Rezensionen 136 Richard Alexander, Framing Discourse on the Environment. A Critical Discourse Approach. New York & London: Routledge, 2009. Alwin Fill “As linguists and language scholars, many of us hold that language plays a major role in predisposing speakers to perceive or to construct the world in a specific fashion.” (3) Richard Alexander’s book is based on the assumption that discourse is not just ‘talk’, but that there is a close link between discourse and what a society holds to be true and important. Discourse thus shapes our ideas and attitudes towards current problems and consequently has a great influence on our actions. It is, however, possible to make people aware of the pursuit of power being exercised through discourse - an awareness-raising task Alexander sets himself in writing the chapters of this book. Framing Discourse on the Environment is grounded in the theory of a dialectical relationship between language, ecology and society, but the main focus of the book is on the analysis of texts. From a methodological point-of-view, the book successfully combines quantitative with qualitative research by linking the questions asked by Critical Discourse Analysis with the statistical method of corpus linguistics. Among the linguistic parameters used for the texts are key-words and purr-words, personal pronouns, nominalizations, metaphors, euphemisms, word-frequencies and collocations. The corpus analysis makes many concordance tables necessary; these however are easy to read since important elements are highlighted and all results are discussed in the subsequent text. Alexander’s book is rich in examples of discourse in which human attitudes towards the ‘environment’ are framed. The texts investigated come from various genres and deal with a variety of topics. They range from an issue of The Economist and a speech by BP CEO John Browne to the mission statements of The Body Shop and the self-representations of large oil and energy companies (e.g. on the internet) as well as of agricultural companies producing genetically altered seed. In the central part of the book (chapters 6 and 7), we find the BBC Reith lectures of the millennium year 2000, which are scrutinized using quantitative and qualitative methods. Chapter 6, called “Wording the World”, explains why these particular radio lectures were chosen and what statistical methods were used. The choice of the lectures as texts to be investigated can be called a happy one, in particular because of the extreme diversity of the speakers. These were a British Tory politician, an American conservation biologist, BP CEO John Browne, Gro Harlem Brundtland (former PM of Norway, known for her commitment to ‘Sustainable Development’), Vandana Shiva (an Indian biodiversity activist) and the Prince of Wales, whose commitment to environmental issues is well known. Alexander’s method makes a comparison between the speeches on the lexical (including the collocational) level possible. For instance, all speakers used the items globalization, sustainable development and world, though with differing frequencies and different collocations. Thus, Shiva uses world most frequently with a strong focus (from the collocations) on feeding the world (94). Browne uses sustainable development three times together with business and obviously sees this development as Rezensionen 137 coupled with profit and economic success: “Sustainable development requires successful companies.” (101) In chapter 9 (“Engineering Agriculture”), Alexander focuses on a central issue of eco-criticism, viz. industrial forms of ‘seed production’, in particular those which involve ‘genetic technologies’. On investigating publicity material of crops and seed sellers (e.g. the Monsanto website), Alexander sees ‘linguistic engineering’ at work, particularly where genetic engineering is made out to be beneficial - even indispensable - for small farmers. This linguistic engineering begins with the collocations used with genetic - among others the following: modification, improvement, enhancement, performance, attributes of plants (155-157). It continues with the frequent use of benefit/ beneficial (e.g. to smallholder farmers) on the Monsanto website (141), and ends by employing such words as stewardship, pledge and commitment for activities which in reality are connected with profit. Alexander shows how the discourse on the issues of genetics is framed so as to make genetic technologies out to be essential in the struggle to “aid poor countries to feed their own populations” (159) - a frame which is contrary to the facts. Chapter 11, on obfuscation and disinformation, deals with the “militarization of rhetoric”, particularly with linguistic strategies which obfuscate what really happens in a war. There is a gap between words and deeds: “If our troops are faced by lifethreatening behaviour in any form they will respond in a robust and decisive fashion,” was broadcast on the BBC during the Blair government. Translated into ordinary English, which is closer to reality, this would be “They will kill anyone who they consider to be acting aggressively” (197, following Paul Chilton). The code names of U.S. military operations, with their harmless cowboy or sports allusions, tell a similar story, e.g. Operation Ranch Hand, Operation Arc Light, Operation Freedom Train, Operation Tailwind, etc. (203f.; see the tables of adjectives (204), and of nouns (205), in these names). With all the obfuscating and euphemizing which occurs, it is no wonder people know so little about the reality of the political world, in spite of being surrounded by so much ‘information’ - a situation called by Alexander (following Chomsky) ‘Orwell’s problem’. In an excursus on theory (175-180), Alexander voices a critique of linguistics, which up until now has chiefly concerned itself with abstract models of language, with Universal Grammar and with investigating linguistic structures and correctness of language use. In this excursus, we also find an interesting comparison between Chomsky and Halliday, supported by extracts from their writings on topics such as classism and racism (178-180). While the two famous linguists agree on the role of these ideologies in capitalist society, Chomsky, in sharp contrast to Halliday, does not see them as problems with which linguists should concern themselves. In one passage, Alexander himself warns of overestimating the power of language and the manipulatory force of euphemisms: “The examination of military euphemisms and the ‘militarization’ of language should not be used to suggest that language is somehow primary or ‘significant’.” (197) When people are confronted with soldiers directing bombs at them, language becomes insubstantial. Alexander’s book is a profound study of the linguistic framing of reality, a study immensely rich in examples and corpus-based data. In its political and ideological chapters, the book goes far beyond its title, which only promises an analysis of discourse on the environment. The book is empirically oriented, but the discussion of Rezensionen 138 the role of linguistics in making the public aware of the importance of language is also of theoretical interest. Perhaps one could object that some of the texts in Alexander’s corpus cannot really be called ‘recent’ (e.g. the Body-shop mission statement of 1994 and the Browne speech of 1997). Another point of possible criticism is that the comparison of the six Reith lectures from the year 2000, though interesting as a piece of applied corpus analysis, does not yield convincing results concerning the different ways the six authors deal with environmental problems. Framing Discourse on the Environment is not a simple presentation of euphemisms and other linguistic strategies: it is a disquieting report of the things people in power do with language. It rings an alarm bell which should raise the readers’ awareness of how Discourse frames, construes, even distorts reality. For anyone interested in language, ecology and politics, the book is an eye-opener and should be compulsory reading. Alwin Fill English Department University of Graz