Green transitions: a socioterminological approach
Résumé
In the Saga project, we are aware of the importance of integrating a view of cultural diversity as key to positive motivation to attain sustainable development, and to the need to integrate these views in the design of curricula at all levels to contribute to educational objectives, including students’ motivation and their connections with their local communities, as well as human communities at large. That is one of the first objective of this hands-on project focusing on a socio-terminological approach to "green transitions" involving students in their first year of master’s degree. The second objective of this study is to gain information on the way European citizens conceive the ecological transition and if this conception is far from the institutional voice about it. Then, we will illustrate what “green transitions” mean for French sustainable urban planners.
Pascale Elbaz will present the socioterminological project methodology, focusing on each step, that is, the creation and analysis of a written corpus featuring green transitions as the main topic, both in an institutional context encompassing public policies at different scales (European, national, local) and in a larger context (in the general press). Then, we will present our step forward to a more sociolinguistic approach, featuring surveys of national languages speakers and interviews with ecological transition experts.
Our research examined the perspectives on the term "green transition" in six languages: French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, and Polish. We observed that the results could be categorized into three distinct approaches, which will be presented by Theo Castagnet, one of the students. Firstly, in some countries, the green transition is viewed as a gradual, long-term process, requiring many changes and efforts over time. Secondly, other countries perceive the green transition as a radical shift, necessitating immediate and transformative actions to address environmental challenges. Lastly, we identified that the green transition is linked to national policies, reflecting a significant integration of environmental goals into the broader political framework. In addition to presenting these findings, we will also discuss the various limitations we faced during our study.
Lastly, we will focus on the French view of a green transition applied to urban planning. Cedissia About will give an overview of the terms used by urban planning professionals in France from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. It is thus a question of establishing connections between the reflections around garden cities, initiated in the second half of the 19th century, and those that guide us today around eco-neighborhoods or more broadly sustainable urban planning. We also distinguish the terminologies of institutional actors, including state services or local authorities, citizen terminologies, which concern rather «activist » projects advocating other ways of living, feeding and moving. We then present in more detail the terminologies relating to the different components of the environmental approach to urban planning and the citizen participation associated with it. Finally, we draw on examples of Parisian projects to illustrate the implementation of these different terminologies.