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PUBLISHED 16 February 2023
DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1124909
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Salim Bouherar,
University of Sétif 2, Algeria
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University of Trento, Italy
Amira Benabdelkader,
Université Frères Mentouri Constantine
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Amina Guerriche,
Université Frères Mentouri Constantine
1, Algeria
*CORRESPONDENCE
Ruihong Huang
ruihong2018@shufe.edu.cn
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CITATION
Huang R (2023) A corpus-assisted discourse
study of Chinese university students’
perceptions of sustainability.
Front. Psychol. 14:1124909.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1124909
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terms.
A corpus-assisted discourse study
of Chinese university students’
perceptions of sustainability
Ruihong Huang*
School of Foreign Studies, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China
Education for sustainable development (ESD) in the higher education context plays
a critical role in advancing the cause of sustainable development. However, previous
research on university students’ perceptions of sustainable development is limited.
This study used a corpus-assisted eco-linguistic approach to investigate students’
perceptions of sustainability issues and responsible actors to address these issues.
This quantitative and qualitative study is based on a corpus of 501 collaborative essays
on sustainability written by ∼2,000 Chinese university students collected with their
permission. The results show that the students had a comprehensive perception of the
three dimensions of sustainable development. Environmental issues have received the
most attention from students, followed by economic and social issues. With regard
to perceived actors, students were inclined to view themselves as active participants
in the cause of sustainable development, rather than as observers. They called for
coordinated action of all relevant parties, such as the government, business sectors,
institutions, and individuals. On the other hand, the author also noticed a tendency
toward superficial green talk and anthropocentrism in students’ discourse. This study
aims to contribute to sustainability education by integrating findings into English as a
foreign language (EFL) classes. Implications for sustainability education in the context
of higher education are also discussed.
KEYWORDS
sustainability, perceptions, Chinese university students, ecolinguistics, corpus, discourse
1. Introduction
Sustainable development concerns the relationship between human beings and nature
with different priorities at different stages. The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and
169 targets announced in 2015 set a global agenda for the following 15 years. However,
as pointed out by Sterling (2016, p. 210), this is an agenda of what we should do in the
biophysical world. The recommended actions could only alleviate the current problems of
this unsustainable world. If we really want to eliminate those problems, we need to find out
the causality, which is believed to be our inner world (i.e., our beliefs, values, and lifestyles).
This is where education should play an important role, especially in bringing about lasting
changes, or a transformation, because “it is owned and affected by participating stakeholders and
learners” (ibid, p. 211). Education does not only help raise the awareness of the youth regarding
sustainability issues but also teach them the skills to implement sustainable development. The
value of education for sustainable development is emphasized in The Decade of Education
for Sustainable Development 2005–2014 (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), 2020), an initiative by the United Nations to introduce education for
sustainable development (ESD).
Universities play an important role in educating “societies’ future decision-makers” about
sustainable development (Barth and Timm, 2011, p. 13). M’Gonigle and Starke (2006) argued
that universities could promote sustainability “in ways no other modern institution could
match” (p. 170). Stakeholders in institutions of higher education involve staff, faculty, students,
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Huang 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1124909
funding bodies, employers, and the community (Yuan and Zuo,
2013). The success of sustainable development education depends
on the participation of all those involved. While many previous
studies have examined the beliefs, attitudes, and understandings of
lecturers (e.g., Reid and Petocz, 2006;Cotton et al., 2007;Sammalisto
et al., 2015), university presidents (e.g., Wright, 2010) and facilities
management directors (e.g., Wright and Wilton, 2012), students’
beliefs about sustainability have not received enough attention and
focus (Aleixo et al., 2021). Students are not passive receivers of
instruction or mere outcomes of education. With their unique
knowledge and perspectives, they are important participants in the
process and producers of the outcomes as well (Levin, 2000). Their
engagement is essential to the success of sustainability education.
Therefore, it is important to undertake research that focuses on
students’ perspectives on sustainability issues.
Several previous studies have surveyed students’ perceptions
of, or attitudes toward, sustainability. Emanuel and Adams (2011)
compared students from two American states with regard to their
perceptions of campus sustainability. Barth and Timm’s (2011) survey
of German university students revealed that students were mostly
concerned with environmental or ecological issues, followed by
social and generational justice. In terms of program intervention,
students who studied sustainability in their major tended to focus
on technology and economic efficiency and emphasized the role of
the state and industry, while those who minored in sustainability
tended to focus on consumption behaviors and stressed the role of
individuals in sustainability. Yuan and Zuo (2013) surveyed Chinese
students’ awareness of sustainability issues and their perceptions
of key factors for sustainable development within the context of
higher education. Eagle et al. (2015) investigated an Australian
university’s incoming business students’ knowledge of and attitudes
toward sustainability issues. Aleixo et al.’s (2021) survey of 1,257
students in Portuguese higher education institutions showed that
most students realize the importance of sustainable development
and advocate reusing and recycling practices to combat climate
change. In these previous studies, questionnaires and interviews
were commonly used to investigate the subjects’ perceptions of
sustainability. However, since the participants of the studies were
voluntary students, their self-selection might have affected the results
of the survey. In addition, the use of categorized questions rather
than open questions in the research might neglect the real attitudes or
concerns of students, as pointed out by 2011 (2011, p. 21). A notable
exception is a survey by Zeegers and Clark (2014) about students’
perceptions of ESD, where their survey data were complemented
with students’ reflective journals; however, only 34 students
were involved.
