Rationalization of discourse and production of knowledge on the environment

Abstract

It is often visible that certain expressions have acquired, through the vagaries
of the context, a disproportionate place within institutional discourse. It has been
demonstrated time and time again that any discourse takes shape in a precise
discursive space and develops consequent lexical recursions. The number of
speeches relating to recurring themes is enough to realize that the use of certain
notions becomes inevitable.
This article proposes to analyze the discourse on the environment by drawing
inspiration from theoretical considerations borrowed from discourse analysis.
The latter makes it possible to elucidate certain discursive processes of freezing
at work in the circulating institutional discourses on the climate, as well as the
different discursive strategies that they mobilize in the discursive field of the
World Bank where the environment continues to be grasped as an object of
discourse. The use of this vague and all-encompassing notion is, however, an
obviousness desired by an expert discourse endowed with a strong normative
dimension intended to be followed by political effects. The institutional character
of this discourse allows the notion of the environment to acquire a privileged
place in the public space and an institutional legitimacy which gives it notoriety
and stability of meaning.