The Growth Fetish Survival: a Critical Discourse Analysis on the Reproduction of the Growth Discourse in Italian Newspapers

Abstract

As in the last decades the human population on Earth kept growing and developing at a constantly increasing pace, concerns about the threatening impact of human activities on the wider socio-ecological system started to arise within various academic fields. The emerging unsustainability of a societal model based on an infinite economic growth paradigm within a world characterized by finite resources, lead a variety of economists, environmentalists and sociologists to question its long-term viability, legitimacy and social entrenchment.

Despite the advancement of many hypothesis and an ongoing discussion about the topic within the academic field, no empirical examples and practical insights have been given on how growth maximization (as measured by GDP) sustain itself as a primary national objective in many countries, how the beliefs behind its efficiency are spread and constantly re-established within societies and how GDP acquired through time a symbolic value (measure of social welfare) that transcends its initial purpose. This paper aims to provide such empirical example.

With my research, starting from a social constructivist epistemology, I investigate how the discourse around economic growth is constructed and reiterated by a popular media (written newspapers) within an example of western society (Italy). For the purpose, I sampled 140 growth-related articles from the four most read newspaper in the country within the time-period Jan-April 2016 and analyzed them by using a properly adjusted Foucaultian three-dimensional framework for critical discourse analysis.

The findings of this paper show the emergence of two antagonist discourses, one fostering a development paradigm based on economic growth and another challenging it. The main insights of this research show how a strong authoritative faction employs a direct, vague and well-established homogeneous linguistic register to deliver its preferred (pro-economic growth) meaning on the topic. Furthermore, control over public discourse access, as well as legitimization strategies such authorization, marginalization/derision of alternatives and rationalization of causal connections are exercised to foster the faction’s mental model of the economic system. On the other side, the persuasion strategy of the opposing faction utilizes a heterogenic linguistic register and seems to revolve around storytelling, exemplification, moralization and the creation of a systemic picture to foster curiosity within the reader. Overall, the strategy can be regarded as an attempt of “cracking” the well-established and socially agreed symbolic power of economic growth as well as showing the discrepancies and contradictions between actions and beliefs fostered by the opposing faction and re-negotiating established meanings.