The Concept of Sustainability in the Context of the English-speaking
Educational Discourse
Tetyana Kozlova
a
English Philology Department, Zaporizhzhia National University, 66, Zukovsky Street, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine
Keywords: Sustainability, Educational Discourse, Concept, Conceptual Metaphor.
Abstract: The study touches upon the issues of a sustainable education targeted at the balance between nature and
civilization as well as society and its individuals. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that sustainability
has become one of the key concepts in transdisciplinary academic discourse carried out in English, and to
examine the language with the help of which the concept of sustainability is approached in recent publications
on education. It is hypothesized that today’s reorientation to sustainable education has necessitated the
meeting point of educational and ecological discourses to tackle modern umbrella concepts and issues of
sustainable development, its challenges, opportunities, and strategies. The findings about communicative
means, tools and strategies preferred for verbalization of the sustainable education concept reveal
transformations in modern education processes, its participants, design, conditions, and outcomes. The
analysis of academic discourse on sustainable education sheds light on the rhetorical repertoire of
sustainability, relevance of future strategies in education implemented to converge ecological and professional
competence, social awareness and individuals’ experience.
1 INTRODUCTION
The planet-scale changes taking place in the twenty-
first century have made the humanity raise for
challenge in various aspects of life. Climate change
and natural disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic,
economic and political unrest, environmental
problems are the issues to battle today. Solving these
and other contemporary problems calls for radical
steps directed at sustainability of life on Earth.
However, contemporary society does not simply have
to deal with damages and governance, it has to design
and integrate a number of complex activities in order
to provide a sustainable social development targeted
at the balance between nature and civilization as well
as the whole society and its individuals. This can be
realized by managing the key issues of the modern
world: transformation, digitalisation and
sustainability (Szelągowska and Pluta-Zaremba,
2021).
The capacity to endure is an ongoing discussion
through environmental, technical, economic,
political, educational, cultural, and health domains of
the post-modern society. Various disciplinary
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5879-6054
theories and practices follow ecological models in
search for continuous living. Operating within an
ecological perspective, they produce a constellation
of paradigms in response to contemporary problems.
That requires the use of a distinctive language for
special purposes in parallel to the environmental
parlance favoured for its
actuality and clarity. The
environmental language has become pervasive in
today’s discourse due to its ability to integrate
specialized knowledge and make it transparent for the
audience (Norton, 2002).
The topicality of this research is determined by a
set of factors influencing sustainable development.
Firstly, sustainable development is connected to
ecological balance and social well-being (Massotte
and Corsi, 2015). Secondly, sustainability has
become synonymous to the integrity of
environmental and social aspects of life (Voigt, 2008,
p. 36), including education (Corcoran & Wals, 2004)
and communication (Weder et al., 2021). Thirdly,
sustainability is significant in education for its
effectiveness and value in realizing particular
initiatives in responding to nowadays requirements
(Easter et al., 2021), combining creativity and
Kozlova, T.
The Concept of Sustainability in the Context of the English-speaking Educational Discourse.
DOI: 10.5220/0011366200003350
In Proceedings of the 5th International Scientific Congress Society of Ambient Intelligence (ISC SAI 2022) - Sustainable Development and Global Climate Change, pages 507-515
ISBN: 978-989-758-600-2
Copyright
c
2022 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
507
efficiency in implementing new ideas, introducing
progressive methods and practices into various
disciplines or institutional activities (Cullingford and
Blewitt, 2013), providing transition in education
towards continuous use of the external source of
knowledge and its implementation in educational
courses (Corazza, 2020).
The purpose of this paper is manifold. Firstly, it
intends to demonstrate that sustainability is one of the
key concepts in transdisciplinary academic discourse
carried out in English, the global lingua franca.
Secondly, the study examines how the concept of
sustainability is approached in education and how it
is reflected in recent relevant publications in English.
The findings about communicative means, tools
and strategies preferred for verbalization of the
sustainable education concept will reveal
transformation processes in modern education, its
participants, design, conditions, and outcomes. The
analysis of academic discourse on sustainable
education will shed light on the rhetorical repertoire
of sustainability, relevance of future strategies in
education implemented to converge professional
competence, social awareness and individuals’
experience.
