Abstract
Over the past three decades, corporate branding has trended strongly towards environmental conscientiousness and green rhetoric, often heralded under the term “sustainability” - a broad and mutable rhetorical strategy that not only serves industry self-interest but is mobilized by civil society actors as well. This tension is especially apparent in the information communication technologies (ICT) sector. Employing Wittgenstein’s concept of the language-game, this article describes how sustainability has been deployed by tech companies, and how these efforts have also been contested - and strategically mobilized - by activist environmental nonprofits and critical scholars seeking to reform tech sector practices. Combining environmental communication, political economy, and discourse analysis, we investigate the conceptualization and communication of sustainability as a discourse within and against the sector.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 640-660 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Journal of Language and Politics |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 9 2023 |
Keywords
- STS
- environmental communication
- environmental media studies
- infrastructure studies
- political ecology
- sustainability studies
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History
- Sociology and Political Science
- Linguistics and Language