Erasure of Plants and Animals through Passivization and Nominalization: An Ecolinguistic Analysis

Abstract

Abstract

            This research examines environmental science discourses' use of erasure to delete the actor or the subject. Two environmental science selected textbooks are examined. An aspect of Stibbe's (2015) model of erasure has been used to analyse the data. So, the methodology used in the article is quantitative.  The model claims that environmental science discourses marginalise nature through language that erase the environment from the textbooks. The researchers explore erasure through passivisation and nominalization, which finds out that the agent is completely removed from such discourse. Researchers examined passivisation and nominalization for void construction. These methods are ubiquitous in discourse, neutralising the agent and creating voids and majorly find out that erasure is extremely visible in the selected textbooks of environmental science.  Moreover, the claim is that environmental science discourse contains   these approaches i.e. passivization and nominalization to develop erasure. The paper recommends a new perspective on ecological discourse on language and research on how euphemistic terminology can harm readers.