In retrospect, the studies with a focus on
educational discourse were carried out to discover
and explain persuasive strategies in education
(Edwards et al., 2004); advantages and disadvantages
of embedding of a disciplinary discourse, such as a
political one, in education for democracy and other
courses (Schriewer, 2009); the challenges of inter-
disciplinary dialogue in academic discourse,
specialization codes, interpretation of dominant
values, and building a pedagogic metalanguage
(Martin, 2020). Another perspective considered
selected aspects and functioning of education as a
complex, multi-faceted system comprising various
disciplines (Surina, 2014) or highlighted various
cultural practices and effects of their implementation
in education (Luke, 2019). However, most recent
studies are trying to look into neoliberal articulation
of EU governance and its influence on new modes of
regulating educational policies and translating ideas
at national levels (Sardoč, 2021).
The new agenda in educational studies is to
address the metalanguage of the incentive paradigm
shift and to elucidate the ecomodelling in the theory
of education and other academic fields.
It is hypothesized that today’s reorientation to
sustainable education calls for the convergence of
educational and ecological discourse to tackle
modern umbrella concepts and issues of sustainable
development, its challenges, opportunities, and
strategies.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 deals
with the methodology principles, description of
material and research procedure. Section 3
demonstrates the actuality and interdisciplinary
character of the ecological perspective in
contemporary scientific studies. It also discusses the
importance of the concept of sustainability to various
academic discourses including educational one,
describes how the concept of sustainable education is
framed and manifests itself.
2 METHODOLOGY AND
RESEARCH PROCEDURE
The methodology of this research is based on several
principles. The first one is the philosophical principle
of alienation between the world, that is the object of
cognition, and the human, that is the subject of
cognition. Although science is a dynamic system of
organized knowledge, it has always proceeded from
the unbroken principle of establishing connections
between the world or what is known about it, and
those who discover knowledge. Since antiquity it has
been recognized that the human knower is inseparable
from the complex environment that is being cognized,
and in which cognizers are important constituents
(Salmon, 2005).
The recognition of the complexity of alienation
between the subject and object of knowledge has
brought to the shift in postmodern science towards
interdisciplinarity and involvement of an ecological
perspective, rethinking ecology autonomy,
appreciating values of nature, hence, revising the
environment we live in and try to save in order to
sustain. Thus, the second principle of this research is
the ecological principle of sustainability.
The third principle is the expressibility principle.
It deals with the antinomy between the necessity to
transmit the encoded knowledge and the possibility to
express it adequately. On the one hand, there is
nothing in our thought that cannot be verbalized
(Kannetzky, 2002; Searl, 2007). On the other hand,
language is to some extent is limited in its means of
expression. That is why we largely rely upon
metaphors to explain some basic ideas (Burbules,
2017; Kazepides, 2010). Assumed that metaphors are
significant for scientific reasoning (Jensen, 2006) in
general, we suggest that this cognitive tool can be
successfully employed in educational discourse.
The fourth principle is the principle of the
conceptual dominants, that is various spheres of
communication attracting particular concepts, on
ISC SAI 2022 - V International Scientific Congress SOCIETY OF AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
508
which communication is focused. In today’s
educational discourse, these are represented by such
traditional concepts as “Education”, “Teacher”,
“Learner”, “Knowledge”, etc., as well as by newly
introduced concepts of “Intercultural learning”
(Kearney, 2015), “Dialogical education” (Bronwyn,
Corsan, 2013), “Special education” and
“Interdisciplinary team” (Manor-Binyamini, 2014),
“Inclusivity” (Rensburg and O'Neill, 2020) to name
but a few. In the last decade special significance is
given to the concept of “Sustainability” (“Sustainable
development”, “Sustainable Education” (Sustainable,
2019)). In spite of the novelty of this concept and
active polemic on that education and learning should
take more account on sustainability, the literature has
not discussed the language with the help of which the
concept of sustainability is approached. To do it, we
designed our research procedure in several stages.
First, the method of sampling was applied to
select extracts containing the lexeme sustainability
and/or its derivatives in the texts relating to
educational discourse. The material included 250
textual fragments obtained from monographs,
scientific articles, manuals and other works relating
to the issues of sustainable education and published
in the last decade.
Second, the contextual analysis was applied to
distinguish the occurrences of the lexeme
sustainability and its derivatives in order to find out
their semantic features and functions shaped by the
immediate environment.
