Framing the path to net zero:a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of sustainability disclosures by major corporate emitters, 2011-2020

Big corporations are a leading contributor to global carbon emissions and their investment decisions have a significant impact on the world’s ability to tackle climate change. This study combines corpus and discourse approaches to examine how major corporate emitters have responded to the Paris Agreement, how they legitimize their practices amid mounting public pressure, and how companies operating in high- and middle-income countries differ in their framing of climate change. The results show that carbon majors place increasing focus on climate issues, widely support the goals of the Paris Agreement and are increasingly making net-zero pledges. However, close inspection of linguistic patterns reveals a troubling disconnect between proclaimed goals, the solutions advocated for, and the radical steps needed to address the escalating climate crisis. Companies from middle-income countries devote comparatively less attention to climate change, which points to the need for better coordinated global efforts to address this problem

Dialogism in Corporate Social Responsibility Communications: Conceptualising Verbal Interactions between Organisations and their Audiences

We conceptualise CSR communication as a process of reciprocal influence between organisations and their audiences. We use an illustrative case study in the form of a conflict between firms and a powerful stakeholder which is played out in a series of 20 press releases over a 2-month period to develop a framework of analysis based on insights from linguistics. It focuses on three aspects of dialogism, namely (i) turn-taking (co-operating in a conversation by responding to the other party), (ii) inter-party moves (the nature and type of interaction characterising a turn, i.e. denial, apology or excuse) and (iii) intertextuality (the intensity and quality of verbal interaction between the parties). We address the question: What is the nature and type of verbal interactions between the parties? First we examine (a) whether the parties verbally interact and then (b) whether the parties listen to each other. We find evidence of dialogism suggesting that CSR communication is an interactive process which has to be understood as a function of the power relations between a firm and a specific stakeholder. Also, we find evidence of intertextuality in press releases by six firms which engage in verbal interaction with the stakeholder. We interpret this as linguistic evidence of isomorphic processes relating to CSR practices resulting from the pressure exerted by a powerful stakeholder. The lack of response by ten firms that fail to issue press releases suggests a strategy of ‘watch-and-wait’ with respect to the outcome of the conflict