An Ecolinguistic Approach to Framing and Ideology in Kaine Agary's Yellow Yellow

Abstract

This article investigates the connection between language and its environment, with a focus on the function language plays in relation to ecological degradation and the social ills that accompany it. Using insights from Arran Stibbe’s (2015) ecolinguistics framework, the article examines purposively sampled extracts from Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow to determine how the issue of ecological degradation has been framed, the frames used to construct it, the ideological stories present in the text and how they influence the way characters think, talk and act. Complex sentence constructions, additives, adversatives, contrasts, pronominal and vocabulary items are among the framing techniques employed to relate the issue of ecological degradation and other societal concerns that accompany it. To underline the gravity of the issue, the writer portrays it in a negative light. This portrayal is achieved through the coalescing of source and target frames with evaluative and descriptive lexical phrases that convey negative connotations. These linguistic resources highlight the various ideological stories in the text and how they influenced the issue. The analysis thus exemplifies the fact that language is indeed a means through which environmental concerns can be addressed.