In contrast to the approach of eliciting data from subjects
through questionnaires or interviews, one of the strengths of a corpus
linguistics approach is its use of large amounts of authentic data
that are produced by subjects in what can be considered natural
communicative contexts. Corpus-based discourse analysis has been
widely used to address social problems such as gender inequality,
racism, nationalism, and, recently, environmental issues by revealing
the ideology or cognition manifested in the language of the discourse
of relevant parties.
In the present case of this study, 501 collaborative textual
discourses on sustainability written by ∼2,000 students at the
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE), as part
of their coursework in a compulsory College EFL class, were
collected and analyzed with the aim to address the following
research questions:
1. What are the perceptions of Chinese university students vis-
à-vis the environmental, economic, and social dimensions
of sustainability?
2. What are the sustainability issues that students consider
important in each dimension?
3. According to students, who should take responsibility for
sustainable development, and what actions need to be taken?
2. Literature review
In this section, I review the terminology and relevant literature
useful for understanding the concept of sustainability in the analysis
and then present an overview of the integration of corpus linguistics,
critical discourse studies, and ecolinguistic approach.
2.1. Dimensions of sustainability
Despite widespread use, sustainability is a contested concept
with different interpretations over history. The most significant
definition of sustainable development is provided in the Brundtland
report Our Common Future, which defines it as a development “that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on
Environment Development, 1987). The publication of this report in
1987 helped popularize the concept of sustainable development. Since
then, this concept has evolved significantly (Bina, 2013;Spindler,
2013). This three-pillar model is a commonly accepted sustainability
model, where the roof of sustainability is supported by three pillars:
environment, economy, and social equality (Spindler, 2013). These
three pillars are not independent of each other. Instead, they tend
to be intertwined. For the convenience of discussion, this study
describes them separately.
Environmental sustainability has usually been prioritized by
scientists. Some early definitions of sustainability mainly focus on
environmental sustainability. For example, sustainability was defined,
by some, as the “maintenance of natural capital” (Goodland, 1995, p.
10), or more specifically, the improvement of human wellbeing “by
protecting the sources of raw materials used for human needs and
ensuring that the sinks for human wastes are not exceeded, in order to
prevent harm to humans” (ibid, p. 10). In the OECD Environmental
Strategy for the First Decade of the 21st Century (OECD, 2001), four
criteria are proposed for environmental sustainability: regeneration,
substitutability, assimilation, and avoiding irreversibility. Similarly,
to help environmental professionals to operationalize the concept
of sustainable development, Morelli (2011) has summarized
five categories of guiding principles for societal needs, namely
preservation of biodiversity, regenerative capacity, reuse
and recycling, constraints on non-renewable resources, and
waste generation.
The definition of economic sustainability varies according to
the approach and perspectives of sustainability. When the issue
is approached from the inside, i.e., the organization in business
contexts, the concept involves the efficiency of production and
economic growth. From the outside perspective of the stakeholders
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Huang 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1124909
in non-business contexts, it concerns how the activities of the
organization influence society over time (Jeronen, 2020). As a pillar
of sustainability, economic sustainability generally takes the outside
approach, which requires that the production system not only
provides people with what they need in an efficient way but also
considers the needs of future generations regarding natural resources.
It has three criteria: equity of allocation of resources, the efficiency of
the use of resources, and the scale of the human economic subsystem
(Goodland, 1995, p. 3).
Similarly, although the social dimension of sustainability is well-
known, its exact meaning is elusive. There is no uniform definition
of this concept (Dempsey et al., 2011). For some, it “requires that the
cohesion of society and its ability to work toward common goals be
maintained. Individual needs, such as those of health and wellbeing,
nutrition, shelter, education, and cultural expression should be met”
(Gilbert et al., 1996, p. 12). For others, the goal of a sustainable
society is to achieve “fairness in distribution and opportunity,
adequate provision of social services,” “gender equity, and political
accountability and participation” (Harris and Goodwin, 2001, p.
xxix). These different aspects of social sustainability are reflected in
four principles of social sustainability: “human wellbeing, equality,
democratic government, and a democratic society” (Caradonna,
2014, p. 13).
Different dimensions, or different aspects of sustainability, may
highlight different priorities in various contexts. For example,
Dempsey et al. (2011) identified social equity and the sustainability
of the community as the core of social sustainability within the
context of urban social sustainability. It is therefore important for us
to know, among the three pillars of sustainability, which dimension
is prioritized by students and what major issues in each dimension
are matters of concern for them. Thus, universities and teachers
could address the issues relevant to students and bridge the gap in
sustainability literacy, as well.
