Arran Stibbe is Professor in Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire. In his teaching and research he focuses on how language makes us who we are as people, and the role of language in building the kind of society we live in, using discourse analysis and ecolinguistics. Ecolinguistics examines how language encodes the stories we live by, and shapes how we see ourselves and our relationship with other animals and the earth. This involves linguistic analysis of a wide range of discourses, from advertising which encourages people to buy unnecessary and ecologically damaging products, to the inspirational language of nature writing. He is founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:00 Welcome
- "I'm a massive fan of Sentientism. It's a crystal clear worldview that you're expressing... it's an important message that needs to get out there."
- Arran's book "Econarrative"
03:39 Arran's Intro
- Ecological linguistics... "I get to analyse any kind
of discourse that I want to... then I critique the stories that are emerging... based on my ecological philosophy... respecting living beings and wanting them
to flourish"
- Discourses from Men's Health magazine to the Pork industry handbook to nature poetry, creation stories... "positive ones and negative ones"
- "Searching for new stories to live by"
- Consulting with @greenpeace and others on messaging
- Stories... Ben Okri: "Stories are the secret reservoirs of values... if we change the stories that individuals and nations live by then we change the individuals and nations themselves"
- "If we pay careful attention to the language we can
understand these stories that fundamentally underpin our unequal and unsustainable and quite cruel society"
- Stories as "cognitive models in our minds that
influence how we think, how we talk and how we act"... individuals and across a culture e.g. "The masculine man being strong & not showing emotions & eating lots of meat... a hegemonic story"
- Narrative: "A more traditional kind of story you might tell to children at bedtime... sequences of events..."
- "I would go with this #meme idea... but I think it's
even more fundamental than that... so much of what we're thinking is part of this wider social cognition..."
- "Is it a simplification to think of a separate being... you wouldn't exist for more than a few minutes on your own in space... your continued existence depends on breathing..."
11:27 What's Real?
26:35 What and Who Matters?
46:15 A Better World?
& much more. Full notes at sentientism.info.
01:12:52 Follow Arran
- Arran at the University of Gloucestershire
- The Stories We Live By – the free online course
- The Ecolinguistics Association
- Stibbe, Arran (2024) Econarrative: ethics, ecology and the search for new narratives to live by. London: Bloomsbury
- Stibbe, Arran (2021) Ecolinguistics: language, ecology and the stories we live by (second edition). London: Routledge
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