an International Journal” 8 [4], pp. 357-370.

Piovano C. and Andolina A. 2022, Italy’s first greenwashing case between corporates, https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/business-and-human-rights-insights/2022/01/italys-first-greenwashing-case-between-corporates.html (15.4.2023).

Plec E. and Pettenger M. 2012, Greenwashing consumption: The didactic framing of ExxonMobil’s energy solutions, in “Environmental Communication” 6 [4], pp. 459-476.

Sharma A. P. 2021, Consumers’ purchase behaviour and green marketing: A synthesis, review and agenda, in “International Journal of Consumer Studies” 45 [6], pp. 1217-1238.

Stibbe A. 2020, Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live by, Routledge, London.

Thompson C.J. 2004, Marketplace mythology and discourse power, in “Journal of Consumer Research” 31 [1], pp. 162-182.

Wild K., Church A., McCarthy D. and Burgess J. 2013, Quantifying lexical usage: Vocabulary pertaining to ecosystems and the environment, in “Corpora” 8 [1], pp. 53-79.

Wilke U., Schlaile M. P., Urmetzer S., Mueller M., Bogner K. and Pyka A. 2021, Time to say ‘Good Buy’ to the passive consumer? A conceptual review of the consumer in the bioeconomy, in “Journal of Agricultural and environmental ethics” 34 [4], pp. 1-35.

Wodak R. and Meyer M. 2016, Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, Sage, London.

Xue F. 2015, Message framing and collectivistic appeal in green advertising – A study of Chinese consumers, in “Journal of International Consumer Marketing” 27 [2], pp. 152-166.


Full Text: PDF

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.
کاغذ a4

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Italia License.