2.2. Corpus-assisted discourse studies and
ecolinguistics
Discourse is a complex concept that involves an interaction
between language and society. In linguistic terms, discourse is
the language above a sentence level or language in use. In social
science, it relates to “the social process of communication” to
build relationships and improve understanding (Lemke, 1995, p.
6). Thus, discourse analysis encompasses a collection of theories
and methods to investigate communicative activities, including
the use of language in contexts, from various disciplines, such
as linguistics, communication, and anthropology, with an aim
to address communication and social problems (Gordon, 2015).
Because of the integration of methods from many fields, Van Dijk
(2015, p. 466) suggests using “discourse studies” instead of “discourse
analysis.” Through discourse analysis, language is studied as a means
of communication. Meanwhile, since language can reflect and shape
our perception and mind, it can also serve as “a method of inquiry”
(Tracy, 2005, p. 726).
Corpus linguistics is a methodology of linguistic study that
relies on large amounts of authentic data to unveil the regularity
of language use, or patterns, with the aid of software. Both corpus
linguistics and discourse analysis require authentic data. The term
Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies or CADS was first coined by
Partington (2004). It is defined as “that set of studies into the form
and/or function of language as communicative discourse, which
incorporates the use of computerized corpora in their analyses”
(Partington et al., 2013, p. 10). Major techniques and procedures
in corpus linguistics, such as keywords,associate sets,word lists,
and concordance, are used to retrieve quantitative information about
lexical items and reveal meaningful patterns of language use in
the discourse under study (Scott and Tribble, 2006;Scott, 2016).
Using corpus in discourse analysis enables researchers to reduce
their cognitive bias and shed light on how speakers or writers
draw on language resources to construct discourse and present
different views of the world (Baker, 2006). Thus, in contrast to
conventional corpus linguistics, CADS aims to reveal some truth
of the world as manifested in language rather than regularities of
the language pattern in themselves. Topics such as immigration and
gender inequality have been on the agenda of researchers’ focus on
discourse studies for a long time. Climate change and environmental
or ecological issues have received a lot of attention in the past 20 years,
which spurred the emergence of ecolinguistics.
Ecolinguistics treats language as part of the ecological system
and highlights its influence on the whole ecological system beyond
human beings, which includes plants, animals, and the environment
we live in, and also takes into account future generations (Stibbe,
2021). As a form of discourse analysis, in ecolinguistics, texts are
studied to uncover “the hidden stories that exist between the lines”
(ibid, p. 2). According to Stibbe (2004), these stories indicate how
our thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, and ideologies are manifested in
our discourse, and they could shape the mindset of young people.
Once stories are discovered, we could critique or promote them
to build a more ecological world. In the Chinese context, Huang
and Zhao (2021) proposed harmonious discourse analysis as an
approach to diversify ecolinguistics with inspiration from traditional
Chinese philosophy, seeking to provide a more holistic view of the
harmonious relationship between human beings and the world.
Since the advent of ecolinguistics in the 1990s, scholars
have explored different levels of language representation, such as
vocabulary, syntax, semantics, metaphor, and discourse. This study
follows the analytic framework proposed by Stibbe (2014, p. 118)
to investigate “how clusters of linguistic features come together to
form particular worldviews.” Stibbe (2021, p. 6) proposed eight types
of stories or “cognitive structures” that are shared by people in a
community or culture, which also shape our behaviors. They include
ideologies, framings, metaphors, evaluations, identities, convictions,
erasure, and salience. In this study, the author mainly focuses on
ideology and salience. The exploration of how the world is, and ought
to be, in the minds of Chinese college students and what aspects
of daily life are regarded as important or worthy of attention is
done by analyzing the linguistic features in their discourse using a
corpus-assisted approach.
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Corpus
The corpus consists of 501 essays with a total of 1,012,409
tokens on the theme of sustainability and innovation: human,
environment, economy, and development of technology. These
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essays were written by first-year undergraduates at SUFE as part of
coursework in the Academic English Course from 2018 to 2019. Each
essay was produced in the form of collaborative writing by four to
five students. This writing assignment was also part of a broader
academic project participated in by numerous Chinese universities.
From 2015 to 2020, the China English for Academic Purposes
Association (CEAPA) held the International Collegiate Conference,
where annually, college students presented works on a given theme
in English. This project aimed to improve university students’
academic English skills while raising their awareness of social
responsibility through problem-solving projects. Many universities
joined this event by integrating the writing project into their EFL
classes, selecting candidates through campus-level competitions, and
recommending candidates to attend the International Collegiate
Conference. The theme of the conference for the years 2018 and
2019 was sustainability and innovation, with a focus on the 17 UN
Sustainable Development Goals.
3.2. Procedures for corpus analysis
Corpus techniques that are used in this analysis include keywords,
collocate, and concordance. In corpus linguistics, keywords refer to
the words in a text or a corpus that are unusually more frequent
than in the reference corpus (usually a corpus of general English).
