ROLE OF IDENTITIES IN CLIMATE CHANGE: AN ECOLINGUISTIC DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PAKISTANI SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISEMENTS

Abstract

The present study aims to uncover the ecologically beneficial and destructive identities from Pakistani social media advertisements. Moreover, how these affect people’s perception of the physical environment is worth examining. This qualitative study uses Stibbe’s (2015) theoretical framework to analyze the collected data. Through purposive sampling, only 4 advertisements from the tourism and real estate sectors were selected from YouTube and Facebook. The findings of the study show that identities used in tourism ads are ecologically destructive, as they promote over-tourism, commodify nature, and can lead to the exploitation of natural resources. The identities used in the real estate sector promote a luxurious lifestyle and encourage overconsumption; moreover, nature’s role is portrayed as a tool of amusement to please human beings. Thus, the identities used in Pakistani tourism and real estate advertisements are ecologically destructive because they are environmentally incompatible and need to be changed with ecologically compatible identities for the well-being of the physical environment.