Environmental Digital Literature: An Instrumentum Laboris for Eco-social Engineering

Abstract

Climate crisis is a global concern as manifested in unprecedented flooding, bushfires, heat waves, global warming, and desertification amongst others. There is also a growing attention in terms of scholarship and research across disciplines to address and understand the debilitating effects of environmental crises. Using Halliday’s systemic meta-function of ideation and Di Rosario’s entax theory, this paper examines “Climatophosis”, an eco-digital poem in order to identify the eco-lexicons in the poem, and the semiotics of digitalization as tools for making environmental statements for intervention in the climate crisis. The analysis reveals the frequency of the eco-lexicon items, the affordances of environmental digital literature such as hybridity, multimodality, multilingualism, audio-visuality, ergodic features, and the human-computer interaction. Also important is the extension of Di Rosario’s entax theory to include meta entax as identified in this study. The conclusion is that environmental digital literature is a veritable instrument to promote eco-advocacy and eco-social engineering through the creation of environmental consciousness and ethical considerations in the care for the environment to mitigate the climate crisis.