The British National Corpus was used as the reference corpus in
the study as it has a large size (∼100 million words), and the well-
balanced design makes it a widely accepted corpus representing
general English. Keywords are especially useful in revealing the
aboutness or style of the text (Scott and Tribble, 2006). Wordsmith
(Version 7) was used in the present study to extract keywords and
key keywords (i.e., keywords that have a wide dispersion) (Scott,
2016). After the keywords were extracted, the researcher also explored
the semantic network of these keywords through their Associate Set
and ran concordance searches for the keywords to examine the co-
text of these keywords. Meanwhile, the study also used #LancsBox
6.0 (Brezina et al., 2021) to present the network of some keywords.
The collocate function of Wordsmith was used to identify the
subject of the obligatory modal verb should, which may indicate who
should take responsibility for sustainability development. Studying
the salience patterns realized in language, which, in this case, included
keywords and typical collocations, gave a glimpse into the stories
in students’ minds, i.e., what sustainability issues are regarded as
significant and noteworthy.
4. Results
4.1. Major sustainability issues for students
The default setting of the Wordsmith was used to extract the
keywords: The minimum frequency was set at 3, the minimum
percentage of text was set at 5%, and the minimal log ratio was set
at 1.5. In our corpus of ∼1 million words, 1,171 keyword entries were
found. Appendix A provides the top 40 keywords ranked in order of
keyness of log-likelihood. Log-likelihood is a measure of the keyness
in terms of statistical significance; the log ratio deals with the effect
size of keyness.
For the convenience of discussion, the study uses the commonly
accepted three-pillar model of sustainability as the framework of
analysis. As can be observed from Table 1, the nominal and adjective
forms of the terms of the three dimensions of sustainability are all
keywords. The keyness of environmental and environment is much
higher than that of economy,economic,social, and society, which
suggests that environmental issues are a major concern for students,
followed by economic issues and social ones.
Table 1 summarizes the statistical data about the comparison
between the total frequencies of each of these keywords in the
students’ discourse corpus with that of the reference corpus.
However, it is not clear to what extent these keywords spread across
the corpus. To solve this problem, the study employs the key keyword
function of Wordsmith. A “key keyword” is a word that is key in
more than one of a quantity of related texts (Scott, 2016). A total
of 666 key keywords were obtained from the database by setting a
“key keyword” to occur in minimum 5 texts with at least 10 keywords
per text. That is to say, 666 keywords occur in more than five
texts. As shown in Table 2, of the three dimensions of the concept
of sustainability, environment(al) is the most salient in the student
discourse corpus. Altogether environmental occurs as a keyword in
79 texts and environment in 71 texts.
Table 2 presents the associates of each of the six keywords related
to the three major dimensions of sustainability in order of the
association of strength. Associates are the keywords closely connected
with a key keyword in the same text (Scott, 2016). The strength of
association was measured statistically using the MI3 score in our
study. The minimum associated texts in which a keyword co-occurs
with the key keyword under study were set to 3.
4.1.1. Environmental dimension
As indicated by the associates of environment and environmental
(see Table 2), the environmental issues that received the most
attention include pollution, protection, recycling, packaging, carbon,
waste/garbage, and energy. In their writing, students aimed to
raise people’s awareness about these environmental issues, call for
appropriate governmental policies, and press for the adoption of a
lifestyle that would favor the environment.
Among the associates of environment(al), garbage is worth special
attention. As can be observed in Appendix A, the term’s keyness
is particularly high, ranking second of all the keywords. There is a
great overlapping of associates between environment,environmental,
and garbage (see Tables 2,3). The associate set of garbage highlights
the recycling of garbage (waste or rubbish) on campus in Shanghai,
or in China, particularly the large quantities of plastic garbage
or packages caused by the fast-growing express delivery service.
Students were concerned about the current environmental situation
and the damage caused by garbage. Sorting or classification of garbage
for recycling was proposed as a promising solution to the problem.
Both government and individuals, especially students, were perceived
to have a role to play in tackling the garbage issue.
Another interesting associate of environment/environmental is
Ant Forest. A total of 305 occurrences of the item Ant Forest were
found in the corpus. The Ant Forest Initiative is an environmental
initiative launched by the Ant Financial Service Group, an online
payment company affiliated with Alibaba. This program started in
2015 with an aim to mobilize people, especially its app users, to
monitor their carbon footprints and live a more environmentally
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TABLE 1 Statistics of keywords related to the three sustainability dimensions.
Keyword Freq % Texts RC. Freq. RC. % Log_L Log_R P
Environmental 1,194 0.12 202 8,411 3,937.76 3.80 <0.001
Environment 1,283 0.13 314 12,935 0.01 3,441.10 3.28 <0.001
Economy 803 0.08 204 10,365 0.01 1,819.30 2.93 <0.001
Social 1,232 0.12 328 41,744 0.04 993.69 1.54 <0.001
Economic 781 0.08 254 23,376 0.02 758.17 1.71 <0.001
Society 697 0.07 273 22,457 0.02 607.83 1.61 <0.001
RC, reference corpus; Log_L, log-likelihood; Log_R, log ratio. The default p-value is 0.000001.
TABLE 2 Associate sets of sustainability keywords.
