The core dilemma in environmental advocacy may be illustrated by the question, "When we communicate about the world, should we stress what we know or what we feel?" The contributors to The Symbolic ...Earth argue that it is more important to decide how we should talk about what we know and feel. In their view, the environment is larely a product of how we talk about the world.
Because the environment is a social construction, the only hope we have of preserving it is to understand and alter the fundamental ways we discuss it. This collection first examines the ways in which discourse creates environment perceptions. Subjects discussed range from the description of natural scenery to the advocacy of political interest groups, from the everyday interactions of citizens facing environmental crises to the greenwashing of corporate imagemakers, and from the psychology of the mass public to the social constructions of the mass media. The authors include nationally known scholars of environmental history, rhetorical theory, ethnography, communication and journalism studies, public policy, and media criticism.
Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison.
Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves ...340-368).
As evidenced throughout this volume, the concept of prudence is experiencing an enthusiastic revival. After many years of neglect and distortion, the term is recovering some of its more useful and ...relevant connotations through the work of postmodern scholars. These connotations—of reasonableness, civic virtue, and practicality—were originally bestowed upon prudence by classical sources to describe a certain excellence of personal character.¹ In a similar vein, the notion of the decorous or proper (Gr. to prepon) has been receiving attention in part because of its long-term and still continuing dialog with prudence. Today, the word “propriety” has come to
In 7890, two essays by John Muir greatly influenced the establishment of Yosemite National Park, and greatly advanced the movement for the preservation of wilderness reserves. Muir used two ...techniques, the sublime response and the persona of the mountaineer, to secure his readers' action on behalf of natural scenery.
The first national dispute between conservationists and preservationists occurred between 1901 and 1913 over the building of the Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite Park. Examination of the controversy not ...only reveals the character of the opponents' arguments, it also demonstrates the decisive role of their rival conceptions of the "public."
The twentieth century has been labeled the age of anxiety, the technological age, and even the postmodern era. A lesser-known, but perhaps more specific, label for the century that has produced such ...forms of communication as generative grammar, electronic mass media, and nonrepresentational art might be the age of discourse. In this century, the termdiscoursehas shed its traditional and exclusive association with continuous verbal or written prose. Instead, the term has expanded to include visual signals, nonverbal gestures, and such discontinuous fragments of signification as advertisements and product logos—in fact, all types and forms of symbolic communication.¹
