This book employs a Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) framework to examine cycling mobility, marking a new turn in ecolinguistic discourse analysis. The author focuses specifically on environment-related arguments concerning the promotion of higher levels of cycling, mainly as a means of transport, and investigates the “US vs. “THEM” narratives present in many discourses about road users. Analysing newspaper articles, institutional documents and spoken interviews, the author searches for a positive new discourse that would inspire and encourage cycling as a habitual means of transport, rather than simply exposing ecologically destructive discourse. The book will be of interest to scholars of discourse and ecolinguistics, as well as contributing to the lively debate about how to increase cycling in fields such as sustainability, sociology, transport planning and management.

Drawing on discourse analysis as an emerging field in transport and urban development, this innovative book takes a novel approach to examining the different interpretations, diversity of views and controversy in society.

In the 21st century cycling has been re-considered as utilitarian transport. Starting from a low modal share, it has surged in many major cities of the Global North and is now being integrated into mobility and urban planning programmes and infrastructure. This book focuses on the process of "becoming" an urban cyclist through socialization.

This open access book provides insight on how the tactical urbanism has the capacity to influence change in mobility practices such as cycling. COVID-19 crisis prompted the public authorities to rethink the use of public space in order to develop means of transport that are both efficient and adapted to the health context and their effects on cycling practices in Europe, North, and South America. Its contributors collectively reveal and evidence through policies analysis, mapping, and innovative qualitative analysis bridging video and interviews, how those new infrastructures and policies can be a trigger for change in a context of mobility transition. This book provides an important element on the way local authorities can act in a quicker and more agile way. While some decisions are specific to the context of the beginning of the pandemic, the analysis offers lessons on the way to implement the transition toward a low-carbon mobility, on the importance of processes based on trials and errors, on the political stakes of reallocating road space.

This open access volume is a call for ecological awareness and action through communication. It offers perspectives on how we, as humans, posit ourselves in relation to, and as part of, the environment in both verbal and non-verbal discourse. The contributions investigate a variety of situated communicative practices and how they instantiate and potentially influence our actions. Through the frameworks of ecolinguistics, multimodal studies and ecoliteracy, the book discusses how the environmental crisis is communicated as an urgent global and local issue in a variety of media, texts and events. The contributions present a wide range of case studies (including news articles, institutional websites, artwork installations, promotional texts, signposting, social campaigns and other), and they explore how communicative actions can help meet the challenges of ecologically-oriented change. The focus is on the impact that linguistic and multimodal communication can have on acting in, with and towards the environment seen as living ecosystems, or 'lifescapes'. The chapters offer a reflection on the way we experience, endorse, reframe and resist value systems in ecological communication, and propose alternative and healthier perspectives to respect and preserve the common and nurturing lifescapes through awareness and action. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

This book reflects the cutting edge in ecostylistic approaches to nature, the environment and sustainability as represented in contemporary non-literary discourse. Firstly, the book presents the ecolinguistic and stylistic terms and theories applied in this ecostylistic analysis (ecosophy, beneficial, ambivalent and destructive discourses; and foregrounding, point of view, metaphor), and reviews the most recent literature in the field of ecostylistics. Secondly, the book examines the occurrences of five marker words (nature, environment, ecosystem, ecology, sustainability) on the websites of five environmental organisations and agencies (Forestry England, Greenpeace International, National Park Service, Navdanya International, World Wide Fund for Nature). The main research purpose of this study is to identify beneficial discourses in the environet and to investigate the beneficial ecostylistic strategies utilised to produce them. Above all, this book reminds us humans that we do not stand apart from nature: we are a part of it. The book will be of interest to scholars of stylistics, ecolinguistics and ecocriticism, as well as scholars of discourse analysis, environmental communication and environmental humanities.

This book investigates the role of translation processes in the shaping and re-shaping of ideological discourse and their impact on the actors involved in the translation process, focusing on institutional texts and their influence on lifestyle issues both public and personal. The volume employs a unique approach in its focus on "lifestyle politics," examining texts produced by political actors, such as international organizations and national governments, and their translations. The book draws on an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating work from translation studies and linguistics with political science and economics, and applies it to English and French versions of the same documents, calling attention to ideological differences across versions. In light of our increasingly globalized world, Caimotto and Raus demonstrate the ways in which globalized discourse undergoes processes of depoliticization and marketization which produce a trickle-down effect on individuals’ personal identities. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in translation studies, critical discourse analysis, and political science.

The first full-length study of cycling activism through the lens of social movement theory, this book demonstrates that, despite tremendous differences, bike activism can be understood as a continuous and connected activity spanning a century and a half and across continents. With examples from street protest to institutional lobbying, it emphasises cycling’s current central importance to zero carbon transport futures, while showing that cycling activism is also not always about the bike or the cyclist, as successive generations of activists have used cycling to articulate different visions of freedom and autonomy. Moving from a consideration of social movement theory as a means to understand cycling activism, the author presents a series of case studies of collective action, organisations, networks and campaigns in order to illustrate and elaborate a theoretical model through which diverse campaigns and approaches to change can be understood. As such, Cycling Activism will appeal to those with interests in mobilisation for social change, mobility and transport studies, and social movement theory, as well as cycling studies.

This book examines emerging debates and questions around cycling to critically analyse and challenge dominant framings and prevalent conventions of ‘good cycling’. Cycling Societies brings to light the plurality of voices and forms of cycling in other societies, revealing the diversity and complexity of cycling across different socio-political regimes, geographies and cultures. It presents case studies from five continents and demonstrates the need of thinking comparatively about cycling and urban environments. The book pivots around the three themes of innovations, inequalities and governance and engages a diversity of voices: world-renowned academics in the field of cycling and urban mobility, cycling activists and transportation consultants. Synthesising academic contributions with policy briefs, this innovative book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of sustainable transportation, urban planning and mobility studies.

The Invisible Bicycle brings together different insights into the social, cultural and economic history of the bicycle and cycling in historical eras of ubiquitous bicycle use that have remained relatively invisible in bicycle history. It revisits the typical timeline of cycling’s decline in the 1950s and 1960s and the renaissance beginning in the 1970s by bringing forth the large national and local variations, varying uses and images of the bicycle, and different bicycle cultures as well as their historical background and motivations. To understand the role, possibilities and challenges of the bicycle today, it is necessary to know the history that has formed them. Therefore The Invisible Bicycle is recommended also to present-day practitioners and planners of bicycle mobility. Contributors are: Peter Cox, Martin Emanuel, Tiina Männistö-Funk, Timo Myllyntaus, Nicholas Oddy, Harry Oosterhuis, William Steele, Manuel Stoffers, Sue-Yen Tjong Tjin Tai, Frank Veraart.