Environmental (79) Environment (71) Economy (32) Economic (22) Social (25) Society (14)
Environment Environmental Development Economy Inequality Men
Protection Pollution Sustainable Development Women Women
Pollution Protection Economic Sustainable Men Inequality
Questionnaire Questionnaire Resources China’s Gender Gender
Recycling Development More China Society Social
Packaging Plastic China Industry Equal Discrimination
Materials Sustainable Environment Growth Equality Equality
Waste Our Sharing Resources Rights Males
Development We Industry United Students Equal
Garbage Ecological Shared Investment Groups Status
Friendly Carbon Environmental Transportation Family Women’s
Energy Waste Innovation Trend Level Male
Sustainable Garbage China’s Living Discrimination Employment
Consumption Respondents City Industries Self People’s
Recycle Questionnaires Government City Development Phenomenon
People’s Recycling Energy Products Income Survey
Industry Shanghai Questionnaire Innovation Feminist Problems
Our Students Behavior Consumption Wechat Students
Awareness China Living Labor College Development
Plastic Energy Industrial More Promote Questionnaire
The number in the brackets indicates the number of texts in which the word is a keyword.
friendly lifestyle. Through an Ant account, users earned virtual-
energy points for their behaviors to reduce carbon emissions, such
as using an online payment service, walking instead of driving, and
so on. When one earns enough points, the company and its partners
will grow a real tree in one of the deforested areas in China. This
initiative was awarded “Champions of the Earth” in 2019, a United
Nations’ environmental honor to recognize outstanding initiatives to
protect the environment. From the students’ writing, we can see that
this initiative was well received among the youth in China.
4.1.2. Economic dimension
Economy or economic is closely associated with development,
sustainability,resources,China,sharing,industry,innovation, and
energy, among others (Table 2). The word resources have a strong
association with economy/economic. Using GraphColl of #LancsBox
6.0, the study obtained the graph of the significant collocates of
resource, as shown in Figure 1, by setting its span to five words to
its left, the collocation statistic value threshold of MI at 3.0 and
minimum frequency of its collocates at 25. This graph presents the
network of the adjective, noun, and verb collocates of the word
resource. The closer a collocate is to the search word resource in the
center, the stronger its collocation strength is. For example, the word
idle is a stronger collocate of resource than waste.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a resource is “a supply of
something that a country, an organization, or a person has and can
use, especially to increase their wealth.” From the lexical network of
the word resource, we can see that students are especially concerned
about the proper use of idle resources, natural resources, and water
resources. Based on the concordance lines where resources co-
occur with economy/economic, it was observed that students suggest
a positive relationship between the proper use of resources and
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TABLE 3 Top 20 associates of garbage.
NAssociate Strength Texts %
1 Classification 13.17 33 58.00
2 Waste 12.66 35 62.00
3 Recycling 12.27 33 58.00
4 Questionnaire 10.96 38 67.00
5 Classify 10.92 15 26.00
6 Packaging 10.39 16 28.00
7 Students 10.12 30 53.00
8 Disposal 10.12 13 23.00
9 Pollution 10.12 19 33.00
10 Environmental 10.09 21 37.00
11 Shanghai 9.94 23 41.00
12 Trash 9.86 11 19.00
13 Campus 9.76 19 33.00
14 Delivery 9.76 14 25.00
15 Sorting 9.56 10 17.00
16 Plastic 9.42 12 21.00
17 Classified 9.37 9 16.00
18 Express 9.36 12 21.00
19 Questionnaires 9.26 19 33.00
20 Recyclable 9.23 9 16.00
sustainable economic development. They embrace a green economy
through the sustainable use of natural resources, advocate the
development of sharing economy through exploiting idle resources
to improve efficiency, and seek to improve economic gains from
reduced consumption of resources (such as land and materials) and
recycling. For example, students wrote:
(1) There is a great number of idle resources in various fields. If the
sharing economy can use these resources efficiently, its depth
and breadth will be expanded.
(2) Through the sustainable utilization of natural resources,
green economic development can improve the utilization
and regenerative ability of the natural environment to the
greatest extent.
(3) Garbage classification collection can reduce the amount of
garbage treatment and treatment equipment, reduce the cost
of treatment, and reduce the consumption of land resources,
with social, economic, and ecological benefits.
At the same time, from the student discourse, we can see that
while the natural world, including human beings, is framed as a kind
of resource, its inherent value is diminished. Being idle is considered
not optimum. We could also ascertain anthropocentrism common in
many students’ discourses and get a sense of overconfidence in the
human ability to harness nature, as shown in example (2).
In addition to promoting the practice of saving and making full
use of natural resources to optimize human interest, the students also
press for an equitable allocation of resources for personal growth
and wellbeing. They were aware of the social problems caused by
the unequal distribution of resources, as shown in (4) and (5). They
argued that equal access to economic and educational resources
is essential to eradicating gender discrimination and other social
inequalities. Providing opportunities to the poor and good education
can help close the gap between the poor and the rich. They suggested
that people’s right to equal resources should be protected by law
[see (6)].