Third, the collected data were systematized
according to the type of information they contained
about the frame structure of the concept “Sustainable
education”. The term frame is understood as a
schematized knowledge, or a knowledge structure
including elements from various cognitive domains
associated with the linguistic unit/s (Dirven, Frank,
and Ilie, 2001, p. 1). In this study, these are the words
sustainability and sustainable combined with
education or educational.
Fourth, structural and distributive analyses were
applied to linguistic means that verbalize the concept
of sustainable education in contemporary English-
speaking discourse. This stage of the research enabled
us to reveal the language means preferred to describe
the current situation in education, its reanalysis and
values.
The metaphoric representations of the concept
“Sustainable education” shed light on the indirect
means of sustainability interpretation, its encoding in
education discourse. Understanding cognitive
metaphors of “Sustainable education” will help to
explore how firmly this concept is established as a
central topic within educational sphere and how
mental-imagery shapes the activation of the concept.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1 Ecological Approach as the Lead in
Postmodern Science
The fact that ecological approach to various issues
has become one of the leads in postmodern science is
evidenced by the pervasiveness of ecometaphors
employed in many spheres of academic
communication. Let us provide just a few examples.
Business discourse favours, for example, business
ecology, ecology of commerce, or alien species
invasion. The field of technology is frequented by
environmental information. Political studies make
use of green ideology while philosophers speak in
terms of ecological thought. Ecometaphors have
penetrated fashion (clothing recycling), social studies
(ecofeminism), linguistics (language vitality), and
education (ecosystem “curriculum” (Weaver-
Hightower, 2008)). It should be mentioned that
ecometaphor is not a simple decorative infringement
that interferes languages for special purposes in order
to strengthen the argumentative and persuasive
effects of scholarly debates. Ecometaphor is so
noticeable in different academic spheres because it is
used as a powerful cognitive tool in approaching
today’s acute issues.
Ecological metaphor signifies the end of the era of
the human dominance and the conquest of nature. It
marks a change towards creating an ecologically
friendly world, its modernization for better social
sustainability and global ecology improvement. The
creation and dealing with that new reality from an
ecological perspective means developing a dialogue
between science and environment, synthesis of
nature, society and its individuals through
creationism, developing new humanistic attitudes,
strengthening of goodness and sustainable lifestyle.
3.2 The Interdisciplinary Character of
the Sustainability Concept
An ecological focus raises a question of sustainability
in institutionalized discourses. It is widely recognized
that the notion of sustainability allows variant
interpretations. Across disciplines, sustainability has
become an umbrella term to refer to development,
growth (economical, technological, intellectual,
experiential, etc.), or continuous well-being
(Caldwell, 1998): “Our future does not depend on the
The Concept of Sustainability in the Context of the English-speaking Educational Discourse
509
preservation of original nature, but on the
preservation of anthropogenic ecosystems … and
productive environment. … constant constructive
interventions, [making] the environment a productive
resource …[that] will enable us to continue on the
road of economic growth and to ensure the constant
increase of welfare” (Renn, 2012).
The concept of sustainability is well integrated in
management education (Amaeshi, 2019), teaching
about earth and environment (Gosselin, 2018), food
and agriculture fields (Christen, 2010),
communication (Godemann and Michelsen, 2011),
medicine (Acton, 2013), discussing educational
structures and practices (Martin, 2010). Irrespectively
of the field, the term sustainability is applied to tackle
the matters of maximum utility from minimum of
resources, interactions of variables, cost-
effectiveness, or long-term effectiveness of measures,
projects or approaches.
According to the experts, “… it is crucial that
education for sustainability leads in a deeply engaged
interdisciplinarity, which explicates the skills and
practices enabling academics and graduates to work
meaningfully with colleagues both within and from
other intellectual fields. Education for
sustainability is undeniably an interdisciplinary field,
characterized by many different epistemologies and
preferred methods and pedagogies. Equally it has
characteristics which may increasingly be described
as disciplinary, in terms of how elements function and
what they reveal” (Davies, Devlin and Tight, 2010,
p. 227).
