The critical awareness of the language of environmental texts: selections from the interpersonal function of language

Anastasia Stamou and Stefanos Paraskevopoulos
University of Thessaly

In this article we study the selections made from the interpersonal function of language when writing about environmental issues. The interpersonal function refers to the way we are involved in the utterance as text producers shaping social roles as well as to how we interact with the recipients of texts positioning them (in a relation of power, solidarity, and so on) in terms of the social world constructed. Drawing upon examples from environmental texts coming from the media, as well as from the formal and informal environmental education, we show how the scientific environmental information transmitted in the texts is rhetorically exploited through language (categorical assertive speech acts, evaluation), leading to the naturalization of scientific "truth".