Space in Fire: A Green Applied Linguistic Approach to Contemporary Fiction on Space and Environment: 'A Wrinkle in Time' and 'Selena' as Cultural Data Sources

Fazila Derya Agis, University of the People

This study will focus on and compare the environmental and metaphorical vocabulary developed in an American movie and a Turkish television series related to humans who go to new planets in order to bring goodness to the world for winning the evil within the framework of ecological semiotics and discourse analysis. The movie is based on L’Engle’s (1962) fiction entitled “A Wrinkle in Time”: Lee, Jennifer and Stockwell, Jeff (screen writers). (2018). A Wrinkle in Time. Burbank, CA : Buena Vista Home Entertainment. The series is the following: Yenidogan, Nilüfer; Akarsu, Istiklal; Karagülle, Gökhan; Müjde, Gani; Solmaz, Fatih; Aybek, Özbek (screen writers). 2006. Selena (104 parts). Istanbul: Süreç Film. In both of these works, flowers, trees, leaves, grass, soil, and several other inanimate and animate objects, including plants and animals appear as metaphors; in the movie, a new term is coined: “tessering” allows humans to unite with nature and travel to different places, whereas in the series, Utopia is a place where every evil is terminated through the force of nature. This study aims at deciphering the metaphorical ecological dystopias and utopias in both works, which refer to the importance of environmental activism, ecology, biology, and geosemiotics. The dialogues between humans and non-humans (plants and animals) allude to the importance of nature in solving many problems humans may face, including finding relatives who get lost, scientific advancement, psychological relief, and magic help in difficult situations, such as winning the evil, when one is faced with false accusations and racism. Both works will be analyzed in terms of Arran Stibbe’s (2014) ecolinguistic approach to discourse analysis.

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 Presented in Session 161. “Minor” Literature