Green universities as linguistic landscapes: Mapping sustainability discourse and environmental identity in Saudi Higher Education
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article examines the green university as a linguistic landscape: a place where sustainability is not only engineered through buildings, waste systems, transport plans, laboratories, and curricula, but also narrated through public language. In Saudi higher education, sustainability discourse has acquired new visibility through Vision 2030, the Saudi Green Initiative, university internationalization, and the growing expectation that campuses contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet the everyday semiotic life of these institutions - the signs, posters, digital screens, recycling labels, corridor messages, garden plaques, bilingual wayfinding systems, campaign slogans, and student-made notices through which sustainability becomes visible - remains underexamined in linguistics. The article proposes a framework for mapping sustainability discourse and environmental identity in Saudi university campuses by bringing together linguistic landscape studies, ecolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, multimodal semiotics, and environmental identity theory. Rather than claiming fabricated field results, it offers a research design and analytic model that can be applied to Saudi campuses across institutional types and regions. The central argument is that green universities should be studied as semiotic ecologies in which Arabic and English, official and student voices, global and local environmental frames, and material placement all participate in the construction of environmental responsibility. The proposed framework asks not only what languages appear on campus signs, but what kinds of environmental subjects they invite students and staff to become: compliant users, responsible citizens, global scholars, innovators, volunteers, or stewards of place. The article concludes by outlining theoretical contributions for linguistic landscape research and practical implications for sustainability communication in Saudi higher education.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This open-access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
How to Cite
Share
References
Alexander, R., & Stibbe, A. (2014). From the analysis of ecological discourse to the ecological analysis of discourse. Language Sciences, 41, 104-110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.08.011
Almaghlouth, S. (2022). Environmental sustainability in the online media discourses of Saudi Arabia: A corpus-based study of keyness, intertextuality, and interdiscursivity. PLOS ONE, 17(11), e0277253. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277253
Alshammari, A. (2025). Assessing campus sustainability in Saudi universities: Faculty perspectives and institutional challenges-a case study of three leading universities. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, 1398. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05768-x
Backhaus, P. (2007). Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo. Multilingual Matters.
Bataeineh, M., & Aga, O. (2022). Integrating sustainability into higher education curricula: Saudi Vision 2030. Emerald Open Research, 4, 19. https://doi.org/10.35241/emeraldopenres.14499.1
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Amara, M. H., & Trumper-Hecht, N. (2006). Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 7-30. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790710608668383
Blommaert, J. (2013). Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes: Chronicles of complexity. Multilingual Matters.
Clayton, S. (2003). Environmental identity: A conceptual and an operational definition. In S. Clayton & S. Opotow (Eds.), Identity and the natural environment: The psychological significance of nature (pp. 45-65). MIT Press.
Council of Universities' Affairs. (2024). Higher education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Governance, empowerment, independence, and preparing for the future. https://www.cua.gov.sa/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/E.pdf
Coupland, N., & Garrett, P. (2010). Linguistic landscapes, discursive frames and metacultural performance: The case of Welsh Patagonia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2010(205), 7-36. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.2010.038
Delmas, M. A., & Burbano, V. C. (2011). The drivers of greenwashing. California Management Review, 54(1), 64-87. https://doi.org/10.1525/cmr.2011.54.1.64
Essa, S., & Harvey, B. (2022). Education for sustainable development in Saudi Arabia: A critical discourse analysis of media and government policy documents. Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 18(2), e2266. https://doi.org/10.21601/ijese/11519
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Polity Press.
Fill, A., & Muhlhausler, P. (Eds.). (2001). The ecolinguistics reader: Language, ecology and environment. Continuum.
Gorter, D. (2013). Linguistic landscapes in a multilingual world. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 33, 190-212. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190513000020
Gorter, D. (2018). Linguistic landscapes and trends in the study of schoolscapes. Linguistics and Education, 44, 80-85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2017.10.001
Halliday, M. A. K. (2001). New ways of meaning: The challenge to applied linguistics. In A. Fill & P. Muhlhausler (Eds.), The ecolinguistics reader: Language, ecology and environment (pp. 175-202). Continuum. (Original work presented 1990)
Hult, F. M. (2009). Language ecology and linguistic landscape analysis. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 88-104). Routledge.
Jaworski, A., & Thurlow, C. (Eds.). (2010). Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space. Continuum.
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(1), 23-49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X970161002
Malinowski, D. (2015). Opening spaces of learning in the linguistic landscape. Linguistic Landscape, 1(1-2), 95-113.
Malinowski, D., Maxim, H. H., & Dubreil, S. (Eds.). (2020). Language teaching in the linguistic landscape: Mobilizing pedagogy in public space. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55761-4
Motschenbacher, H. (2024). Contrasting a university's language policy with its linguistic landscape: A case study. Current Issues in Language Planning. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2023.2283652
Pennycook, A. (2010). Language as a local practice. Routledge.
Saudi Green Initiative. (2021, October 23). HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister announces the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2060. https://www.sgi.gov.sa/knowledge-hub/hrh-the-crown-prince-and-prime-minister-announces-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia-s-aims-to-achieve-net-zero-emissions-by-2060/
Saudi Green Initiative. (2024). SGI target: Grow 10 billion trees across Saudi Arabia. https://www.sgi.gov.sa/about-sgi/sgi-targets/greening-saudi/
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (2003). Discourses in place: Language in the material world. Routledge.
Shohamy, E., & Gorter, D. (Eds.). (2009). Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery. Routledge.
Stets, J. E., & Biga, C. F. (2003). Bringing identity theory into environmental sociology. Sociological Theory, 21(4), 398-423. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-9558.2003.00196.x
Stibbe, A. (2015). Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by. Routledge.
UNESCO. (2020). Education for sustainable development: A roadmap. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802
UNESCO. (2026). Education for sustainable development: Learning to act for people and planet. https://www.unesco.org/en/sustainable-development/education
United Nations Saudi Arabia. (2022). The role of Saudi universities in advancing the SDGs and Saudi Vision 2030. https://saudiarabia.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-12/2022%20Saudi%20Universities%20Paper.pdf
Wals, A. E. J. (2014). Sustainability in higher education in the context of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Journal of Cleaner Production, 62, 8-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.06.007