Anthropocentric and Ecocentric Perspectives in Environmental News: A Corpus-Assisted Ecolinguistic Study

Abstract

Anthropocentric views place humans at the center of value and concern, while Ecocentric perspectives prioritize the intrinsic worth of all living and non-living elements of nature. This paper examines anthropocentrism and ecocentrism in environmental news texts. Based on Stibbe (2015) ecolinguistic concept of the stories we live by, the study analyses 500 weather reports (tokens 98,763) which were identified in the major media outlets of the international and national scope, such as BBC, CNN, DW, Al Jazeera, and GNN. The research examines keywords, the lines of concordance, and collocational patterns using AntConc (version 4.3.1) to study how nature and human beings are framed as part of the discussion on environmental crisis. Results indicate that a prevailing anthropocentric discourse, which entails anthropocentric metaphors, institutional reactions and economic interests, is present in the Western media. On the contrary, the ecocentric discourses can also be observed in some articles by DW and Al Jazeera, in which there is a focus on ecological integrity, biodiversity and agency of the non-human beings. The report shows the discursive potential of environmental journalism in influencing general environmental awareness and makes recommendations to establish a transition to more ecocentric reporting in news media. By identifying linguistic patterns that marginalize or foreground ecological systems, the research contributes to the broader field of ecolinguistics and environmental communication. It advocates for inclusive narratives that support sustainability and non-human life.