Find our Sentientism conversation on the Sentientism YouTube here and the Sentientism Podcast here.

Arran Stibbe is Professor in Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire. In his teaching and research he focuses on how language makes us who we are as people, and the role of language in building the kind of society we live in, using discourse analysis and ecolinguistics. Ecolinguistics examines how language encodes the stories we live by, and shapes how we see ourselves and our relationship with other animals and the earth. This involves linguistic analysis of a wide range of discourses, from advertising which encourages people to buy unnecessary and ecologically damaging products, to the inspirational language of nature writing. He is founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better future?”

Sentientism answers those questions with “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” In addition to the YouTube and Spotify above the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple & here on all the other platforms.

00:00 Clips!

01:00 Welcome

– “I’m a massive fan of Sentientism. It’s a crystal clear worldview that you’re expressing… it’s an important message that needs to get out there.”

– Arran’s book “Econarrative“

03:39 Arran’s Intro

– Ecological linguistics… “I get to analyse any kind of discourse that I want to… then I critique the stories that are emerging… based on my ecological philosophy… respecting living beings and wanting them to flourish”

– Discourses from Men’s Health magazine to the Pork industry handbook to nature poetry, creation stories… “positive ones and negative ones”

– “Searching for new stories to live by”

– Consulting with  @greenpeace  and others on messaging

– Stories… Ben Okri: “Stories are the secret reservoirs of values… if we change the stories that individuals and nations live by then we change the individuals and nations themselves”

– “If we pay careful attention to the language we can understand these stories that fundamentally underpin our unequal and unsustainable and quite cruel society”

– Stories as “cognitive models in our minds that influence how we think, how we talk and how we act”… individuals and across a culture e.g. “The masculine man being strong & not showing emotions & eating lots of meat… a hegemonic story”

– Narrative: “A more traditional kind of story you might tell to children at bedtime… sequences of events…”

– “I would go with this #meme idea… but I think it’s even more fundamental than that… so much of what we’re thinking is part of this wider social cognition…”

– “Is it a simplification to think of a separate being… you wouldn’t exist for more than a few minutes on your own in space… your continued existence depends on breathing… an interchange with other species… within your body… you only exist in an interconnected web”

– “Even your thoughts aren’t yours they’re coming from this wider social cognition”

– Eastern religious challenges to over-simplistic rationality / language / concepts “the world is more complex”

– “We can’t just stay quiet and meditate in a forest… we have to tell other stories… they will be simplifications but they’re necessary… to spread compassion”

11:27 What’s Real?

– “The way we’re thinking right now is a function of our upbringing and our history”

– An intellectual family… number theory, mathematics, physics, NASA, computer science, philosophy

– Father spent 15 years on an “extremely rational” philosophical treatise. “He started from nothing… from there he came up with the secrets of the universe.” “…He was embarrassed by the fact that he wasn’t a completely rational being… he had emotions and he had imagination…”

– Father aspiring to be like Spock from Star Trek?

– A very atheistic family

– “I did feel like my father was missing something by denying the emotional, the imaginative, the embodied, the experiential, the sensuous side of being human”

– Turning towards eastern religion… daoism, zen “that’s really influenced everything that I’ve done”

– “I’ve ended up being quite scientific in my analysis of language but I do have a real appreciation for the whole other imaginative, emotional, intuitive, experiential and sensual world”

– A broad naturalism vs. a narrow scientism?

– The natural world, the socially constructed world and “the supernatural world of ghosts and fairies”

– The shared physical reality of rain vs. the English social construction that rain is “terrible weather” 😊

– “Some people say ‘…everything is a social construction’ and I say ‘no we’re outside -we’re in the rain… that’s not a social construct’”

– “Pragmatically… we’re trying to build a more compassionate world… one way… is through rationality, evidence and reasoning… the other side is about exploring the stories we live by… which may not correspond exactly to the physical world but is nonetheless guiding thoughts and actions…”

– “The stories are not true, they’re not false – they’re just versions of reality we’ve decided to follow.”

