DIACHRONIC ECOLOGICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF IMDb

Abstract

Media is a useful tool to convey various types of messages. Within the past years, broadcasting media has covered a wide range of different communication methods such as television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. The article's central hypothesis is that movies, TV, and video games quotes, as the subcategory of broadcasting, convey messages about environmental issues. It seems that ecological discourse analysis can be useful, as it focuses on texts about the environment. In a diachronic approach, the present article aims to explore the environmental issues in movies, TV, and video games quotes; in this regard, we analyzed ecological discourse and solutions proposed by IMDb quotes. The data was collected from the IMDb database using Keyword in Context (KWIC) over 1990-2020. The findings indicated that KWICs such as global warming (38%) and endangered species (19.18%) had the highest frequencies. On the other hand, only 0.67% of the raw numbers of quotes belonged to environmental issues, which indicated that IMDb quotes implicitly conveyed the message regarding ecological matters. Furthermore, the studied IMDb mostly explained the consequences and provided solutions to environmental issues. Therefore, the frequency of informing people about environmental negligence was much lower than expected.