Promotional Multimodal Discourses and theShaping of Green-(Peacers) Identities

The rapidly growing awareness of environmental issues is changing societal attitudes to the dangers of carbon sequestration, greenhouse gases, pollution, climate change and global warming evidence, water scarcity and so on. In this vein, ‘environmentally friendly’ , ‘sustainability’, ‘socially responsible sourcing’, ‘fragile planet’, ‘ethical trade’ have become fashionable words/phrases in all discourse domains, from supermarket advertising to corporate communication (Cox 2012), from the news media, story-telling, video-narratives or social media platforms to specialised scientific literature and essays. Increasingly, (self-)promotional discourses, which voice environmentally correct attitudes, are deployed through multimodal videos that also circulate through YouTube, one of the most popular collaborative social networks and a medium for the expression of personal views. Paradoxically, similar ‘green’ buzz words are found in the videos of both Greenpeace campaigns and the Russian gas giant Gazprom’s corporate communication. The missions of the two corporations are intrinsically different. Concern for the environment was at the origin of the Greenpeace (GP) movement in 1971 that used/uses non-violent protest as a means to protect our planet. GP campaigns, which are globally advertised through hundreds of videos, are designed to engage public opinion, solicit volunteers and donors to prevent environmentally unsustainable actions and enable eco-friendly ones, thus challenging pre-existing mental frames on geo-political issues. Gazprom (GZM) – the world’s leading gas producer – also attempts to advertise its corporate image as eco-friendly, though its mission is to extract and distribute gas through powerful technology, connecting an entire continent and beyond. The aim of this study is to analyse aspects of both GZM’s and GP’s modes of advertising their goals, which display remarkable similarities, by utilizing some resources of multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) and through the lens of ecolinguistics (EL). EL is committed to investigating the role of language in the life-sustaining interactions of humans and, in Stibbe’s view, should be used to challenge the modern anthropocentric myths of unlimited progress/success, omnipotent science, the human domination of nature, and endless growth. The socio-cognitive implications of this ongoing shift of attitude will also be discussed.