Promoting and Preserving ‘The Waste Land’: The Environmental Discourse of the UK Government

The notion of language as a form of action which is socially shaped and socially constitutive allows us to think of any text as constitutive of social identity, social relations and systems of knowledge and beliefs (Fairclough 1992). Starting from this assumption, the study was aimed at investigating the UK government’s ‘beliefs’ and viewpoint concerning environmental issues. In particular, the UK Department of Energy and Climate change and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ actions have been taken into account focussing on political speeches concerning environment, including sustainability, water and land pollution, food safety, energy efficiency, agricultural emissions, climate change. According to Fairclough (1989, 1995), ideologies are socially and discursively formed, reproduced and changed in a variety of ways which include institutional forms of discourse among their most prestigious varieties. In the study attention has been paid to the way the institutional Departments of the UK government build-up their own ‘discourse’ while promoting their own action on protecting and preserving the environment. In short, the final goal has been to focus on UK Government’s ideological attitude towards the preservation of ‘the waste’ world environment.