THE DISCOURSE OF RADICAL ECO-ACTIVISTS OF THE «SCIENTIST REBELLION» MOVEMENT (LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE)

Abstract

The article studies linguostylistic features of the publications from the official website of the «Scientist Rebellion» radical environmental movement as well as the strategies that the authors of these materials use to influence the target audience. The conducted research allowed us to conclude that the core texts of the site are samples of political discourse in an environmental «framework», as are the publications of other radical eco-activists. However, unlike other radical environmentalists, the «Scientist Rebellion» site administrators competently arrange the materials, successfully alternating purely scientific publications on environmental issues, newspaper articles about ecoactivists’ deeds and programme texts of the movement containing political demands. The latter constitute the semantic core of the site, while the rest of the materials play a subordinate argumentative role. The main strategies used in the political texts of the movement are the same as in the publications of other radical eco-activists: 1) intimidating the addressees with the help of vivid descriptions of the terrible future that awaits humanity; 2) blaming politicians as those responsible for the situation; 3) offering a programme for getting out of the situation; 4) calling on addressees to join the actions; 5) victimizing the movement participants by showing sympathy for environmental activists because they are being repressed by the authorities. The key publications of the site contain little purely scientific terminology. They use only generally understood environmental vocabulary, which forms the basis of modern environmental discourse. The pivotal expressions are synonyms for a terrible environmental situation: climate disaster, climate crisis, climate emergency, etc. Negative characterization of the situation and the actions of politicians is achieved through the use of various parts of speech with a negative meaning, numerals denoting large numbers, and superlative forms of adjectives: civilizational collapse, unprecedented famine, untold suffering, uninhabitable planet, hundreds of millions of refugees, the worst impacts of climate breakdown, ruthless exploitation of nature and human beings. Some stylistic devices are also used to thicken the colours, in particular hyperbole and gradation. So, despite their claims to be scientific, the core publications of the «Scientist Rebellion» movement tend to appeal to the addressees’ emotions rather than reason. The conducted research confirmed our assumption that the «Scientist Rebellion» movement arose as a result of the fact that radical environmentalists compromised themselves with ambiguous actions, thus restricting the desire of the average citizens to participate in solving environmental problems. The «Scientist Rebellion» movement set itself the task of improving the reputation of radical environmentalists and attracting more affluent segments of the population to participate in rescuing our planet.