The Discourse of Sustainability in English Language Teaching (ELT) at the University of Oxford: Analyzing Discursive Representations

Abstract

The article presents and discusses a study that focuses upon discursive representations of sustainability in English Language Teaching (ELT) that are found on the official web-site of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. The study involved a corpus of texts related to sustainability in ELT that were collected on the website of the University of Oxford. The corpus was analyzed qualitatively to identify and classify the types of discursive representations of sustainability in ELT. After that, it was investigated quantitatively to calculate the most frequent types of discursive representations of sustainability. The results of the corpus analysis revealed that the most frequent types of discursive representation of sustainability in ELT at the University of Oxford involved “lifelong learning” and “digital sustainability”, respectively. It was found that the aforementioned discursive representations did not reflect the main sustainability goals that were set by the University of Oxford, inter alia, zero carbon emissions and biodiversity. It is suggested in the article that the discursive representations of sustainability “lifelong learning” and “digital sustainability” are indicative of an ELT-specific aspect of the discourse of sustainability that is communicated online by the University of Oxford.

Learning English Under the Sounds of Air Raid Sirens: Analysing Undergraduate EFL Students’ Sustainable Learing Practices

“…A facilitative role of using social networking sites and the digital wilds of unstructured out-of-classroom exposure to authentic English online is in concord with the literature which reports that Facebook, Instagram, and other social networking sites can ensure the maintenance of EFL students' written skills (Kapranov, 2022b;Lin et al, 2022) and the expansion of their vocabulary (Pourdana, 2022;Wang et al, 2021). The present findings are also in line with the literature in the field of EFL studies that report the cross-fertilisation effect of writing skills on sustaining an EFL learner's vocabulary (Karataş & Tuncer, 2020;Zhang & Zhang, 2022).…”

“…Importantly, the concept of sustainable learning factors in a paramount role of the immediate and global learning contexts (Sterling, 2009). It should be noted that the concept of sustainable learning has found its place in applied linguistics, EFL studies and English Medium Instruction (Han et al, 2021;Kapranov, 2022bKapranov, , 2021Kirsner et al, 2007;Peng & Xie, 2021).…”

Modal Verbs in English-Medium Research Articles on the Issue of Climate Change and Health

“…The article presented and discussed a novel study that investigates the frequency of the occurrence of central modal verbs in the corpus of RAs on the intersection of climate change and health-related issues. Given that climate change is often problematised in the literature through the lens of adjacent scientific domains (Kapranov, 2022c(Kapranov, , 2023c, the article's focus on interdisciplinary discourse on climate change in English-medium RAs published in Eco-Environment and Health and The Journal of Climate Change and Health can be relevant to linguists and health workers alike.…”

Modal Verbs in Sustainability Reports by the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford

“…The literature suggests that sustainability reporting by HEIs is studied through the lenses of i) content analysis, ii) critical discourse analysis (CDA), and iii) rhetorical analysis (Melles 2020;Nicolò et al 2021;Nikolić and Vukić 2020;Weisser 2017). Given that there is a plethora of studies on sustainability reporting by HEIs (Bice and Coates 2016;del Mar Alonso-Almeida et al 2015;Fonseca et al 2011;Gamage and Sciulli 2017;Hassan et al 2019;Kapranov 2022b;Lee et al 2013;Nicolò et al 2021;Nikolić and Vukić 2020;Melles 2020;Weisser 2017), this article does not seek to present a detailed and comprehensive overview of the literature. However, this section of the article outlines the aforementioned approaches to the discourse of sustainability reporting by HEIs, namely content, CDA, and rhetorical analyses.…”

“…Firstly, the British private and public stakeholders (inclusive of HEIs) were the first actors to recognise sustainability as a topical issue that needed to be addressed on the institutional level (Kapranov 2018b). Secondly, the leading British HEIs are reported to pay specific attention to the issues of sustainability, sustainable development, and climate change (Adams 2013;Kapranov 2022b). For instance, both UC and UO have their own Sustainability Centres that maintain the respective universitywide websites dedicated to communicating sustainability to the faculty, students, and as well as the general public, for instance, Sustainability at https://sustainability.admin.ox.ac.uk/home (UO 2022a) and Sustainability at https://www.environment.admin.cam.ac.uk (UC 2022a).…”