(4) It is a common phenomenon that people prefer bigger cities
where there are more resources like job opportunities or
education, and as a result of this, bigger cities are usually
much more crowded than smaller ones, and it also means
higher housing prices. This is what we call uneven distribution
of resources.
(5) On the contrary, the students with low social and economic
status have no more resources to make up for their previous
academic failures, and the risk avoidance motivation of
the decline in social status is relatively low, which leads
them to be in a very big disadvantage in the access to
higher education.
(6) We should ensure that women enjoy equal opportunities
and resources for economic development in accordance with
the law.
4.1.3. Social dimension
With regard to the associate set of social and society, the
(in)equality issue is highlighted in students’ discourse, especially
gender inequality, as illustrated in Table 2. The associate set of
gender was further explored in the study. Apart from commonly
connected words such as women,men,female, and male, words
that point to the concerns of students over gender inequality
issues include (in)equality, discrimination, work(place),job, and
employment, among others. It can be observed that students were
especially concerned about equal opportunities for men and women
in the job market and discrimination against women in the
workplace. This may be because the proportion of female students at
the author’s university is very high (the ratio between male and female
graduate students in 2018 is ∼1:1.7), and the job market in China is
very competitive.
In addition to gender (in)equality, health or the mental wellbeing
of university students and access to quality education were also
emphasized. Human wellbeing, which is related to self-identity,
self-esteem, self-actualization, self-efficacy, and self-learning, has
received much attention from students. A strong association of social
that is worth mentioning is self (Table 2). For example, students
commented that:
(7) The popular trend of the “Kua Kua group” provided a platform
for university students to express their feelings as well as
build up their own self-esteem and social circles through
communication with others.
(8) Ant forests have met the needs of users for entertainment,
self-identity, and social interaction to many degrees.
Another important associate of social/society is education.
In the associate set of education, some words are naturally
connected with education, such as student,school(s),teaching,
learning,teachers, and class. The list highlights quality,
high,university/universities, and college. This indicates that
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FIGURE 1
Significant collocates of resource.
FIGURE 2
Extracts from the concordances of we should.
students are most concerned about higher education and
high-quality education.
4.2. Perceived actors and their
responsibilities
What are the views of students with regard to who is to assume
the responsibility for sustainable development and what actions
need to be taken? One clue of language lies in the collocates
of should, one of the most frequent words in the corpus. The
modal auxiliary should have 2,230 tokens in the corpus and
widely spreads out in the whole set of texts with a dispersion of
0.95. It ranks 46th in terms of frequency among 21,325 different
words. Semantically and pragmatically, should is generally used
to express obligation or necessity. Its left collocates may imply
the actors, while the right collocates may indicate actions to be
taken. The collocates of should were searched for within the span
of one word to its left and one word to its right. As presented
in Table 4, governments (including countries and departments),
business sectors (such as companies and enterprises), institutions
(such as schools and universities), individuals (such as everyone and
people), or groups (such as women and students) were perceived as
important actors.
In addition, pronouns, such as we,they, and it, are also at the
top of the left collocate list of should. A close examination of these
words in context revealed that the pronoun they mainly refer to the
relevant actors or stakeholders, as mentioned earlier, while it is used
to refer to some phenomenon or behavior, or stakeholders such as
the government or a specific company. What is noteworthy is the
use of we. The meaning of the collective pronoun we is complex. It
may include the reader/listener or exclude them (Mulderrig, 2011).
In other words, it may refer to the student writers only (i.e., exclusive
we) or include both the writer and the reader (i.e., inclusive we), or
even the other relevant stakeholders. Of the 404 occurrences of we
should, only five indicate exclusive usage, three are ambivalent, and
the rest are inclusive. The inclusive we assume a consensus with the
readers and other stakeholders. It has a sense of solidarity. Instead of
directly requesting others to do something, the student writers were
inclined to call for coordinated action, which is hard for all relevant
actors to refuse. Figure 2 is an extract from the corpus concordances
of we should.
As presented in Table 4, the verb collocates of should with a span
of one word to its right comprises primary verbs such as have,be, and
do that can be used as lexical verbs or auxiliary verbs and lexical verbs
such as take,pay,make, and many others. As the meaning of be is
not clear without context, the researcher further examined the three-
word clusters of should be +verbs. The most frequent clusters include
should be taken,should be paid, and should be made. For example,
measures should be taken,(something) should be taken into account,
(something) should be paid attention to, and efforts should be made.
Comparing these clusters with the top verbs that accompany should,
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TABLE 4 Top 15 collocates of should within a span of one word to its left
and one word to its right.
L1 collocate Freq. R1 collocate Freq.
We 404 Be 714
Government 173 Take 82
They 116 Pay 70
It 62 Have 67
Students 60 Make 60
Women 35 Do 48
Companies 29 Strengthen 43
Enterprises 28 Improve 32
School 25 Focus 28
Schools 25 Provide 26
People 23 Set 28
Universities 20 Give 26
Everyone 15 Increase 21
Countries 14 Try 19
Departments 14 Put 19
there are great overlaps of the main verbs such as take,pay, and make.
