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Article published In:
Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 10:2 (2024) ► pp.136–165

Semiotic landscape in a green capital

The political economy of sustainability and environment

ORCID logo | University of Duisburg-Essen
In the wake of the ‘climate apocalypse’ global discourse, the environmental agenda of the European Green Deal and the overarching objective for the European Union are to deliver a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. European cities are under pressure to reinvent urban environments and develop resilience to environmental risks. This paper looks at semiotic material appearing in Essen, a city in Germany awarded the European Green Capital title. Grounded in the multimodal social semiotic approach and ecolinguistics, the paper investigates strategically emplaced ‘green’ semiotic material which shape environmental values and privilege. The paper illustrates the political economy of city clean-ups which every so often result in questionable environmental choices and fail to alleviate social inequalities. The analysis ultimately shows how semiotic forms of sustainability are evidently implicated in the creation of urban eco-arenas accentuating the socioeconomic stratification and privileges of valorized places.
Keywords: semiotic landscape, green city, political economy, sustainability, environmental inequalities, global warming discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Inventing Green Cities: The political economy of sustainability and environment
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Saving German(y) cities
  • 5.Making (up) the green
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 27 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.23016.kos
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