Unveiling the Language of Ideology in China’s Environmental Planning. Pilot Ecolinguistic Analysis of an Environmental Impact Assessment Report.

Planning the use of the environment for human purposes is commonly considered a technical process, whereby decisions are taken based on scientific evidence. In fact, cultural factors significantly influence these processes. Although their role is often overlooked in today’s techno-centred debate on sustainability, ideologies are as important as biological or biophysical indicators in shaping environmental decisions. Ecolinguistics provides a coherent analytical approach to investigate these factors, by unearthing beliefs and ideas that inform decision-making and normalise social-ecological goals. The field has enjoyed increasing popularity among Chinese scholars and sinologists. However, to date only limited efforts have been done to design and apply a systematic framework of ecolinguistic analysis for Chinese texts. Our work represents a first step to address this gap. Based on a wide review of literature, we identify a set of ecolinguistic indicators and apply them to analyse the introductory section of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report, a key component of China’s environmental decision-making processes.