For example, students suggested that:
(9) Perhaps, the government should take the responsibility to
make new policies that promote the upgrading of the
domestic building material market.
(10) From this, we come to the conclusion that enterprises
should pay attention to product quality and
technological innovation.
The common collocates of should make include efforts,use of
policy, and law, indicating the necessity of efforts and regulations.
Should have is often followed by nouns such as right,opportunities,
choice, and awareness. For example:
(11) Women should have opportunities to go to work, to explore
their potential, to cultivate their core competitiveness, and to
develop their leadership of decision-making in all respects of
the public and private life.
These concordance lines suggest that students believe that the
commitments of different parties and the consensus of the whole
society are required if we want to make a difference in this
unsustainable world.
5. Discussion and conclusion
These results indicate that the students at SUFE have a
comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of the concept
of sustainability. The themes of their writing covered various
aspects of sustainable development, including the environment,
society, economy, culture, interaction, technology, innovation, and
so on. The three major sustainability dimensions, i.e., environment,
society, and economy, have received great attention. Among them,
the environmental or ecological dimension of sustainability was
prioritized by the students. This tendency is much in line with
the findings of some other scholars, such as those of Barth and
Timm’s (2011) investigation of a German university, Yuan and Zuo’s
(2013) survey of a Chinese university, and Fisher and McAdams’
(2015) survey of an American university. It is interesting to note
that the students under study were especially concerned about the
garbage disposal, recycling, and reducing waste. These issues were
also regarded as important factors in environmental sustainability by
the student participants in Yuan and Zuo’s (2013) survey. However,
we noticed that despite the criticism of shallow environmentalism by
Stibbe (2004) about two decades ago, the students’ textual discourse
still shows a feature of shallow environmentalism characterized by
focusing on immediate ecological problems and solutions while
overlooking the deep “psychological causes” (p. 243).
The second most important dimension that has drawn great
attention from the students is economic sustainability, which is
different from Barth and Timm’s (2011) results that social and
generational justice followed environmental aspects as the second
important dimension for the students in a German university. This
difference may be due to the influence of China’s fast economic
development and the great importance that the whole society attaches
to economic prosperity. Another possible reason could be that most
students at SUFE have economics or business-related majors. As the
economic dimension is closely related to the environmental aspect
(Goodland, 1995), students were concerned about the efficiency of
their use. They were attracted by new models such as the green
economy and sharing economy.
As for the social dimension, gender inequality at the workplace
and in job markets was made salient in the students’ discourse.
Previous studies suggested that gender might affect how students
perceive sustainability (Fisher and McAdams, 2015). Future research
that takes into account the gender factors of the students under
study would help to shed important light on the issue. Keywords
analysis helps us identify the salient concerns of students. Meanwhile,
we should also be aware of what is erased, such as the other
two principles of social sustainability: democratic government and
democratic society.
Concerning the students’ perception of responsible actors, the
results suggest a strong association with the government (state or
country), industry, and individuals, which is in common with the
findings of Barth and Timm’s (2011) about German students. It is also
worth noting that the students were inclined to regard themselves as
part of the broader community on the planet and feel a responsibility
to participate in sustainable development. Meanwhile, the students’
writing indicates that institutions sometimes fail to address the
issues that are of significant concern to them, such as the quality
of education and the effectiveness of liberal education curricula. It
is, therefore, important for universities to develop a shared vision
through dialogs with students.
Taken together, in students’ writing, we could see
their concerns about individual growth opportunities, the
relationship between human beings and their environment,
and the relationship between human beings. Generally, they
have a positive attitude toward sustainable development
and are willing to contribute to the cause. Yet, overall the
students’ discourse in this study is ambivalent discourse
(Stibbe, 2021). Behind these words, the researcher identifies
some stories of superficial green talk, such as garbage
classification and recycling. These practices could help
protect our ecosystem. Too much attention on garbage
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disposal may distract attention from the real cause behind
the garbage problem; that is, our understanding and ideology
of the relationship between human beings and the world
are human-centered. Reading between the lines, we could
also see a tendency toward anthropocentrism. According to
Huang and Zhao (2021), who based their harmonious discourse
analysis on traditional Chinese philosophy, human beings, non-
human species, and non-living beings are the basic elements of the
ecosystem. Human-orientedness does not mean human benefits
should be paramount. All beings need to have a harmonious
coexistence. Since human beings depend on natural resources
to survive, they have the responsibility to take care of the
natural environment.
This corpus-assisted discourse analysis helps to reveal Chinese
students’ perceptions of sustainable development, as demonstrated
in their writings. Yet, the findings of this study need to be
interpreted with caution, given the limitations of corpus data. A
limitation of the study was the homogeneity of the participants
in terms of majors, which may limit the generalizability of these
findings to the general university student population in China.
Future research should include students in different disciplines
from different universities. Another limitation concerns the nature
of students’ writing. Compulsory collaborative work may create
some peer pressure among group members and thus influence their
writings, which may not reflect the real opinions of each individual
student. Future researchers may want to employ questionnaires or
interviews to triangulate these findings.
