Cover not available
Article published In:
Practices of Dialogue, Dialogues in Practice
Edited by Alain Létourneau, Geneviève Boivin and Nicolas Bencherki
[Language and Dialogue 13:2] 2023
► pp. 181–199

Constituting climate change in dialogic practice

The moral universe of climate actors

| H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute,
In this essay, I present data from a regional climate conference to demonstrate how speakers engage in dialogic practice to constitute a moral universe of climate actors. I employ the notion of the science-policy-practice dialogue to introduce three identity categories – scientist expert, elected policymaker, and practitioner – which participants use to position themselves and relate to others and their environments. Using discourse analysis, I attend to the membership categorization devices speakers use to deploy these identity categories and constitute the cast of climate characters. Speakers assign themselves and others to identity categories by making claims to enoughness, which are then used to establish expectations and justify actions.
Keywords: dialogism, climate, membership categorization, environment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Climate and the moral environment
  • 3.Science-policy-practice dialogue
  • 4.Methodological insights
    • 4.1Data collection
    • 4.2The speakers
    • 4.3Method
    • 4.4Membership categorization devices
    • 4.5The cast of characters
    • 4.6Superdiversity and enoughness
  • 5.Analysis: Constituting climate change in Tampa Bay
    • 5.1Relating to climate change
    • 5.2Establishing enoughness
    • 5.3Relating to others
    • 5.4Relating to environment
    • 5.5Climate change as a moral imperative
  • 6.Discussion
  • References
Published online: 1 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00146.smi
References (36)
References
Althusser, Louis. 2014 [1970]. On the reproduction of capitalism: Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Transl. by G. M. Goshgarian. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Carolyn. 2004. “Membership categorization and interview accounts.” In Qualitative research: Theory, method and practice, ed. by David Silverman, 162–176. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bartesaghi, Mariaelena. 2014. “Coordination: Examining weather as a “matter of concern.”” Communication Studies 65(5): 535–557. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay K., John Flowerdew, and Rodney H. Jones. 2008. “Approaches to discourse analysis.” In Advances in discourse studies, ed. by Vijay K. Bhatia, John Flowerdew, and Rodney H. Jones. 1–18. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2013. Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes: Chronicles of complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan and Ben Rampton. 2011. “Language and superdiversity.” Diversities, 13(2): 1–21. [URL]
Blommaert, Jan and Piia Varis. 2013. “Enough is enough: The heuristics of authenticity.” In Linguistic super-diversity in Urban areas: Research approaches, ed. by Joana Duarte and Ingrid Gogolin, 143–159. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. 1966. Language as symbolic action: Essays on life, literature, and method. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Caldarice, Ombretta, Nicola Tollin., and Maria Pizzorni. 2021. “The relevance of science-policy-practice dialogue: Exploring the urban climate resilience governance in Italy.” City, Territory and Architecture 8(9): 1–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chakraborty, Jayajit. 2009. “Automobiles, air toxics, and adverse health risks: Environmental inequities in Tampa Bay, Florida.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99(4): 674–697. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chakraborty, Jayajit, and M. Martin Bosman. 2010. “Spatial and Environmental Justice in the Metropolis.” In Spatial and environmental justice in the American metropolis: A study of Tampa Bay, ed. by Jayajit Chakraborty and M. Martin Bosman, 1–22. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.Google Scholar
Cheney, George. 1983. “The rhetoric of identification and the study of organizational communication.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69(2): 143–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooren, François. 2014. “Pragmatism as ventriloquism: Creating a dialogue among seven traditions in the study of communication.” Language Under Discussion 2(1): 1–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cox, J. Robert. 1999. “Reclaiming the “indecorous” voice: Public participation by low-income communities in environmental decision-making.” In Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Conference on Communication and the Environment, ed. by C. Brant Short and Dayle Hardy-Short, 21–31. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University School of Communication.Google Scholar
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (n.d.). What is open space/green space? [URL]
Garrard, Greg. 2012. Ecocriticism (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gherardi, Silvia. 2017. “Sociomateriality in posthuman practice theory.” In The nexus of practices: Connections, constellations, practitioners, ed. by Allison Hui, Theordore Schatzki, and Elizabeth Shove, 3851. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1956. The presentation of self in everyday life. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre.Google Scholar
Hirvela, Kyle R. 2011. Park access and distributional inequities in Pinellas County, Florida. [Master’s thesis, University of South Florida].
Hulme, Mike. 2017. Weathered: Cultures of climate. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Korten, Tristram. 2015, March 8. “In Florida, officials ban term ‘climate change.’” Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. [URL]
Krueger, Katherine. 2015, March 23. “Florida’s unspeakable issue leaves climate change official tongue-tied.” The Guardian. [URL]
Kuhn, Timothy, Karen L. Ashcraft, and François Cooren. 2017. The Work of communication: Relational perspectives on working and organizing in contemporary capitalism. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lersch, Kim M. and Timothy C. Hart. 2014. “Environmental justice, lead, and crime: Exploring the spatial distribution and impact of industrial facilities in Hillsborough County Florida.” Sociological Spectrum 34(1): 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norris, Sigrid and Rodney H. Jones. 2005. “Discourse as action/discourse in action.” In Discourse in action: Introducing mediated discourse analysis, ed. by Sigrid Norris and Rodney H. Jones, 3–15. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paglia, Eric. 2018. “The socio-scientific construction of global climate crisis.” Geopolitics 23(1): 96–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roulston, Kathy. 2001. “Investigating the ‘cast of characters’ in a cultural world.” In How to analyze talk in institutional settings: A casebook of methods, ed. by Alec McHoul and Mark Rapley, 100–112. New York: Continuum. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1995. Lectures on conversation: Volumes I and II, ed. by Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smithberger, Leanna K. 2021. The communicative constitution of environment: Land, weather, climate. PhD dissertation, University of South Florida. [URL]
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. “A tutorial on membership categorization.” Journal of Pragmatics 39(3): 462–482. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stevanovic, Melisa. 2018. “Social deontics: A nano-level approach to human power play.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 481: 369–389. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stretesky, Paul B. and Michael J. Lynch. 2002. “Environmental hazards and school segregation in Hillsborough County, Florida, 1987–1999.” The Sociological Quarterly 43(4): 553–573. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Turner, Matthew D. 2016. “Climate vulnerability as a relational concept. Geoforum 681: 29–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zinken, Jörg and Eva Ogiermann. 2011. “How to propose an action as objectively necessary: The case of Polish trzeba x (“one needs to x”).” Research on Language and Social Interaction 44(3): 263–287. DOI logoGoogle Scholar