The contribution of ecolinguistics to the ecological crisis: A corpus-based study of ‘second-hand’
(2022) 16th Arizona Linguistics Circle (ALC 16) — Location: The University of Arizona (USA) (21.October.2022)
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- Abstract
- Ecolinguistics refers to “the (inter-)relationships between language and (its) environment” (Couto 2014: 122). Today’s environment is characterized by an ecological crisis that affects us all and that leads more and more citizens to change their habits in an attempt to reduce their ecological footprint. One way of doing so is by buying second-hand rather than new. Although second-hand consumption is said to have increased considerably over the last few years (ThredUP 2021) and although the stigma once associated with second-hand goods is thought to be gradually giving way to “a more confident and exuberant championing of second-hand shopping as an ethical alternative to unregulated and uncontrolled ‘consumerism’” (Franklin 2011: 156), language continues to convey some negative representations of second-hand consumption and thus reinforces stereotypes that are part of the collective imagination. This will be demonstrated through a corpus-based study of the word ‘second-hand’ in the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA; Davies 2010), a diachronic corpus covering two centuries (1820-2019) and comprising almost 500 million words. The corpus analysis reveals that the word ‘second-hand’, used in the sense of being acquired after having been owned by someone else, shows a slight decrease in frequency over the last few decades. It is also used with certain collocates that have clearly negative connotations, such as ‘dirty’ in the following example: (1) She wore a dirty, secondhand muumuu that looked like a tent on her. (COHA, 2015, Fiction) Although second-hand stores in which large quantities of items are crammed in every space of a confined area, as described in example (2), are pretty much a thing of the past, such negative representations continue to be exploited in comparisons like that in example (3), which compares the excessive catchiness of a poem to ‘a second-hand furniture dealer’s storeroom full of chandeliers’. (2) No need to worry – he would still be there – but he quickened his pace, glanced hurriedly over the crowded array of second-hand books in the window of the Rebuilt Bookshop. (COHA, 1935, Fiction) (3) But in masses of other poems he overdid the catchiness, and everything in the poem was so attention-getting there was no way to recall it: the purposeless glitter was packed tight like a second-hand furniture dealer’s storeroom full of chandeliers. (COHA, 2012, Non-fiction/Academic) It will be argued that the destigmatization of second-hand consumption also requires changes in its linguistic representations. Positive collocates of ‘second-hand’, some of which can be found in COHA, e.g. (4), need to become more salient in people’s minds. This could be done, for example, through advertising campaigns associating second-hand shopping with positively connoted terms. In this way, linguistics, and more particularly ‘corpus-assisted ecolinguistics’ (Poole 2022), has a contribution to make to the ecological crisis. (4) Before you know it, it’s going to be collecting dust in those secondhand bookstores that you love so much. Those are an important part of our ecosystem. (COHA, 2019, TV/Movie)
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Gilquin, G. (2022). The contribution of ecolinguistics to the ecological crisis: A corpus-based study of ‘second-hand’. 16th Arizona Linguistics Circle (ALC 16), The University of Arizona (USA). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/101603