Language and Climate Change: An Ecolinguistic Discourse Analysis of Pakistani Tourism Advertisements

Abstract

This study is an ecolinguistic discourse analysis of Pakistan’s tourism advertisements. It critically evaluates the discourse of the advertisements to determine whether it is ecologically beneficial, destructive, or ambivalent. This qualitative study collected one English-language advertisement from YouTube from the tourism industry through purposive sampling. Ecolinguistic discourse analysis, as proposed by Stibbe (2015), is used as a theoretical framework to uncover the nature of tourism advertisement discourse. The study finds that the metaphors, identities, and ideologies used in tourism advertisement are ecologically destructive. In this advertisement, nature is commodified and used as a tool to attract a pack of tourists to increase revenue, without considering its consequences for the ecosystem. The findings of the study can play a positive role in addressing the climate change problem, because they expose ecologically destructive discourse and support ecologically beneficial discourse.