Green Stories: An Eco-linguistic Investigation of Political Manifestos for Election, 2024 in Pakistan
Keywords:
Ecolinguistics, Erasure, Framing, Manifesto, Political discourse and SalienceAbstract
Political manifesto is indispensable in political world to provide the outline of any political party’ vision, policies and actions; the clear and loud political manifestos are the source to hold the public support for bringing them in power (Eder et al., 2016). The importance of political manifestos triggered the researcher to investigate the genre through language and ecology lens. The current study aims to investigate the political manifestos for election, 2024 in Pakistan by employing Stibbe’s theory of language, ecology and the stories we live by (2015). The study focuses to identify the political ideology covering ecological elements, economy and human behavior. The political manifestos of four political parties of Pakistan were observed and analyzed under framing, metaphor, salience, erasure and ideology. In depth qualitative analysis using Eco-linguistics perspectives decoded the linguistic information and provided the insights for the study. The results of the analysis revealed that leading political parties of the country are aware of the value of environment and ecology in human life and they are quoting climate changes and promising for agricultural, industrial and green energy revolutions. The manifestos are framed positively; salient claims, thematic convictions and specific metaphors of manifestos uncovered the hidden ideologies of political parties. Furthermore, the presence of erasure as ‘the void, the mask and the trace’ in the claims and promises of the political discourse establishes challenges for elected parties. The study is unique to investigate the political manifestos drawing on ecological elements and can be used to understand the political discourse in context of ecology which is the topic of conversation current days. The valued insights of the study are helpful for policy makers, media, political parties and educators to discuss the green stories in political discourse.
References
Ali, A., Rashid, A., & Sultan, A. (2020). Exploring Identities and Ideologies in Political Parties’ election Manifestos: a corpus Assisted Critical Discourse analysis. Global Political
Review, V(III), 44–58. https://doi.org/10.31703/gpr.2020(v-iii).05
Cardo, M., & Celle, A. (2024). Question sequences and salience in TED talks. Anglophonia, 37. https://doi.org/10.4000/12poe
Eder, N., Jenny, M., & Müller, W. C. (2016). Manifesto functions: How party candidates view and use their party’s central policy document. Electoral Studies, 45, 75–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.11.011
Fairclough, N., & Fairclough, I. (2018). A procedural approach to ethical critique in CDA. Critical Discourse Studies, 15(2), 169–185. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2018.1427121
Fine, J. C., & Love‐Nichols, J. (2021). Language and climate justice: A research agenda. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 25(3), 453–473. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12469
Flusberg, S. J., Holmes, K. J., Thibodeau, P. H., Nabi, R. L., & Matlock, T. (2024). The Psychology of framing: how everyday language shapes the way we think, feel, and act. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 25(3), 105–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/15291006241246966
Fredrikzon, J., & Haffenden, C. (2023). Towards erasure studies: Excavating the material conditions of memory and forgetting. Memory Mind & Media, 2. https://doi.org/10.1017/mem.2023.2
Hassan, A. (2018). Language, Media, and Ideology: Critical Discourse analysis of Pakistani news bulletin headlines and its impact on viewers. SAGE Open, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018792612
Irvine, J., & Gal, S. (2000). Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation. In P. Kroskrity
(Ed.), Regimes of Language (pp. 35–84). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment. Environmental Communication, 4(1), 70–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524030903529749
Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The language of evaluation. In Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511910
Nerlich, B., & Koteyko, N. (2009). Carbon reduction and CO2 sequestration: The linguistic
construction of climate change mitigation. Discourse Studies, 11(6), 699–712. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445609347338
Stafford, R., Alexander, J., Axon, S., Boakes, Z., Cantarello, E., Croker, A. R., Cvitanović, M., Almela, V. D., Ginige, T., Harris, N., Jones, E., Kountouris, Y., Lilleker, D., Russell, F., Sokolnicki, J. R., Upson, S. J., & Vincent, E. (2025). Evaluating post 2024 election scenarios for the UK based on political party manifestos. PLoS ONE, 20(5), e0324942. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324942
Stibbe, A. (2015). Ecolinguistics. In Routledge eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315718071
van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Politics, Ideology and Discourse. In Encyclopedia of Language &
Linguistics (2nd ed.), Vol. 9, 728–740. Elsevier.
Xianyin, N. W., & Jun, N. G. (2025). Metaphors in the Vegetarian: An Ecolinguistic analysis. Sino-US English Teaching, 22(5). https://doi.org/10.17265/1539-8072/2025.05.004
