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Language and the Environment: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Flood Narratives in South-Eastern Nigeria
Subject area: Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities · Area of research: English Language and Literature
Abstract
Flood has become one of the most destructive environmental hazards in South-Eastern Nigeria. It displaces communities, destroys farmland, and reshapes public discourse on climate vulnerability. While hydrological and policy studies have examined its physical and administrative dimensions, little attention has been paid to how language constructs, naturalizes, or contests the disaster's meaning. This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis, informed by Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Stibbe's ecolinguistic framework, to a purposively sampled corpus of twenty-three publicly available, named, and dated Nigerian and international news reports, agency situation reports, and one investigative feature on flood and gully erosion in Anambra, Imo, Abia, Enugu, and Ebonyi States between 2022 and 2026. Line-by-line analysis of directly cited excerpts identified the ideological and ecological work these choices perform. Five recurrent narrative patterns emerged: (i) an anthropocentric blame narrative erasing non-human ecological processes; (ii) a religious and fatalistic narrative that forecloses causal inquiry; (iii) a militarized narrative figuring floodwater as an animate adversary; (iv) a humanitarian vulnerability narrative positioning residents as passive or depersonalized recipients of aid; and (v) a governance-oriented narrative that rarely engages anthropogenic climate change. These narratives are neither neutral nor evenly distributed, with distinct implications for public perception, victim agency, and environmental accountability.
Keywords
ecolinguistics; environmental communication; flood; media discourse; South-Eastern Nigeria
How to cite this paper
@article{1724278,
author = {Dr. Cynthia Adaeze Onuegwunwoke, Dr. Gloria Ukamaka Amadi, Dr. Kevin Onyewuchi Ugorji, Rita Nkiruka Chieke, Dr. Eugene Chukwuemeka Onuoha},
title = {Language and the Environment: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Flood Narratives in South-Eastern Nigeria},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {4},
pages = {3397-3410},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1724278.pdf},
abstract = {Flood has become one of the most destructive environmental hazards in South-Eastern Nigeria. It displaces communities, destroys farmland, and reshapes public discourse on climate vulnerability. While hydrological and policy studies have examined its physical and administrative dimensions, little attention has been paid to how language constructs, naturalizes, or contests the disaster's meaning. This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis, informed by Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Stibbe's ecolinguistic framework, to a purposively sampled corpus of twenty-three publicly available, named, and dated Nigerian and international news reports, agency situation reports, and one investigative feature on flood and gully erosion in Anambra, Imo, Abia, Enugu, and Ebonyi States between 2022 and 2026. Line-by-line analysis of directly cited excerpts identified the ideological and ecological work these choices perform. Five recurrent narrative patterns emerged: (i) an anthropocentric blame narrative erasing non-human ecological processes; (ii) a religious and fatalistic narrative that forecloses causal inquiry; (iii) a militarized narrative figuring floodwater as an animate adversary; (iv) a humanitarian vulnerability narrative positioning residents as passive or depersonalized recipients of aid; and (v) a governance-oriented narrative that rarely engages anthropogenic climate change. These narratives are neither neutral nor evenly distributed, with distinct implications for public perception, victim agency, and environmental accountability.},
keywords = {ecolinguistics; environmental communication; flood; media discourse; South-Eastern Nigeria},
month = {October},
}