A Linguistic-Ecosophic Perspective on Weather Reports

Abstract

This study investigates how language used in broadcast weather reports contributes to ecological understanding or misunderstanding through the lens of ecosophy and Stibbe’s (2021) nine discourse features: ideology, framing, metaphor, evaluation, identity, conviction, erasure, salience, and narrative. This study is a continuation of the author PhD work. Drawing from a corpus of 1,500 weather broadcasts (458,936 words) across international news networks—including BBC, CNN, DW, Al Jazeera, France 24, and ARY News—the research employs a corpus-informed, mixed-method analysis to examine how weather is linguistically constructed and ideologically framed. Findings reveal a dominant pattern of destructive and ambivalent discourses, characterized by anthropocentric metaphors, economic framings, ecological erasure, and a lack of environmental conviction. Beneficial discourses, though present, were rare and typically limited to reports from DW and Al Jazeera. These patterns suggest that broadcast weather discourse often reinforces shallow, human-centered narratives, undermining ecosophical values of interconnectedness, ecological truth-telling, and biocentric awareness. The study argues for a transformative shift in weather communication—one that reimagines meteorological discourse as a site for ecological storytelling and public environmental education.