Analyzing Environmental Discourse through Construction-Based Pattern Extraction
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Ecology, Environment, and Natural Language Processing
Abstract
Environmental issues are at the centre of a debate currently taking place across all communication channels. This paper provides an analysis of texts in which these issues are discussed, with the novelty of applying a methodology that enables the extraction and comparison of different narratives and points of view. The texts used in this study are the English Living Planet Reports published biennially by the WWF from 2014 to 2024. The methodology is based on the extraction of constructions – patterns collected in the English constructicon CASA – which allow us to identify differences in the presentation of the issues discussed in the analysed texts. Our results show that this methodology can be very helpful in the comparative analysis of texts to reveal different perspectives, for example, to observe diachronic variations.