– “Animals have feelings… objectively that’s true… but then if I say ‘animals are human possessions’ that is a story that we’ve created… a destructive story”

– The risks of arbitrariness and relativism

– Yuval Noah Harari’s focus on stories and whether he loses the differentiation between facts, abstractions and fabrications… e.g. seeing gods, money, contracts, corporations as equivalent “they’re all just stories”

– “We absolutely have to distinguish between fictional stories which are myths and legends that you’re not expected to take directly but can still influence how we see the world… a story like Genesis where god creates the earth and creates humans in the image of god… a very powerful story that sits at the heart of our culture… maybe needs to be resurfaced and examined and questioned…”

– “Story world – not our world but a world”

– Then social constructions / cognitive structure in our minds like “the economy is a story… economic growth… bartering then swapping tokens… electrons on computers… derivatives of things that are being sold… this is all socially constructed reality but it’s very real for us nonetheless…”

– “We’ve got to distinguish between fictional stories and then the stories that we live by – the very real ways we structure the society around us”

26:35 What and Who Matters?

– “The end of the story is that I’m an ecolinguist… all ecolinguists need to work from an explicit ethical framework”

– “It’s about judging whether stories are destructive or beneficial – going beyond ‘are they true or are they false’”

– An ecological philosophy or ecosophy… “starts off with one word… Living! – that exclamation mark means that living is something to be celebrated and respected and cared for”

– “Living applies to all species… living with high wellbeing… positive lives… now and into the future… staying within environmental limits so that we can continue living… that brings in justice… if we’re going to be consuming massively less as a species then that needs to come from the very richest and the very poorest actually need to consume more”

– “One thing about an ecosophy is you must consider, not just humans, but also other species and the physical environment.”

– “That has been the big problem with ethics… it tends to just think about humans.”

– “If it’s unsustainable then it’s going to collapse very soon – so any kind of ethical system has to consider more than the human”

– Learning about factory farms “that had a very deep impact on me… I kept that cognitive dissonance going for quite a while… but in the end I just realised that this is something that I must dedicate my life to changing… we can’t have this going on in our society… the suffering is absolutely despicable… we must do something about it”

– “It’s very much an ethics of care that this is based on rather than a Peter Singer type of utilitarianism… it is not a cognitive calculus… it’s coming from direct care”

– The Peter Singer Sentientism episode

– “Often all of the [ethical] frameworks that we’re using is just put on top of actually what we know is right”

– The risk of ecocentrism being a veneer on anthropocentrism (ecosystem services, pretty nature)

– The risks of an ecocentric flattening of the ethical differences between sentient beings and insentient entities

– “I would give primacy to sentience and to animals – certainly. But also I would want to just not think of everything as individual separate beings”

– “The only thing that is actually of value is life – because beings that are alive value their lives in different ways… that’s how life evolved… an evolutionary thing… humans do it but so do plants… the plant will move and track the sun…”

– “So I do see value in beings that are alive that are doing whatever they can to continue living and valuing their own lives… but having said that… absolute primacy to sentient beings… this is to do with movement… if we’re hurt… then we can move away from it… plants… can’t actually move away… there’s no need for them to have that kind of pain reflex.”

– “I do think it’s possible to value and care about sentient beings as well as plants… rivers… ecosystems… in different ways – with primacy for sentience”

– “There is a danger – if you’re quite binary about it… ‘plants aren’t sentient’… then you can think of them then as resources and you can then do anything that you want to them… monocultures… pesticides… a whole range of things we probably don’t want to do. Whereas if we can respect them as beings… that might lead us to a gentler kind of more ecological approach to dealing with them”

– Living in Japan for 8 years “A lot of sentiment towards animals and plants and other things… it wasn’t rigid…”

– Identifying activated roles (actively doing things – thinking, sensing, talking) and passivated roles (having things done to them) in sentences “Is it only humans who are doing things and saying things and thinking things – or do we have animals that are doing it as well… maybe even plants?”

