Multimodality in environmental discourses: on the framing of meat production and consumption

In times of climate change and threatened biodiversity, the meat industry is under pressure: cattle farming produces methane gas and factory farming has a negative impact on biodiversity. Meat-producing companies are confronted with the need to rethink their processes and products in terms of their impact on the environment and to adapt their external communication to changing consumer behaviour; a framing of sustainability and animal welfare seems indispensable, and this must take place not only verbally, but also visually and acoustically. Studies in the field of ecolinguistics traditionally place a clear focus on the analysis of language, metaphors and images. Analyses of the interplay of modes are a research desideratum. Against the background of the omnipresence of the sustainability discourse in a wide variety of media, the state of research thus only selectively reflects the actual use of multimodality in environmental discourse. Using the example of communication under the label La-Viande.fr (Group INTERBEV, Association Nationale Interprofessionelle du Bétail et des Viandes ), the aim of the present study is to explore the following questions: How does the interest group frame meat production and consumption? How do the modes interplay to contribute to this framing?