3.3 The Concept of Sustainable
Education
In educational discourse the concept of sustainability
is manifested as a manifold notion expressed with the
help of word combinations: sustainable education,
education for sustainable development, sustainability
education plan, sustainable education model,
education for sustainable lifestyle, learning for
sustainability. The absence of the one-word naming
proves the complexity of notion and the necessity of
longer, hence more elaborate, structures to refer to the
concept. The naming is built according to a wide
range of patterns: combinations of the adjective
sustainable with nouns directly or indirectly referring
to the concept (sustainable education, sustainable
learning, sustainable teaching, sustainable training);
combinations of nouns with nouns (sustainability
education plan); prepositional of-phrases
(sustainability of education); prepositional for-
phrases (learning for sustainability, education for
sustainable lifestyle). Such a variety of structures
reflects the manifold nature of the conceptualized
idea.
The name of the concept consisting of the
adjective sustainable combined with the noun
education expresses the qualifying conceptual
feature. By establishing subordinative relations
between the initial adjectival component and the head
noun-member of the language structure, speakers
condense the information about the type of
“education which is leading to continuous well-
being” or “education for continuous well-being”. This
type of structure is extremely common in academic
prose on education. Although it is difficult to predict
the possible re-phrasing, it is always certain that the
structure expresses the idea of education leading to
the achievement of some goal. Thus, sustainability is
conceptualized as a goal encouraging changes to meet
increasing environmental changes.
The names composed of noun + noun sequences
also represent information densely and rely on the
implicit meaning expressed by the premodifying
nound and the head. Such is sustainability education
which can be extended to sustainability education
plan, etc. by adding head components and shifting the
conceptual focus. Nevertheless, the semantic
relations between the modifying noun sustainability
and the noun education remains transparent for
decoding. In fact, such noun + noun sequence is used
to express “purpose” (noun 2 education is for the
purpose of noun 1 sustainability). For instance:in
their study for sustainability education, Wals and
Jickling …, suggest [that] because decisions about
sustainability ultimately rest on different interests
and values the concept needs to be openly challenged,
negotiated and discussed rather than [avoided by]
masking its complexity under a seemingly ‘shallow
consensus’” (Rogers, 2016, p. 221).
The prepositional of-phrases (sustainability of
education) and prepositional for-phrases (education
for sustainability) can be described as the naming
with post-modifiers. These types are widely used in
academic literature concerning the topic under
discussion. Obviously, it is so, because such
structures are generally more common in academic
prose than corresponding relative clauses. Not only
do they allow a very dense packaging of the
conceptualized idea. They also represent the
identification feature of the concept, make it
recognizable for interlocutors. For instance:
“… education for sustainability needs to do more
than focus on the cognitive domain of learning and
the development of skills or the psychomotor realm –
to engage with in particular effective realm(ibid.).
As is clear from the given context, they are
sustainable values, belief, attitudes and behaviours
that matter. Thus, the aim of sustainable education is
to engage and enable learners to enact tools and
ISC SAI 2022 - V International Scientific Congress SOCIETY OF AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
510
principles for the prospective societal transformation
(ibid).
More extended structures manifest other
constituents of the concept “Sustainability as it is
framed in educational discourse. For example, the
phrase education for sustainable development entails
subjects (in other terms, actors or participants) of the
situation: Does this form of education for
sustainable development ensure a sufficiently radical
reappraisal of the function and purpose of schools to
help people build a personal and social capability so
that, as lifelong learners, they are able to manage the
tensions that arise between their own needs, those of
others and critically, the needs of the planet?
(Clarke, 2013). This and other contexts, which were
selected and analysed in this study, show that the
participants involved into the process of sustainability
education are to realize their good intentions, respond
to conceptual and pedagogical shifts with the purpose
of responsible treatment of resources and
advancement of sustainable development.
Despite the fact that various structures are applied
synonymously, they should be distinguished for their
semantic features. The concept encoding has an
iconic nature in the sense that a more compact
structure carries more informational scope and less
content. In contrast, a more extended structure, is
opted for less informational scope but more content.
For instance, the term sustainable education implies
the whole paradigm change involving ecological and
humanistic values. To the contrary, the term
education for sustainable development occupies a
tiny niche leaving the whole paradigm unchanged
(Páll, 2021).
To sum, the frame of sustainability in educational
discourse is maintained by the intentional concept
including the following constituents: sustainability
(purpose/intention); learners, educators (agents);
challenge, negotiation, discussion, integration
(actions and behaviours to exercise for achieving the
goal of continuous well-being); creativity, capability,
interest and value (skills and tools employed to
achieve the goal of continuous well-being).
