The discourses of sustainability in news magazines: The rhetorical construction of journalistic stance

Sustainability has become a key concept in the debate over global environmental challenges. With the view that at the heart of the environmental debate is undoubtedly the text, this paper examines the rhetorical construction of text and provides linguistic insights into how the concept of sustainability is textualized. Corpus findings show that the discourse of sustainability is constructed by interwoven discourses which depict sustainability as a goal, as a problem, or as an object of analysis or study and implemented by companies and institutions. The rhetorical construction of the argumentation of the discourses of sustainability further suggests that the news magazines convey a multiplicity of obvious or hidden communicative purposes. This paper critically examines how resources such as evaluation, hedging or intertextuality are used in journalistic discourse to convey the author’s stance towards sustainability, trying to position the audience and thus to shape the public awareness and acceptance of sustainability.