Critical discourse analysis of climate change in IBEX 35 companies

Abstract

This paper presents a multimodal analysis of the corporate sustainability webpages of Spanish IBEX 35 companies. Our intention is to determine how global corporations in Spain address climate change in the construction of their reputational identity. To do so, we examine the major discourses and narratives on climate change used by IBEX 35 companies in their public communications, in comparison with the conceptualizations put forward by other social agents, such as NGOs. From the methodological point of view, our study follows the theoretical principles of critical discourse analysis, multimodal studies and ecolinguistics. To conduct the analysis of webpages, we apply Halliday's systemic-functional grammar and Kress and Van Leeuwen's grammar of visual design. This methodological framework enables us to describe and classify images on the webpages and to determine how these images work to enforce certain narratives and ideologies. We also consider the type of language used on the webpages and the values with which these linguistic choices are associated.