As to the evaluative aspect of the sustainability
concept, it should be noted that it is highly
appreciated in educational discourse and is placed
among the discursive values: practices we see
fundamental to effective sustainability education
(Hunter, April and Hill, 2018); We suggest this
[education for sustainability] offers fertile
opportunity for students to cultivate the skills,
dispositions, and motivation to make change happen
(ibid.).
The evaluative component reveals how
interlocutors make judgements about the concept, to
what degree they like or dislike it, how their
judgements agree with their expectations and self-
esteem. The results of the contextual analysis showed
that both adjacent and distanced language units can
be used as the evaluation indicators. The proof can be
found in the following quote: “… the role of
interdisciplinary knowledge in education for
sustainability cannot be overstated; sustainable
futures can only be enabled by a concerted
engagement across all disciplines, both in terms of
response to and amelioration of current challenges.
Thus, we will educate for a world in which we are
preventative and viable in our social, economic, and
ecological arrangement(Davies, Devlin and Tight,
2010).
Firstly, the names of the concept, such as
sustainable futures and education for sustainability,
occur together resulting in nominative condensation.
This tool appears to be efficient in enhancing a
positive charge of the concept.
Secondly, the names of the concept occur in
speech together with the positively charged
vocabulary. Such indicators, which can be regarded
as contextual evaluative cues, break into two
subgroups. The first subgroup of cues, which are
contextually close to the expressions referring to the
concept, include words with inherent positive
connotations. These cues contain positive semantic
elements in their meanings and thus evoke good and
approving associations, demonstrating that
interlocutors experience good feelings about the idea
of sustainability: (not) to overstate “(not) to describe
or interpret something in a way that turns to be more
important and serious that it really is”, concerted
“planned, arranged and performed together for a
shared purpose; a kind of an effort that is determined
and very serious”, amelioration “making bad or
unpleasant situation better”, viableable to work as
intended or to succeed”.
The second subgroup of cues, which are
contextually close to the names of the concept,
include words with adherent positive connotations.
These cues do not explicate positive associations,
they rather imply them. It happens due to the fact that
words with adherent positive colouring acquire it
through the context. In other words, they are neutral
lexical units which may become positively charged in
speech depending on the communicative situation
and linguistic environments in which they are used:
preventative “intended to stop something before it
happens” > “intended to stop something harmful
before it happens”, engagement “the fact of being
The Concept of Sustainability in the Context of the English-speaking Educational Discourse
511
involved” > “the fact of being interested”, challenge
“a situation that needs a great mental or physical
effort in order to be done successfully” > “enjoyable
difficulty”, response “an answer; something said or
done as a reaction” > “something said or done as a
positive reaction to positive stimuli”.
In the evaluative terms of a new ecological
paradigm, sustainability is described as A worldview
representing positive attitudes toward the
environment” (Karrow and DiGiuseppe, 2020).
Sustainability of education is in the same rank as
the key human values of postmodernity: sustainable
happiness… contributes to individual, community, or
global well-being…and the environment (ibid.),
sustainable development … as an ethic of solidarity,
equality, and mutual respect among people,
countries, cultures, and generations … in harmony
(ibid.).
3.4 Metaphoric Representation of
Sustainability in Education
Discourse
It is important to discuss conceptual metaphors that
manifest the concept of sustainability in educational
discourse, because they serve as a bridge to
understanding educational context that is shaped by
particular social environment in which they evolve.
In addition to that, conceptual metaphors are
expressed by means of language units employed both
in their direct and indirect meanings, hence provide
information on the rhetorical value of the discourse
engaging the concept.
Unexpectedly, conceptual metaphors engaged in
educational discourse to represent the concept of
sustainability are very few. We suggest that it might
be attributed to the complexity of the environmental
nature of the concept, that is its alienation with so
many things that raise the concept to the level of
abstraction (the conditions that humans exist, live and
work in, as well as influence to improve them and act
more effectively).
According to the results of our research, the key
conceptual metaphor employed to manifest the
concept is the metaphor of the container. It is a kind
of ontological metaphor based on spatial relations of
“having the inside and the outside of something”. The
container metaphor is recognised by cognitive
linguists as one of the most significant and deeply
engraved metaphors (Alejo, 2010).
