Il linguaggio francese dell’écoféminisme: un profondo intreccio lessicale tra due movimenti [The French language of ecoféminisme: a deep lexical intertwining between two movements]

Abstract

Term coined in 1974 by French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne, écoféminisme indicates the union of the radical ecological movement and feminism, that is a kind of feminist movement particularly committed to safeguarding nature and the environment. Nowadays, ecofeminism insists on stressing that the kind of logic of power used to justify domination over human beings with reference to gender, ethnicity and class belonging, is used to justify domination over nature as well. The linguistic analysis of the domain of ecofeminism shows the presence of a specialised vocabulary of the movement that occurs in various scientific articles, posters, newspaper articles and interviews on the web. Our purpose is to study and investigate the presence of a real “ecofeminist lexicon” in the French language through a semantic-pragmatic study of the lexemes and terms that concern its movement, structure and founding ideology. With this aim in mind, a linguistic-terminological corpus that may help to understand how feminism can enrich the ecological and environmental perspective through a more complete and conscious consideration of the human being is scrutinised.

Keywords

• environment
• ecofeminism
• écoféminisme
• lexicology
• linguistics
• french
• french language
• sociology