Environmental issues in political discourse : a case study of selected printed media prior to the 2013 local general election in Malta

Abstract

This dissertation deals with the environment as a subject within political discourse that is presented as a structure of meaning within which it is integrated. This process of integration assumes an articulation and the re-articulation of the subject through discourse by the different social actors within the political sphere. The study attempts to show how meaning is structured in a hierarchical manner and the role different agents both political and non-political serve to distribute knowledge within the public sphere. Also the resulting discontinuity of reality through the plurality of meaning allocated to the subject and the rising social antagonisms. The adopted research method is discourse analysis specifically a critical linguist approach that strives to understand how discourse is able to legitimately produce social facts and consequently mobilizing social action in one political direction over any other alternative. This methodology provides a critical evaluation of the contingency of reality as a social construction. The theoretical approach encompasses post structuralism as it provides a subjective perspective of reality and the interpretation of meaning along with a social constructionist approach that provides a critical evaluation of the logic in meaning. This will be applied to local environmental issues that are represented within the political discourse which will then be subjected to a comparison to the discourse reproduced within local printed media.