The metaphorical thought of speakers is
embodied in expressions realizing orientational
relations (“educational dimensions of human nature
(Kazepides, 2010)):
on under, where sustainability is represented as
a cover of something or the basis for something
(“practices of sustainability and sustainable
development on various academic disciplines,
institutional practices, fields of study and methods of
enquiry(Cullingford and Blewitt, 2013); how the
concept of change underpins quality … education by
acknowledging the commonplace perceptions of the
arts in society … This leads us to rationale for why an
integration of sustainability and … education makes
good educational sense” (Hunter, April and Hill,
2018);
in out, where sustainability is represented as a
source of something (“integrated in … sustainability
(Weder, Krainer and Karmasin, 2021);
sustainability learning outcomes (Armon,
Scoffham and Armon, 2020); A future that is big
enough for all of us – animals in sustainability
education(ibid));
from – to, where sustainability is represented as
destination (“learning from traditional wisdom”,
sustainability education from an indigenous
knowledge) (ibid);acquiring knowledge about
sustainability – measuring and evaluating the
performance to and away from sustainability
(Rogers, 2013, p. 222)).
Another metaphor, used to express the concept of
sustainability in education, is linked to the ideas of the
container and space. It builds on the orientational
image-schema and adds to it. The following example
is a vivid evidence to the representation of
sustainability as the opening whole: a focus on a
form of ecological consciousness that unites cognitive
affective, imaginative, and spiritual perspectives.
While the term “comprehensive sustainability
education” is used … to denote a relational, holistic,
participatory, and systemic approach, other terms
have evolved to describe related educational
practices (Armon, Scoffham and Armon, 2020);
educators co-engage farmers in learning (ibid.).
At the same time educational discourse
communicates on sustainability as a turning point, a
border line, or a transition, conveying the idea of a
positive change that leads to the creation of a new
personality (“sustainability education: transition or
transformation” (ibid.)).
This idea is supported by the image of a bridge
allowing people an easier change from one state or
situation to another: “…‘bridge at the edge of the
world’ … that will save humanity… What part will
schools play in helping people… take the path
towards this bridge?(Armon, Scoffham and Armon,
2020), integrative approaches to sustainable
development”, making the links” (Filho et al., 2015),
ISC SAI 2022 - V International Scientific Congress SOCIETY OF AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
512
focus on sustainability but within cross-cultural,
national, and geographical borders … underpinnings
of diverse opinions” (ibid., p. 9).
Sustainability in education is actualized as a
continuity, a link, or a connecting part. This image
prevails in the contexts discussing the relevance of
interdisciplinarity, integration, inclusivity and
engagement in learning: to capture students’ views
and attitudes towards sustainability issues”,
allowing experiential integration of knowledge”, “...
learning for sustainability… students’ ability to
engage in the classroom” (ibid., p. 8).
In similar fashion, sustainability in education is
discussed in terms of communication, revealing the
necessity of interactivity and a dialogue between the
agents: sustainable development, and intercultural
dialogue through education, science, culture
(Karrow and DiGiuseppe, 2020), promote dialogue
among cultures and peoples (ibid., p. 324). We
cannot do more, but agree that “nothing will improve
our schools and our society more than rich and
genuine dialogue” (Kazepides, 2010). The metaphor
of connection is realized with the help of
metalanguage: dialoguetalk between groups,
societies, etc.”, to address “to give attention or deal
with somebody or something; to speak or write to
someone”, voice “the sound that are made when
people speak”, etc.
For instance, in forward-thinking dialogue about
how teachers might best address issues of
sustainability in their teaching (Hunter, April and
Hill, 2018); starting with new voices and diverse
insights: better futures begin now” (ibid., p. 80); “but
hear the river speaking of a different way of
knowledging / being. This vision for sustainability
education is riverspeaking…” (Corcoran, Weakland
and Wals, 2017).
With the help of conceptual metaphors, our
thinking and communication becomes more efficient
as we can easier distinguish things from one another,
describe our new experience by referring to
something that we know well.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The findings supported the hypothesis that the
concept of sustainability has developed as a cognitive
response of speakers to profound changes in the
postmodern era. The challenging circumstances, risks
posed by global disasters to human existence,
necessitated a revision of our environment and how
we deal with it.
For this reason, we are witnessing integration of
sciences, theory and practice, needs of nature and
civilization, the whole society and its members. In the
challenge calling for change, environmental
discourse is merging with education to produce an
ecometaphor which helps to communicate across
various sciences and fields.
