Phraseology and Culture in English

particular branches of science (meteorology, biology and geography) or the 
language of activist protest fall rather easily into the category. Our data do 
contain some planned examples from the technical domains, especially 
where these appeared in newspaper and magazine articles. While analysis 
of texts such as lists of planned specialist terminology from technical do-
mains would also yield interesting results, this paper focuses primarily on 
the unplanned emergence of new multiword units. Both phenonema, how-
ever, illustrate a principle, well known to language planners, that “language 
change tends to lag behind radical social and technological changes” (Mühl-
häusler 1983: 71). Given the problem that the term “environment” can in-
clude almost everything, we extracted and sorted data according to the over-
all context in which the text samples appeared, as well as according to the 
emerging corpus of samples. 
1.2. Length 
Concepts that are culturally-central are generally expressed by short words 
(Zipf’s Law 1949). Contrast, for instance, words used for domesticated ani-
mals (“cat”, “pig”, “cow”), by words for wild animals not encountered every 
day (“cockatoo”, “hippopotamus”, “buffalo”). Words for animals which be-
come more central are frequently shortened, as in Australian English (“kan-
garoo” Æ “roo”, “cockatoo” Æ “cocky” and “crocodile” Æ “croc”). Most of 
the words and concepts grouped in the domain of environmental language 
are not short, but are expressed by sometimes cumbersome multiword units. 
This reflects the comparative recency of the phenomenon of environmental 
language. However, the shortening of word bases was observed where con-
cepts have acquired emotive meaning, or are becoming central to the dis-
course. The use of some acronyms as word bases such as nimby (from “Not 
in My Back Yard”), GM (from “genetically modified organisms”), and the 

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Lexical developments in greenspeaking
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organisms”), and the shortening of “ecological” to “eco-“ in words such as 
ecosystem exemplify this. 
The transference of environmental multiwords in part or in their en-
tirety to other domains indicates that these multiwords have attained 
meaning as a single concept which can be generalised metaphorically to 
other domains. For example, the affix -friendly was originally used in en-
vironmental language in multiwords such as greenhouse friendly and envi-
ronmentally friendly, and cannot be traced back to scientific discourse. 
Environmentally friendly was originally used in activist boycotting cam-
paigns to distinguish desirable products that were environmentally sound;
with the implication that their purchase and consumption would not be 
deleterious to the environment, as opposed to other product choices. It has 
since acquired usage with words that are not strictly environmental, such 
as the general description “user-friendly”. Such transference indicates the 
increasing centrality to discourse, of such environmental concepts. The
-friendly affix is now widely used in mainstream advertising and political 
discourse to describe almost anything that is deemed beneficial or harm-
less towards the recipient: planet friendly (environment) or size friendly
(consumer). 
1.3. Resources 
It is not surprising that people make use of available language resources in 
coining multiword units to express new environmental concepts. This in-
volves meaning extension of existing units by combining existing material 
(e.g. “green”, “greenhouse”) or combining existing material into new units. 
Multiword units thus built, are not brand new and neutral, but they inherit 
the accumulated detritus of past connotations and past usage of each com-
ponent. This involves the metaphorical extension of meaning. 
A catch-phrase such as “Spaceship Earth” (Myers 1990), could originate 
only in a context where “Earth” has been recognised as part of a greater 
whole, with its own conditions of integrity. A spaceship must have the ca-
pacity to support and sustain life within a closed system or environment. 
The phrase connotes the idea that if our planet is like a spaceship, humans 
have the capacity to understand, build and maintain such a system on a 
planetary scale. Setting aside the hubristic question of whether humans 
really can do this, to depict our planetary home as a spaceship adrift in hos-
tile, empty black space evokes a sense of urgency, inspires a sense of be-

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