Despite the limitations, the large authentic data produced by
students provide a good starting point for researchers to understand
their opinions of sustainability. Moreover, the practice of integrating
sustainability education into an EFL course at SUFE demonstrates
the possibility of providing sustainability education in seemingly
unlikely subject areas. It will be of great benefit for teachers
and institutions to learn how this kind of language-oriented
learning activity in an EFL class enhances students’ awareness
and understanding of sustainability issues. As noted earlier, the
students are aware of their roles in taking care of the environment.
Teachers can use this finding as a point of departure and encourage
students to rethink the relationship between humans and nature.
Positive discourses from their local culture and traditional Chinese
culture that embrace a philosophy of a harmonious relationship
between human and non-human species and their environment
can be used as examples of alternative paths to improve human
wellbeing in addition to technological development. Hopefully, this
transformation of mindset or cognition will ultimately lead to
changes in behaviors.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in
the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed
to the corresponding author.
Ethics statement
Ethical review and approval was not required for the study
on human participants in accordance with the local legislation
and institutional requirements. Written informed consent from the
participants’ legal guardian/next of kin was not required to participate
in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the
institutional requirements, however, the data was collected with
signed consent from the students.
Author contributions
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and
has approved it for publication.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be
construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the
authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated
organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers.
Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may
be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the
publisher.
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Appendix A
TABLE A1 Top 40 keywords in the corpus.
NKeyword Freq. % Texts RC. Freq. RC. % Log_L Log_R P
1 Students 6,502 0.64 369 14,514 0.01 34,081.39 5.46 <0.001
2 Garbage 1,790 0.18 95 278 14,832.89 9.31 <0.001
3 Questionnaire 1,992 0.20 385 1,181 14,152.12 7.37 <0.001
4 China 1,923 0.19 377 4,912 9,659.31 5.27 <0.001
5 Online 1,238 0.12 232 597 9,080.89 7.67 <0.001
6 Shanghai 1,095 0.11 257 226 8,864.60 8.90 <0.001
7 We 9,257 0.91 499 3,00,833 0.30 7,968.10 1.60 <0.001
8 Recycling 1,202 0.12 105 1,050 7,962.51 6.81 <0.001
9 Development 2,869 0.28 429 32,010 0.03 7,201.63 3.14 <0.001
10 Classification 1,124 0.11 84 1,660 6,613.69 6.06 <0.001
11 Campus 919 0.09 150 625 6,379.15 7.17 <0.001
12 Our 4,333 0.43 478 93,455 0.09 6,257.40 2.19 <0.001
13 College 1,701 0.17 259 9,995 0.01 6,143.02 4.06 <0.001
14 Research 2,375 0.23 460 26,704 0.03 5,930.61 3.13 <0.001
15 Respondents 934 0.09 243 1,084 5,824.11 6.40 <0.001
16 Internet 647 0.06 219 97 5,375.40 9.36 <0.001
17 Education 2,204 0.22 227 25,880 0.03 5,342.50 3.06 <0.001
18 SUFE 570 0.06 132 0 5,241.40 138.21 <0.001
19 Gender 968 0.10 108 1,960 5,224.64 5.60 <0.001
20 Questionnaires 739 0.07 288 490 5,152.39 7.21 <0.001
21 Survey 1,351 0.13 357 8,055 4,844.99 4.04 <0.001
22 Sustainable 714 0.07 183 680 4,647.65 6.69 <0.001
23 Packaging 742 0.07 47 959 4,512.11 6.25 <0.001
24 Energy 1,477 0.15 153 12,098 0.01 4,486.92 3.58 <0.001
25 Waste 1,194 0.12 167 6,657 4,420.33 4.14 <0.001
26 Data 1,625 0.16 398 18,084 0.02 4,086.04 3.14 <0.001
27 Wechat 431 0.04 95 0 3,963.23 137.80 <0.001
28 Environmental 1,194 0.12 202 8,411 3,937.76 3.80 <0.001
29 Sharing 793 0.08 66 2,414 3,753.40 5.01 <0.001
30 Consumption 829 0.08 159 3,286 3,554.67 4.63 <0.001
31 People 3,747 0.37 473 11,6,196 0.12 3,458.11 1.66 <0.001
32 Consumers 734 0.07 145 2,290 3,444.02 4.98 <0.001
33 Environment 1,283 0.13 314 12,935 0.01 3,441.10 3.28 <0.001
34 Improve 964 0.10 371 6,171 3,338.68 3.94 <0.001
35 Bikes 507 0.05 27 457 3,337.55 6.77 <0.001
36 People’s 911 0.09 337 5,597 3,219.82 4.00 <0.001
37 Chinese 827 0.08 259 4,153 3,210.81 4.29 <0.001
38 According 1,316 0.13 443 15,686 0.02 3,156.87 3.04 <0.001
39 Pollution 798 0.08 136 4,107 3,064.46 4.25 <0.001
40 China’s 489 0.05 175 564 3,053.57 6.41 <0.001
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