A critical discourse analysis of ideology-loaded eco-sustainability in Saudi News reports

Abstract

This study examines how the environmental ideology embedded in ecol-sustainability discourse is reproduced in news reports. It analyzes 43 reports from Saudi newspapers and the Saudi Press Agency using van Dijk’s socio‑cognitive framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, complemented by insights from ecolinguistics. The reports are examined at macro‑structural and micro‑linguistic levels to identify discursive strategies and linguistic choices through which journalists reproduce three key environmental principles incorporated in the Saudi Vision 2030: anthropocentric sustainability, environmental protection as a moral and implicitly religious duty, and the State as the primary guardian of environmental protection. The findings indicate that headlines and leads frequently construct the State as the main initiator and driver of environmental action, while other participants predominantly appear as supporting and enacting this vision. The campaign slogan “Your Impact Is Green” links individual responsibility to state leadership and frames citizens’ actions as part of a wider national project grounded in moral and religious accountability. At the syntactic level, material processes commonly cast government officials and institutions as principal actors in environmental protection, and their evaluative statements are foregrounded in prominent positions. The reports also repeatedly use the phrase “natural resources” for soil, air, water and ecosystems, associating their protection with human welfare and economic development. Overall, the analysis suggests that the coverage promotes a mainly anthropocentric and state‑centric environmental discourse that legitimizes state leadership in environmental protection and presents the environmental principles of Vision 2030 as a taken‑for‑granted framework for imagining sustainability.