– Analysing Genesis as a creation story “God is very much the active participant… the earth which brings forth plants…”

– Other creation stories “There you see a whole range of different animals that are activated – taking a role in the creation”

– Environmentalist discourse: “It’s very anthropocentric. The whole more-than-human world is just resources for us to exploit… totally passivated… fish stocks for instance.”

– Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”… “It’s written in a way that gives activation to animals and to plants… How the salmon know the waters that they live in and they swim… they’re actively participating in their world”

– “Conveying a story through the linguistic choices – that animals are beings we should respect because they have interests… they’re getting on with their own lives for their own purposes.”

– The analytical philosophy of recognising the intrinsic value of animals vs. the language / story  approach making their agency and interests clear

– “This is a powerful way to use language… we can convey these stories to people about animals being sentient and mattering… without having to have a long philosophical conversation about it… just convey it directly”

46:15 A Better World?

– Destructive stories pushed by those with agendas and/or that draw in typical human psychology

– “How to make the world a better place? We need to look very closely at the language that surrounds us in everyday life… texts… visual images… music… reveal the underlying stories that they are conveying – we don’t notice them. We think that things just are the way they are. But actually they’re just stories and other stories are possible.”

– “Are they working or not? – this is where you judge them against your ecosophy…”

– “Where they’re not working we need to go and search for new stories to live by… traditional and indigenous cultures… alternative movements like permaculture… slow food… alternative theories of economics… Kate Raworth’s Doughnut economics… Gross National Happiness in Bhutan”

– “When we’ve found these stories… what are the linguistic features that are conveying those stories”… spreading those features and those stories

– Analysing advertising “Buying this product will bring you happiness” vs. grandparents’ story that “money doesn’t buy you happiness”

– “These are really negative stories… encouraging us to buy this stuff that we don’t need… we’ve got to have this job to get money to buy all this stuff…”

– “Convey new stories to live by… the path to happiness not being through accumulating lots of stuff but through connections with other people… with nature… through sharing and learning…”

– JW: Animal agriculture messaging as an example that combines so many forms of destructive stories. As an animal agriculture marketing executive “There’s an additional level of challenge… you’ve got to make this [the brutal exploitation, torture and killing of obvious sentient beings] feel like a good thing… it’s OK and it’s normal”

– Working with Greenpeace on a campaign and criticising their “Eat less and better meat” message… “It became ‘less meat, more life’”

– Humane-washing via “family farms”, “Red Tractor” and “happy cow” language

– “I would have an abolitionist perspective… it should be illegal to hurt animals… anyone who hurts animals should go to jail” whereas “The RSPCA has a more environmental way of thinking”

– Animal ag messaging that it is “benign, that the animals are happy, that they wouldn’t have any lives at all if it wasn’t for us… eating meat is masculine… national identity… the true American!… meat as a path to love… family… bonding over the meat… feeding each other meat… so romantic”

– “These are real psychological needs… belonging… connection… love – and then the advertisers will use those needs and say ‘to get this you need to buy our product’”

– “Which is absurd – you can bond over a plant-based meal and then nobody else has to die for it”

– “If we thought about it it would be ridiculous… but they don’t work on rational thought… it’s about associations… we’re in the shop… we just have this positive, warm, fuzzy association with it without remembering where it came from… and we buy the product”

– JW: How even ecocentric narratives can be co-opted or warped… appeal to nature fallacies (nature is intrinsically good)… techno-phobia (e.g. ultra-processed foods)… “humans are the virus” and eco-fascism

– “Especially we need to look at narratives which appear ecocentric or environmental… but have these negative consequences… I call them ambivalent discourses… often from the right place… but within them there is something that is tripping them up”

– An example: “Protecting nature and humans aren’t part of nature… a wild-life park – you’ve got to get rid of all the indigenous population from it!… that’s such a destructive story that arises from development discourse”

