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⏸️ STOP REDIRECT & STAY ON PAGESILENCES IN THE STORM: AN ECOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ERASURE IN THEENVIRONMENTAL NEWS HEADLINES OF PAKISTANI ENGLISH-LANGUAGENEWSPAPERS
Abstract
Abstract
When it comes to reporting floods, smog, locust swarms, earthquakes, heatwaves or stray-animal conflicts, Pakistaninewspapers keep relentlessly reporting the events but the language of the headline doesn't mention who suffers, who isin charge or who is to be blamed. In this study, this absence was explored. Following Stibbe (2015), and especially thenotion of erasure and its three stages, the study has been based on twenty-nine environmental news headlines that havebeen picked from English-language sources in Pakistan: twenty-six headlines from Dawn, one from The ExpressTribune, and two supplementary policy and archival texts. A qualitative, descriptive and interpretive design was used,and each headline was explored in terms of the language/suppression/backgrounding of participants, the ecologicalideologies embedded in those language/suppressions and the amount to which that ideology could be accepted withinthe stated ecosophy of interdependence, justice and ecological limits. The analysis, which confirmed that erasure wasnot limited to occasional occurrences, revealed that nearly all headlines committed at least one type of erasure andmost undertook two or three. Through the processes of nominalisation, agentless and passive constructions, thepersonification of nature as a destructive entity, the massification of animal and casualty, numerical abstraction andsuperordinate economic categories, the vulnerable populations, non-human life, and institutional responsibility wereall backgrounded. The three conceptual groupings that emerged throughout the data were: economisticanthropocentrism, where nature was important only as a means of production for markets; environmental determinism,where the hazards were autonomous forces acting upon a helpless population; and technocratic managerialism, wherethe crisis was a matter of administrative control, not of justice. The study concludes that the ecological harm headlinesin Pakistan not only record ecological harm but also erode accountability for it, while the study recommends a changein the practice of headlines to restore the people, living things and responsible institutions to the sentence.
When it comes to reporting floods, smog, locust swarms, earthquakes, heatwaves or stray-animal conflicts, Pakistaninewspapers keep relentlessly reporting the events but the language of the headline doesn't mention who suffers, who isin charge or who is to be blamed. In this study, this absence was explored. Following Stibbe (2015), and especially thenotion of erasure and its three stages, the study has been based on twenty-nine environmental news headlines that havebeen picked from English-language sources in Pakistan: twenty-six headlines from Dawn, one from The ExpressTribune, and two supplementary policy and archival texts. A qualitative, descriptive and interpretive design was used,and each headline was explored in terms of the language/suppression/backgrounding of participants, the ecologicalideologies embedded in those language/suppressions and the amount to which that ideology could be accepted withinthe stated ecosophy of interdependence, justice and ecological limits. The analysis, which confirmed that erasure wasnot limited to occasional occurrences, revealed that nearly all headlines committed at least one type of erasure andmost undertook two or three. Through the processes of nominalisation, agentless and passive constructions, thepersonification of nature as a destructive entity, the massification of animal and casualty, numerical abstraction andsuperordinate economic categories, the vulnerable populations, non-human life, and institutional responsibility wereall backgrounded. The three conceptual groupings that emerged throughout the data were: economisticanthropocentrism, where nature was important only as a means of production for markets; environmental determinism,where the hazards were autonomous forces acting upon a helpless population; and technocratic managerialism, wherethe crisis was a matter of administrative control, not of justice. The study concludes that the ecological harm headlinesin Pakistan not only record ecological harm but also erode accountability for it, while the study recommends a changein the practice of headlines to restore the people, living things and responsible institutions to the sentence.