Language change is greenwashing – doesn’t treat the problem
Mark Meisner, 95 - Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from York University, Executive Director of the International Environmental Communication Association, former professor of environmental studies at SUNY-ESF “Resourcist Language: The Symbolic Enslavement of Nature,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Communication and Our Environment, eds. David Sachsman, Kandice Salomone and Susan Seneca, pp.236-243, Chattanooga: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 1997.https://markmeisner.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/meisner-resourcist_language.pdf //DH
My final clarification is to say that language is not a problem that needs fixing. Instead, I prefer to think of it-with apologies to Susan Sontag (1978)--as a sort of contagious symptom of an underlying disease. Treating language will not make the anthropocentric-resourcist ideology and its behavioural, economic and structural manifestations go away. Thus language change alone would be nothing more than greenwashing. But language is a sign of something wrong and it is a way to get the people concerned to think about the issues. The recognition of patterns in the language we use to talk about environmental issues can only help us to better understand how those discourses shape actions. With that in mind, I now turn to my taxonomy.