The findings about communicative means, tools
and strategies preferred for verbalization of the
sustainable education revealed transformations in
modern education towards interdisciplinary
approach, cooperation of individuals, creativity,
critical thinking and exchange of knowledge. Doing
so, we provide the higher standards of continuous
existence, maximize environmental and humanistic
values, approaching the new standards of continuous
well-being.
REFERENCES
Acton, Q. A. (Ed.), 2013. Issues in Dermatology and
Cosmetic Medicine: 2013 Edition, Scholarly Editions.
Atlanta, Georgia.
Alejo, R., 2010. Where does the money go? An analysis of
the container metaphor in economics: The market and
the economy. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(4), 1137-1150.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.08.013
Amaeshi, K., Muthuri, J. N., and Ogbechie, Ch. (Eds.),
2019. Incorporating Sustainability in Management
Education: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Springer.
Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98125-3
Armon, J., Scoffham, S. and Armon, Ch. (Eds.), 2020.
Prioritizing Sustainability Education: A
Comprehensive Approach, Routledge. New York.
Bronwyn D., P. and Corson, P. (Eds.),·2013. Oral
Discourse and Education, Springer Science+Business
Media. Toronto. doi 10.100/7978-94-011-4417-9.
Burbules, N. C., 2017. Wittgenstein’s Metaphors and His
Pedagogical Philosophy. In Peters, M. and
Stickney, J. (Eds.). A Companion to Wittgenstein on
Education, Springer. Singapore.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3136-6
Christen, O., Squires, V., Lal, R. and Hudson, R., 2010.
Interdisciplinary and Sustainability Issues in Food and
Agriculture, EOLSS Publications.
Clarke, P., 2013. Education for Sustainability: Becoming
Naturally Smart, Routledge. New York.
Corazza, L., 2020. Sustainability education for future
managers. An autoethnographic research experience
on transformational learning, Giappichelli. Torino.
Corcoran, P. B. and Wals, A. E. J. (Eds.), 2004. Higher
Education and the Challenge of
Sustainability: Problematics, Promise, and Practice,
Springer Science & Business Media. Amsterdam. doi
10.1007/978-0-306-48515-2
The Concept of Sustainability in the Context of the English-speaking Educational Discourse
513
Corcoran, P. B., Weakland, J. P. and Wals, E. J. (Eds.),
2017. Envisioning Futures for Environmental and
Sustainability Education, Wageningen Academic
Publishers. Amsterdam.
Cullingford, C. and Blewitt, J. (Eds.), 2013. The
Sustainability Curriculum: The Challenge for Higher
Education, Earthscan. London.
Davies, M., Devlin, M. and Tight, M., 2010.
Interdisciplinary Higher Education: Perspectives and
Practicalities, Emerald. Bingley.
Devon, J., 2006. Metaphors as a Bridge to Understanding
Educational and Social Contexts. International Journal
of Qualitative Methods, 5(1), 36-54.
Dirven, R., Frank, R. and Ilie, C. (Eds.), 2001. Language
and Ideology, Vol. 2. Descriptive cognitive approaches,
John Benjamins. Amsterdam.
Easter, S., Cuelemans, K. and Kelly, D. (2021). Bridging
Research-Practice Tensions: Exploring Day-to-Day
Engaged Scholarship Investigating Sustainable
Development Challenges. European Management
Review, 18(2), 9-23.
https://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12443
Edwards, R., Nicoll, K., Solomon, N., and Usher, R., 2004.
Rhetoric and Educational Discourse: Persuasive Texts,
Routledge. London, New York.
Filho, W. L., Brandli, L., Kuznetsova, O. and Paço, A.,
2015. Integrative Approaches to Sustainable
Development at University Level. Making the Links,
Springer. New York. doi 10.1007/978-3-319-10690-8
Godemann, J. and Michelsen, G. (Eds.), 2011.
Sustainability Communication: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives and Theoretical Foundation, Springer.
London, New York. https://doi.org/101007/978-94-
007-16971
Gosselin, D. C., Egger, A. E. and Taber, J. J., 2018.
