Green and sustainable? Unmaking the Anglocentrism of global environmental discourse

This chapter provides an analysis of “the new green language” which has emerged in the era of climate destruction and global warming. It is argued that the keywords of the new green language are Anglocentric in nature, and at the same time, somewhat paradoxically, steeped in anti-language ideologies. This chapter asks whether the new green language is exercising a form of discursive and conceptual colonialism and provides in-depth analysis of the words “green” and “sustainable”. Drawing on research in environmental semantics and postcolonial semantics, this chapter proposes a “linguistics for the earth” which is prepared to unthink and unmake the centrisms of global discourse, and at the same time provides an aspirational and hopeful framework for the study of words and the world.