From carbon markets to carbon morality: creative compounds as framing devices in online discourses on climate change mitigation

Lexical combinations of at least two roots around "carbon" as the hub, such as "carbon finance" or "carbon footprint," have recently become ubiquitous in English-speaking science, politics, and mass media. They are part of a new language evolving around the issue of climate change that can reveal how it is framed by various stakeholders. In this article, the authors study the role of these "carbon compounds" as tools of communication in different online discourses on climate change mitigation. By combining a quantitative analysis of their occurrences with a qualitative analysis of the contexts in which the compounds were used, the authors identify three clusters of compounds focused on finance, lifestyle, and attitudes and elucidate the communicative purposes to which they were put between the 1990s and the early 21st century. This approach may open up new ways of analyzing the framings of climate change mitigation initiatives in the public sphere.

Queering religious texts: An exploration of British non-heterosexual Christians’ and Muslims’ strategy of constructing sexuality-affirming hermeneutics.

Religious authority figures often use religious texts as the primary basis for censuring homosexuality. In recent years, however, non-heterosexual Christians and Muslims have begun to contest the discursively produced boundary of sexual morality.Drawing upon two research projects on non-heterosexual Christians and Muslims, this article explores the three approaches embedded in this strategy.While acknowledging that homosexuality is indeed portrayed negatively in some parts of religious texts, the participants critique traditional hermeneutics by highlighting its inaccuracy and socio-cultural specificity, and arguing for a contextualized and culturally relevant interpretation. They also critique the credibility of institutional interpretive authority by highlighting its inadequacy and ideology, and relocating authentic interpretive authority to personal experience. Finally, they recast religious texts to construct resources for their spiritual nourishment.This strategy generally reflects the contemporary western religious landscape that prioritizes the authority of the self over that of religious institution.