Greenhushing: the deliberate under communicating of sustainability practices by tourism businesses

Greenhushing selectively communicates fewer pro-sustainability actions by businesses than are practiced; based on a perception of customers’ rights to consumerism. We first studied the gap between the communication of sustainability practices in the audits and websites of 31 small rural tourism businesses in the Peak District National Park (UK). The analysis showed that businesses only communicate 30% of all the sustainability actions practiced. Their websites emphasised customer benefits, using explicit, affective, experiential and active language that legitimises the customers’ hedonistic use of the landscape, while downplaying complex issues and normalising sustainability to reduce customer guilt. Just one website mentioned climate change. We found that greenhushing results from a low moral intensity, masking potentially negative consequences of perceived lower competence, whilst protecting business from more cynical consumers who may interpret their statements as hypocritical. Subsequent textual analysis and interviews were used to understand how communication constitutes these organisations. We propose that greenhushing reshapes and constitutes tourism businesses through their communications. Moreover, greenhushing is a form of public moralisation that adopts communication practices similar to greenwashing, reflecting the social norms expected from a business; however, in this case, located in a moral muteness, rather than moral hypocrisy, that businesses accept but resent

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"It is not my intention to be a killjoy..." : objecting to a licence application : the complainers

This paper explores the constructed nature of legal complaints through the adoption of a socio-linguistic model with an emphasis upon pragmatics and elements of conversation analysis. When making a legal complaint, we posit that there is a conflict between effective communication and the uptake of politeness strategies. Furthermore, how complaints are ‘worked up’ in situ is a product of the arena in which such complaints are made. Through a textual analysis of the methods of complaining adopted by those who make representations to the licensing authority, for the purposes of objecting to a licence application, we show the tension between making oneself clear and being polite, and how complaints in different settings take different forms. We conclude by exploring the implications of our findings for legal processes—is it reasonable, for instance, to talk of ‘consistency’ in testimony if each complaint is worked up in situ—and for pragmatic theory more generally, i.e the applicability of Brown and Levinson’s politeness model for legal processes