Media Coverage of Sustainable Fashion: a Linguistic Perspective

Being one of the most exploitative and environmentally unfriendly industries in the world, modern fashion industry is gradually transforming from fast to slow, showing an urgent need for sustainability. Hence, conscious or sustainable fashion as a multidimensional and multifaceted phenomenon can be defined as an awareness about all the inputs and processes in garment making industry, including natural and human resources. Despite all increased media attention to sustainability and related issues, there is still a big gap between theoretical and practical research in the sphere of arts and humanities and other branches of science, such as economy, politics, engineering, building, education etc. Thus, the article analyzes media coverage of sustainability development, namely sustainable fashion, through the prism of modern linguistics. The main purpose, objectives and language data have predetermined the use of general scientific methods (namely, deduction, data collection, interpretation and verification) as well as methods of linguistic research (namely, lexico-semantic and content analyses). The study involves 30 textual fragments selected via continuous sampling method from world-renowned fashion and style magazines, such as Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, Vanity Fair, Vogue. Moreover, 20 visual images have been chosen with the same intent. Textual and visual content has been studied within the framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA), aiming at synergy of two modes of communication, inter alia, verbal and non-verbal means of presenting information in media. As a result of the analysis it has been confirmed that journalists and columnists of high-end mass media on fashion are using their popularity, reputation and persuasive potential in order to establish a long-term pivot to sustainability in their readers’ minds.