|  The Burren Action Group
The Burren Action
Group has campaigned vigourously for the past 8 years against
the construction of an
interpretative centre in what is classed as a site of Special Conservation Value -
Mullaghmore in County Clare. Their work has been consistent and difficult - having
to finance advertising and court cases. They won out when it was ruled that the
initial planning permission was revoked; but a new case begins now as there are
now applications from the same Office of Public Works
to build a smaller centre at the same location, called an 'Entry Point'.
My research work used the studies carried out in
Ecospeak: Rhetoric
and Environmental Politics in America
Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline Palmer, 1992).
Their main argument is that
much of the jargon employed in environmental debate serves to polarise
the speakers into opposing and irreconcilable positions. Groups,
such as
businesses and governments, who wish to encourage economic development,
will frequently configure opponents as anti-progress and irrational.
Equally, green groups configure development driven bodies as destroyers
of the earth etc. The final outcome of such polarising rhetoric is
alienation of the general public, who are either lost by virtue of the
specialised languages both groups can employ, or who are lost between
the virtues
of both positions. In an age where serious decisions are being made
on environmental issues, Killingsworth and Palmer argue that an alternative
approach to the debate be taken. Rather than placing the speakers in
opposing camps, they should be read as part of a continuum which is
constantly changing in response to the emerging power positions of the
various bodies involved.
I studied the rhetoric, both verbal and visual, employed in a brochure
and questionnaire published by the Office of Public Works and distributed
free to all the households in County Clare in 1996 (Entitled The
Office of Public Works - Conservation and Access). Both the visuals
and language construct the OPW as 'green', conservationist, and seeking
both heightened public awareness of environmental issues, and increased
tourism to the area. The opposers of the proposed Interpretative Centre
are constructed as anti-progressive, exlclusive and begrudging.
The language used in the Sound of Stone page in the Burren Action Group
website is highly poetic and mystical. The developers are portrayed in
the tradition of the 'wheels of greed' of William Blake and the greedy
destructive industrial powers of Charles Dickens. The site of Mullaghmore
is configured as sacred, a place which should be left apart from
the ravages of present day developments.
|
Home