A Critical Stylistic Analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals
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Abstract
This study provides a brief critical stylistic analysis of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with the aim to understand how specific discourses in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) create development priorities and ideological positions. Applying Jeffries’ (2010) Critical Stylistics, the paper examines ten strategies in terms of how agency, responsibility, and consensus are linguistically represented. The results show that the SDG discourse utilises nominalisations, generic pronouns and vague evaluative expressions such as to naturalize global consensus, while concealing power relations and structures of inequality. The paper shows that SDG language is not value neutral but strategically composed for the dissemination of a harmonious image of global development, pointing to the necessity to engage reflexively and critically with international policy discourse.
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