The Discourse of Sustainability in English Language Teaching (ELT) at the University of Oxford: Analyzing Discursive Representations

Abstract

Abstract The article presents and discusses a study that focuses upon discursive representations of sustainability in English Language Teaching (ELT) that are found on the official web-site of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. The study involved a corpus of texts related to sustainability in ELT that were collected on the website of the University of Oxford. The corpus was analyzed qualitatively to identify and classify the types of discursive representations of sustainability in ELT. After that, it was investigated quantitatively to calculate the most frequent types of discursive representations of sustainability. The results of the corpus analysis revealed that the most frequent types of discursive representation of sustainability in ELT at the University of Oxford involved “lifelong learning” and “digital sustainability”, respectively. It was found that the aforementioned discursive representations did not reflect the main sustainability goals that were set by the University of Oxford, inter alia, zero carbon emissions and biodiversity. It is suggested in the article that the discursive representations of sustainability “lifelong learning” and “digital sustainability” are indicative of an ELT-specific aspect of the discourse of sustainability that is communicated online by the University of Oxford.