International Journal of Sub-Saharan African Research (IJSSAR)

Background: Environmental discourse shapes public understanding and influences the interpretation of ecological responsibility and sustainability. However, the notion of economic growth is prevalent in these discourses, depicting economic development as compatible with ecological responsibility. In spite of this, research into the growth ideology in corporate environmental discourse in Kenya is minimal.
Objective: The present study investigated the discursive construction and reproduction of growthism alongside ecological responsibility in environmental management reports.
Method: Drawing on a corpus of 36 environmental reports, a mixed-method design was employed with quantitative findings reinforcing qualitative discourse analysis. Keywords, lexical patterns and collocations were analysed and interpreted on the basis of Critical Discourse Analysis and the ecological framework. Results: The findings revealed that growth ideology was manifested through passivation and nominalization of expansion-related terms such as growth alongside a high prevalence of statistical quantifiers. At the discourse practice level, growth ideology was reproduced through the marketization of ecological challenges, normalisation of growth and the rationalization of economic progress as the ultimate corporate objective. Conclusion This ideological construction therefore served to reinforce institutional control by corporations who linguistically legitimise economic growth in the eyes of the shareholders, at the expense of ecological protection.
Unique Contribution: The findings demonstrated the role of language in perpetuating the growth narrative in sustainability communication, which has the potential to influence the shareholders’ perception about corporations’ ecological responsibility. The results provided further insights into the current corporate struggle to balance economic expansion with ecological sustainability as realised through language. Recommendations: Regulatory bodies such as the Capital Markets Authority and NEMA should integrate eco-linguistically beneficial language into their reporting standards. The agencies need to encourage discursive strategies that explicitly frame ecological risk instead of camouflaging it in the name of sustainability. Additionally, ecolinguistic and critical language awareness training programmes could be incorporated into everyday shareholder education, besides other professional training materials.