Open AccessDECOUPLING AS RHETORICAL STRATEGY IN GOOGLE’S GREEN DISCOURSE
Author(s) -
Rianne Riemens
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12026
Subject(s) - rhetorical question , narrative , decoupling (probability) , capitalism , sociology , humanity , environmental ethics , political science , law and economics , political economy , law , politics , engineering , philosophy , linguistics , control engineering
This paper examines Google’s green discourse in relation to theecomodernist movement and $2 . In recent years, tech companies such as Google have taken amore explicit position as actors in the ‘fight’ against the climate crisis. Tech companiesoften suggest technological innovation as a necessity to deal with the climate crisis,thereby attempting to develop a form of ‘green platform capitalism’ that presents us with abetter, greener version of its business model. This paper presents a rhetorical analysis ofa selection of the corporate discourse (2019-now) in which Google presents its environmentalefforts, in order to understand how the company frames the relation between technology andnature. It argues that technology-nature relations are framed through ‘decoupling’, a termderived from the ecomodernist movement that functions as a rhetorical strategy to highlightpositive connections between technology and nature and obscure uneasy connections. Throughdecoupling, Google is able to present its wish to save ‘nature’ without discussing its useof nature, thus legitimating green platform capitalism. Decoupling, the paper concludes,thus allows Google to create a narrative of green growth as the only logical way forhumanity to move forward. While this narrative might be attractive, it does not question thefeasibility of decoupling and conflicts with resolutions that centralize degrowth as answerto the climate crisis.