Phraseology and Culture in English

Melina Magdalena and Peter Mühlhäusler 
longing and even ownership, and highlights the need to take responsibility 
and commit to maintaining the vessel’s integrity. It implies that there is no 
hope of getting help from “outside” to do this. This single catch-phrase con-
notes all of these ideas and more, depending on the specific context in which 
it appears. 
Expressing things in new ways takes a lot of effort (Fill 1996). Deep 
ecologists and ecofeminists are two groups of language users who have 
attempted to reframe mainstream perceptions by expressing them in novel 
ways (Mühlhäusler 2003: 39–40). The premise for doing this is to force 
speakers to conceptualise familiar situations differently from how they were 
previously understood. Through coinage of new terms which stand in op-
position to, or parallel with existing terms, a prevalence of dualistic think-
ing within this process often prevails, but perhaps this is merely a reflection 
of the underlying dualistic structure upon which we humans build our un-
derstanding of the world. 
Challenges which arise through the reversal of dichotomies can be use-
fully provocative. For example, the multiword blend malestream thinking
replaces main with male, to highlight the feminist assertion that western 
culture is essentially patriarchal, excluding thereby, the views and needs of 
women. Through use of this new multiword, the term from which it is de-
rived, mainstream thinking, stands in conceptual relief as not reflecting, 
after all, the thoughts of every human being. Understanding of this cleverly-
blended word can only be reached through conscious analysis. This multi-
word serves as a good example of how difficult it can be to challenge, through 
planned language changes, concepts that are so thoroughly embedded in 
our culture. 
Borrowing environmental terms from non-Western languages could pro-
vide a solution to the problem of reconceptualizing a language such as Eng-
lish. On a morphological level, language planners could induce lexical de-
velopment by introducing into English a new level of classifying affixes, 
which would alter the meanings of words and make transparent the effect 
of what they denote on the environment. We note that in a place like Aus-
tralia, to which English was transported two centuries ago, even borrowing 
whole words and phrases from Aboriginal languages very rarely occurs. As 
a consequence, Aboriginal knowledge of environmental management has 
not influenced white Anglo attitudes or practices. 

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Lexical developments in greenspeaking
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1.4. Derivation 
1.4.1. Scientific discourse 
Most of the multiword units in our database are derived from Latin and 
Greek bases. This reflects the top-down emergence of many of these terms 
from scientific discourse (“conservation biology”, “ecosystem delineation” 
and “human intervention”). Environmental awareness is nothing new, but 
study of how to address the environmental crisis began in earnest only over 
the last few decades. Along with our explosive entry into the information 
age, alarm bells have begun to ring, as bits of information are assimilated 
and compared across domains. We might observe environmental changes 
and disappearances from our own backyards in our everyday lives, but 
finding ways to talk about these phenomena often comes via scientific ap-
plication.
1.4.2. Environmental movements 
In contrast, the emergence of multiword units from grassroots environmental 
movements may originate from left-wing academics such as Lovelock (“Gaian 
citizen”, “Gaian message”, “Spaceship Earth”) (Myers 1990), or earlier think-
ers like Steiner (“biodynamic”) (in German, 1924, first published in Eng-
lish 1993). Such multiword units are also coined by individuals and groups 
who are active in environmental projects and protest (“eco-moguls”, “efflu-
ent living”). 
1.4.3. Indigenous movements 
Thirdly, the language used by Indigenous people involved in movements 
towards reclaiming a different relationship with the land from that imposed 
upon them by colonialist invaders, can reflect their different understanding 
of environment. An example of this is the use of belong, when applied to 
land and humans. The western assumption that land belongs to the humans 
who own it is reversed by people who see themselves as belonging to the 
land. Metaphors to reframe the relationship between Indigenous people and 
land include land as a journey or land as a story (see Williams, Baines and 
Cels 1993). Using such metaphors can lead to new ways of expressing

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Melina Magdalena and Peter Mühlhäusler 
essential differences in responsibility and relationship between humans and 
land.
1.4.4. Language planning 
In Australia, environmental language planning has led to suggestions of 
renaming native plants and animals. Many of the multiword names for na-
tive flora and fauna emerged out of colonial settlement, when existing lexi-
cal resources that were brought from settlers’ places of origin were applied 
to plants and animals found in their new environment. The list below fo-
cuses on Australian rodents, many of which are not biologically related to 
the rats found in other parts of the world. While this proposal has merits, it 
is important to also recognise that the proposed re-adoption of Aboriginal 
names for these animals does not recognise the possibility that the Aborigi-
nal names themselves could be morphologically complex and rich. The pro-
posal seeks. instead, to bypass negative connotations carried by the term 
rat, in the hope that this will lead to a more positive evaluation of these 
animals by those who encounter them. 
A comprehensive proposal on renaming Australian rodents is found in 
Braithwaite et al. (1995) and includes suggestions such as: