Can Stakeholders hold the Commons? English as the Global Language of Capitalism and that of Sustainability: Contradictions and Potentials

This paper investigates the role of English as a Lingua Franca in the International communication concerning environmental issues. The case studies analysed focus on Anglicisms in Italian texts dealing with environment-related issues. Contrasting hypotheses are presented in order to investigate their respective validity and to understand how they coexist and what can be done in terms of discourse strategies in order to improve environment-friendly communication. A taxonomy of four strategies is proposed - International, Creative, Oppositional, Professional - in the attempt to pin down the different goals communicators are pursuing when they insert Anglicisms in their texts. This is then applied to the analysis of environmental communication in general and its framing, hypothesising two main communicative approaches, one targeted at citizens the other at consumers and stakeholders.