– Instead… “Telling a story that humans are part of nature”

– “With destructive discourses you’re more resisting them and opposing them and fighting against them… beneficial discourses you’re completely positive and you’re helping… ambivalent ones – you want to work with people”

– JW: Another example: “The environment is really important… modern industrialisation is a serious problem… we should go back to the ways we used to live… traditional societies where women did what they were told, men were powerful and part of being powerful was going out and killing… so I’m going to the supermarket and buy a burger”

– “Sometimes there’s enough for you to work with them on it but sometimes there isn’t… they’re just using it in a disingenuous way”

– The Eva Hamer and Alex Lockwood Sentientism episodes on advocacy and change narratives

– “The kind of stories that we’re looking for… the goal of society being happiness rather than growth… getting over [treating] nature as a resource… seeing beings as actively engaged – living their own lives for their own purposes… masculinity perhaps might be about protecting the earth and all the beings… wellbeing can be found through connections and family…”

– “’Being more rather than having more’… not a slogan… it’s a whole way of using language that conveys that story in subtle and persuasive ways to people…”

– “’Here are the stories’ – that’s not the end result of ecolinguistics. It’s ‘here are the stories and here are the inspirational ways to use language to convey those stories and let’s use that all kinds of campaigns… in biology textbooks… economics textbooks… new forms of language that are right there in the textbooks’”

– Using our ecosophy as a guide to what to focus on “You look for the most dramatically negative and awful language or the most spectacularly positive language… you don’t waste your time with wishy-washy things… because there’s so much – focus on the really powerful things”

– “The stories that we live by are extremely entrenched… stories of neo-liberalism or economic growth”

– The UK election where both main parties “It’s all economic growth… never for a moment about the actual ends of society – what we want to create”

– “Even if we have collapse of industrial civilisation then we will need to search around for new stories to live by”

– “You know the stories that will come up first – will be the fascist ones… We need alternative, hopeful, positive stories to draw on. Let’s start right now… we’re going to need them as things collapse – which I think they already are”

– JW: The risks of doomerism and fatalism

– “This idea of a ‘problem’… a problem has a solution… this really binary thinking… [either] it has a solution so actually we just need to recycle and wash our yoghurt pots and turn the lights out and everything is going to be fine… or there’s no solution and we can’t do anything. So I avoid that framing completely… It’s a predicament that we’re facing and we have to respond to it… recognise the reality… respond to that reality… whatever the situation is we can make it better than it would otherwise have been.”

– “I wouldn’t go with ‘there’s nothing we can do’ but I would also very much avoid  ‘the solutions are simple… all we need is the political will’… that’s way over-simplified”

– JW: Facing the scale and inertia of the web of human discourse is daunting – but there’s also the hope of latent human care… “Constructive and positive stories… these aren’t alien things to humans… these are things that resonate with humans… flow through many of our cultures and resonate with us now.”

– “If you’re critical of the stories in the culture around you and you search for positive new stories to live by you can have your personal transformation… and the social transformation of the networks around you – that can make a real difference”

–  “I’ve seen ecolinguistics making a difference to so many people’s lives… this liberation… ‘my culture thinks this… there’s other possible ways to think about it’ – that’s so liberating.”

– “I find this more liberating than ‘there’s a set of false facts and a set of false facts ones…’ that’s really important… but beyond that there’s this whole other world… of stories”

01:12:52 Follow Arran

– Arran at the University of Gloucestershire

– The Stories We Live By – the free online course

– The Ecolinguistics Association

– Stibbe, Arran (2024) Econarrative: ethics, ecology and the search for new narratives to live by. London: Bloomsbury
– Stibbe, Arran (2021) Ecolinguistics: language, ecology and the stories we live by (second edition). London: Routledge

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info.

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Thanks to Graham for the post-production and to Tarabella and Denise for helping to fund this episode via our Sentientism Patreon.