Reversed Positionality, Reversed Reality: An In-depth Linguistic Analysis of the Mainstream and Alternative Environmental Justice Frame

‘Environmental justice’ (EJ) has been a strongly debated media topic in recent years, principally in its most generally accepted definition: While the ‘West’ carries the largest responsibility for climate change, the ‘South’ will suffer earliest and most severely from the consequences (Farbotko, 2005; IPCC, 2014; Sze & London, 2008). Although the mainstream media clearly do not fail to address the issue, they overlook some deeper-lying levels of ‘Western’ responsibility, related to the strongly entrenched ‘Western’ development model (liberalism, ‘Western’ superiority…) (Darnton & Kirk, 2011). This is largely due to their top-down/hegemonic ‘positionality’. According to Pulido and Pena (1998) positionality - one’s “location within the larger social formation” (Taylor, 2000, p. 509) - is key to the way people talk and think about, and thus act upon environmental issues. Positionality - in terms of context (e.g., sponsors), content (e.g., sources) and production process (e.g., media producers) - is also a core point of difference between mainstream and alternative media (Atton, 2002; Downing, 2001). Indeed, due to their bottom-up positionality alternative media tend to deconstruct hegemonic thinking and construct alternatives, amplifying the grassroots voices of movements or citizens (Hopke, 2012). Drawing on the assumptions above, we conducted a qualitative micro-scale framing analysis (Entman, 1991; Van Gorp, 2006) of a number of case study articles on EJ, published in three Flemish (Northern Belgian) newspapers and an alternative outlet. More specifically, we identified and discussed the verbal framing devices - like agency, word choice or metaphors (Entman, 1991; Richardson, 2007; Tankard, 2001; Van Gorp, 2006) - which, underpinning certain reasoning devices, function as “signature elements” (Gamson, 1989, p. 159) of the frame(s). Drawing on these findings, two comprehensive frame matrices were compiled. Clearly, our analysis illuminates in detail how frames come about. Our insights were, however, also sustained by a broader inductive qualitative framing analysis (n = 726). By and large, the alternative frame reverses the ‘Western’ hierarchical thinking, based on demarcations like ‘us’ (‘West’) versus ‘them’ (‘South’), agents versus patients, ‘heroes’ versus ‘victims’, ‘developed’ versus ‘undeveloped’. Both frames denounce the ‘West’s’ excessive GHG emissions. Nevertheless, the mainstream represents the disproportionate vulnerability of the ‘South’ to climate change impacts as an internal defect, which can only be resolved by external help (the ‘West’). ‘Development’, ‘aid’ or the generalization of the ‘South’ are crucial ‘signature elements’. The alternative frame, however, reverses this thinking: An external cause (‘the West’) bears full responsibility for the ‘South’ suffering the major part of the climate change consequences, but also for its disproportionate (social, economic…) vulnerability, it being reduced to a silent victim. Yet, the ‘South’ holds a superior/equal (agent) position with regard to adaptation, thanks to grassroots (‘internal’) experiences. Clearly, the alternative frame provides the broader contextualization which the mainstream overlooks. Important ‘signature elements’ are, among others, ‘equality’, ‘resilience’ or the individualization of the ‘South’. This reversal is also vividly illustrated by the (‘reversed’) ideological square (based on van Dijk (1998, p. 33)), we introduce as a novel contribution to the (applied) linguistics and media studies field. References Atton, C. (2002). Alternative Media. London: Sage. Darnton, A., & Kirk, M. (2011). 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