“Together we can all make little steps towards a better world”: interdiscursive construction of ecologically engaged voices in YouTube vlogs

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on the resources of Ecolinguistics and Positive Discourse Analysis, this paper investigates the interdiscursive practices that lifestyle vloggers engage in to construct their expertise and credibility when performing eco-activism. The analysis of the corpus of 30 YouTube vlogs promoting a sustainable lifestyle reveals the interplay of cross-generic conventions that young adult YouTubers employ to manage their lay expertise. Their mediated activist talk mixes basic text types of narration, argumentation, exposition and instruction with self-disclosure, technical and colloquial talk as well as social and promotional discourses. In this way, the vloggers exploit the affordances of the medium to construct the new stories of consumerism and everyday, ‘ordinary’ eco-activism based on private, green lifestyle choices. The vloggers’ interdiscursive talk and the presence of credibility strategies in the data may have an empowering effect on the audience. For one thing, the vloggers position their audience as actors who are capable of making effective choices on their way to a sustainable life. For another, empowerment is accomplished through the transformation of the vloggers’ private experience into public discourse that members of the audience can find relevant and meaningful. Overall, the study points to the potential of interdiscursive practices in the vlog as a ‘positive’ linguistic resource that can encourage people to protect our ecosystems.