Interdisciplinary Teaching About Earth and the
Environment for a Sustainable Future, Springer. Cham.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03273-9
Hunter, M. A., April, A. and Hill, A., 2018. Education, Arts
and Sustainability: Emerging Practice for a Changing
World, Springer. Singapore.
https://doi.org./10.1007/978-981-107710-4
Idowu, S. O., Vries, H. J. de, Mijatovic, I. and Choi, Ch.
(Eds.), 2019. Sustainable Development: Knowledge
and Education About Standardisation, Springer. Cham.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28715-3
Kannetzky, F., 2002. Expressibility, Explicability, and
Taxonomy. In Grewendorf, G. and Meggle, G.
(Eds.). Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality.
Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, Springer.
Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-
0589-0-5
Karrow, D. D. and DiGiuseppe, M., 2020. Environmental
and Sustainability Education in Teacher, Springer.
Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-3-030-25016-
4.
Kazepides, T., 2010. Education as dialogue: Its
prerequisites and its enemies, McGill-Queens
University Press. Montreal.
Kearney, E., 2015. Intercultural Learning in Modern
Language Education: Expanding Meaning-Making
Potentials, Multilingual Matters. Bristol.
Lemons, J., Westra, L. and Goodland, R. (Eds.), 1998.
Ecological Sustainability and Integrity: Concepts and
Approaches, Springer. Dordrecht.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1337-5
Luke, A., 2019. Educational Policy, Narrative and
Discourse, Routledge. New York.
Manor-Binyamini, I., 2014. Language and Discourse in
Special Education: Understanding Ethnographic
Interdisciplinary Team Culture, Springer. Haifa.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09024-5
Martin, J. R., Maton, K. and Doran, Y. J., 2020. Accessing
Academic Discourse: Systemic Functional Linguistics
and Legitimation Code Theory, Routledge. New York.
Massotte, P. and Corsi, P., 2015. Sustainability
Calling: Underpinning Technologies, ISTE. London.
Norton, B., 2002. Searching for
Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Essays in the
Philosophy of Conservation Biology, Cambridge
University Press. Cambridge.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613821
Páll, J. et al., 2021. Mapping Education for Sustainability
in the Nordic Countries, Nordic Council of Ministers.
Copenhagen.
Renn, O., 2012. Sustainability: The need for societal
discourse. In Reichel, A. and Bauer, J. (Eds.). Civil
Society for Sustainability, EHV. Bremen.
Rensburg, H. van and O'Neill, Sh., 2020. Inclusive Theory
and Practice in Special Education, IGI Global.
Hershey.
Rogers, J., 2016. Sustainability and Performativity. In
Davim, J. P. and Filho, L.H. (Eds.). Challenges in
Higher Education for Sustainability, Springer. New
York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23705-3
Salmon, J. F., 2005. Frederick Ferré’s Epistemic Norms
Interpret Evolution. In Nature, Truth, and
Value: Exploring the Thinking of Frederick Ferré,
Lexington Books. Lanham.
Sardoč, M. (Ed.), 2021. The Impacts of Neoliberal
Discourse and Language in Education: Critical
Perspectives on a Rhetoric of Equality, Well-Being, and
Justice, Routledge. New York.
Schriewer, J., 2009. Discourse Formation in Comparative
Education, Peter Lang. Frankfurt am Mein.
Searle, J., 2007. Philosophy of Language: an interview with
John Searle. ReVEL, 5(8).
http://www.revel.inf.br/files/entrevistas/revel_8_interv
iew_john_searle.pdf
Shurina, I., 2014. Dilemmas of the Modern Educational
Discourse, LIT Verlag Münster. Vienna.
Szelągowska, A. and Pluta-Zaremba, A. (Eds.), 2021. The
Economics of Sustainable Transformation, Routledge.
New York. doi: 10.4324/9781003219958
Voigt, Ch., 2008. Sustainable Development as a Principle
of International Law: Resolving Conflicts between
Climate Measures and WTO Law, BRILL. Leiden,
Boston.
ISC SAI 2022 - V International Scientific Congress SOCIETY OF AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
514
Weaver-Hightower, M. B., 2008. An Ecology Metaphor for
Educational Policy Analysis: A Call to Complexity.
Educational researcher, 37(3), 153-167.
Weder, F., Krainer, L. and Karmasin, M. (Eds.), 2021. The
Sustainability Communication Reader: A Reflective
Compendium, Springer. Wiesbaden.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31883-3
The Concept of Sustainability in the Context of the English-speaking Educational Discourse
515