“This World Is Rotten”: An Analysis of Eco-Fascist Discourse

Abstract

[Abstract] The 20th century saw the birth and replication of a new, dangerous ideology: fascism. Over the past century, it has led to a variety of subtypes, one of which interests us specially: ecofascism. This dissertation explores how the English language is used by ecofascists and spread through the internet through the use of discourse analysis. In the past few decades of the 20th century, discourse analysis appeared and branched into three main approaches. The last of these approaches, that is, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), utilises a mixed methodology in which linguistic, textual and social elements are considered. The present study has been carried out by following CDA and, more particularly, Fairclough’s approach to it, which involves looking into different linguistic features through the glass of socio-historical context. Fairclough’s model emphasises the division of the three levels present in CDA: the textual dimension, the discursive dimension and the social dimension. Corpus studies have also been a part of this analysis to aid in the creation of the most objective study possible, by comparing a corpus created with ecofascist texts specifically for this dissertation with two control corpora, the BNC and the COCA. This dissertation shows how, by scrutinising the published material in as much detail as a work of this magnitude and kind allows, the use and repetition of certain terms and other linguistic subtleties has a very real and relevant ideological purpose. To this end, I have focused on elements such as pronouns, modal verbs and rhetorical devices used in a linguistic context. This analysis has proven that my initial hypothesis that linguistic and textual elements are being used for the writers’ own profit, thus influencing the readership, is correct.