Abstract
Stibbe argues that there is a link between what he refers to as the ‘stories-we-live-by’ (p. 6) and the ways in which we act and think in this world. Extending beyond traditional narrative structure and between the lines of text, he defines these particular stories as the mental models shared across a culture or community of people that govern their perceptions of everyday realities. From an ecological perspective, Stibbe argues that the critical analysis of the linguistic and visual manifestation of these stories provides us with the opportunity to not only reveal and question those stories deemed ecologically destructive, but also to foster and promote new stories that will contribute to the protection and support of both human and non-human life. Stibbe refers to this form of analysis as ecolinguistics. With the purpose of clearly defining and outlining the philosophical background and methodological framework of an emerging discipline in the study of language, this book brings together key philosophical traditions in ecology with the theoretical and methodological strengths of critical discourse analysis (CDA), cognitive science, rhetorical analysis and identity scholarship.
With the goal of carving out a unique space for this particular form of scholarship, Stibbe has distanced his work from his previous alignment with discourse analysis (Stibbe, 2012, reviewed in Discourse Studies, 2014, 16(2): 323–324). Unlike his previous work where he positions his approach as an extension of CDA, in Ecolinguistics, Stibbe replaces the broader notion of the term ‘discourse’ with ‘stories-we-live-by’. Here, discourse is relegated to only one form of the story and reduced to the limited definition of a standardized way of representing the world shared by members of a particular group. Ideologies, on the other hand, are referred to here as the stories that underlie these discourses, defined as ‘belief systems about how the world was, is, will or should be which are shared by members of particular groups in society’ (p. 23). It is through discourse, Stibbe argues, that these systems of belief are conveyed. In this sense then, what distinguishes discourse from the other mechanisms of story-telling outlined in this book is its standardization and connection to a specific group or institution.
A chapter on discourse and ideology, described as representing the broadest form of ‘the story’, is followed by chapters on framing, metaphor, evaluations, identities, convictions, erasure and salience. Although Stibbe concedes that these ‘types of story’ interact with one another and that a sophisticated analysis would take these interactions into account (p. 188), he treats these mechanisms of story-telling as individual stories in their own right. Framing, for instance, is defined in Chapter 3 as the employment of a story from one context to shape the perception and conceptualization of another through the use of ‘trigger words’ (p. 48), whereas in Chapter 7, evaluations are defined as stories about what is or is not truthful or certain. In each chapter, Stibbe’s discussion of these terms is interspersed with examples from a series of visual and linguistic texts derived from a range of disciplines. The inclusion of these examples provides the reader with tangible illustrations of how these mechanisms function within the text and how they can be challenged or revised. Each discussion is then followed by a more in-depth example of what a full analysis of the type of story in question would look like. Unlike the analyses in his previous book (Stibbe, 2012), these analyses lack depth and focus. Guided by the purpose of illustrating the difference between mechanisms, these chapters function as a step-by-step manual of ecolinguistics rather than a series of well-structured and in-depth ecolinguistic analyses of the stories that we currently live by.
Underlying this structural choice is a problematic conceptualization of ‘the story’ as taking on different forms, rather than being made up of different parts of a whole. Discourses, in the broader Foucauldian sense of the term, encompass most if not all of these mechanisms of story-telling. Framing, metaphor, evaluation, identity, conviction, erasure and salience can all be understood as discursive mechanisms. In every story, each of these can be taken up as another layer of analysis. Rather than structuring the book around the different mechanisms through which these stories are told, a more effective approach might have been to structure the book around the stories themselves and to employ the analysis of these mechanisms of story-telling as a means of critiquing, revising, resisting or promoting the various stories-we-live-by. Thus, in the example of neoclassical economics in Chapter 2, Stibbe could also have asked how this story was framed; what metaphors were employed; what was constructed as truthful, uncertain or fraudulent; who the actors, heroes or villains were; what was erased; and what was made more salient. The space allocated to outlining the specificities of each mechanism of story-telling, as different parts of the same story, could have been reduced to one chapter, with each concept elaborated upon further within the analyses themselves.
Overall, the success of this book is in Stibbe’s ability to bring together a multiplicity of academic voices and to begin to carve out a unique space for this type of scholarship with a clear critical standpoint and an overarching goal of social change. By strategically uncoupling ‘story’ from ‘discourse’, and ecolinguistics from discourse analysis, Stibbe extends the appeal of his book to scholars beyond the field of discourse studies. In doing so, however, this work fails to develop a sophisticated and coherent theoretical framework in place of ‘discourse’ to conceptualize the stories-we-live-by from a macro perspective. Thus, the multiplicity of academic voices, though unified under a common critical goal, lacks a strong theoretical foundation to bind the various branches of ecolinguistics together as a coherent whole. The broader question, then, of what a story is from a macro perspective can only be answered here through a kaleidoscope of theoretical perspectives and empirical examples.