ECOLINGUISTIC FRAMING OF THE ANTHROPOCENE APOCALYPSE: AN ECO CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF HUMAN-NATURE RELATIONSHIP IN THE ROAD BY MCCARTHY

Abstract

This study investigates the ecocritical ad ecolinguistic framing of the Anthropocene apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy's The Road by integrating Fairclough's three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with Stibbe's (2015) ecolinguistic framework. Using a qualitative interpretive research design, the study analyzes purposively selected textual passages having ecological devastation, environmental degradation, and interactions between humans and the natural world. The analysis is conducted across Fairclough's 3D model (1989) while employing Stibbe's (2015) concepts of framing, evaluation, salience, erasure, metaphor, identity, and"stories we live by" to analyze the ecological ideologies embedded within the narrative. The findings reveal that McCarthy constructs the post-apocalyptic landscape as a discourse of ecological exhaustion in which recurring representations of ash, silence, biodiversity loss, and environmental desolation challenge anthropocentric assumptions and expose the consequences of ecological exploitation. The novel systematically reframes the human–nature relationship by replacing narratives of human dominance and technological progress with an ecological worldview grounded in interdependence, vulnerability, and environmental responsibility. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that environmental collapse in The Road functions not merely as a fictional setting but as an ideological critique of unsustainable cultural narratives that characterize the Anthropocene. By integrating CDA with ecolinguistics, this research contributes to environmental literary discourse studies and ecolinguistic scholarship by offering a comprehensive analytical framework for examining ecological meanings in literary texts. The paper has international implications for it contributes to United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals SDG-13 (Climate Action) a discourse on environmental consciousness and encourages readers to critically reconsider humans’ relationship with the more-than-human world in the face of accelerating global ecological crises.