EXAMINING LANGUAGE AS A TOOL FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: AN ECOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON DR. SEUSS’S THE LORAX

Abstract

Environmental degradation has become a very big issue in the world and therefore there is a need to incorporate the ecological awareness in the early learning. Children literature is a very sensitive component in shaping of young minds, which can be adopted as a tool in advocacy of environment. The paper presents the language of environmental advocacy in one of the children story books, The Lorax by Dr. Seuss in the context of ecolinguistic approach by Stibbe (2015). The study is aimed at disclosing how the environmental awareness can be provoked by the linguistic choices in the story, and how the anthropocentric worldviews can be criticized and how the values of sustainability can be promoted to young readers. The text is analyzed with the help of the theoretical framework of ecolinguistics and, in particular, the concepts of the stories-we-live-by and cognitive framing that help to single out the following key points of the text: metaphors, the narrative voice, and the moral positioning. These findings show that The Lorax employs persuasive ecological metaphors, emotionally loaded terms and morality dichotomies to deliver the message that environment should be taken care of urgently. In the text, the idea of ecological consciousness and activism is developed among the targeted audience through descriptions of the consequences of the abuse of the environment and the moral duty to respect nature. The paper demonstrates the potential of children literature as the potent means of environmental education and supports the use of ecolinguistic approaches to the interpretation of literature and designing the curriculum.