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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
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