The Faculty of Humanities, Diponegoro University through the master program in linguistics, held a guest lecture on Monday, March 28, 2022 by zoom meeting. The speaker of this lecture is Peter Suwarno, Ph. D from Arizona State University in America. He gave a lecture on the topic “Ecolinguistics: How A Language Can Destroy Environment”. This general lecture was attended by the dean of the faculty of humanities, Dr. Nurhayati, head of the linguistics master program, Dr. Agus Subiyanto, MA, as well as moderator, lecturers and students of the master program in linguistics and the alumni.
In this lecture, Dr. Suwarno said that language can damage the environment. He explained how language can damage the environment through ecolinguistics.The language used in advertisements affects the consumerism pattern of society, which then encourages mass production. Thus, this can damage the environment. Nowadays, consumerism is a part of our society’s life and brings a new culture that can damage the environment.
Language can do two things: damage or save the environment. This relates to products, consumption, and advertising. Moreover, this is also related to social status. People follow trends for social status. They will buy expensive things to show their social status. Even poor people want to buy expensive things to be recognized by others. They will compete to buy it even though it is beyond their reach. No doubt, this can damage the environment and mental health. Sentences used in advertisements can affect people’s mindsets about social status. It forces them to buy and consume goods. Then they indirectly pollute the environment.
In addition, the culture of the people who have been influenced by consumerism will comment on each other. These comments can be in the form of criticism about the clothes or goods that we have. Then, people would compete to follow current trends to get praise. The more compliments we want, the more our society buys and consumes things that end up piling up a lot of garbage. This is very damaging to the environment.
The lecture of Dr. Suwarno showed us that the culture of consumerism was inherent in society. In this case, language plays a role in the destruction of the environment. He gave insight on how to use language well to save our environment.