Words shape how we feel, how we act, how we perceive the world. “Change” and “emergency” resonate in profoundly different ways when attached to the word “climate.” When is alarmist language helpful, and for how long can alarmist language retain its urgency? How do the ways we frame nature affect the degree to which we care for it? This session on linguistics explores why we must choose our words and metaphors carefully, because they don’t end in letters and punctuation but in the shaping of thoughts and therefore habits, actions, lifestyles. Words are causes for real effects in how we address climate change.

Relevant Materials

• The stories we live by, a free ecolinguistics online course by Arran Stibbe
• Towards a grammar of ecocultural identity, a research paper by Arran Stibbe
• Education for Sustainability and the Stories We Live By, a research paper by Arran Stibbe

Quotes

• “The words you speak becomes the house you live in.” – Hafiz
• “Remember your words can plant gardens or burn whole forests down.” – Gemma Troy
• “Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” – Rumi