Positioning as discursive struggle for equity: a critical discourse analysis of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of African countries

ABSTRACT

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are critical climate policy documents formulated by the Party countries, under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement, to communicate their goals and commitments to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. As an emerging discourse genre, it has attracted increasing attention from discourse analysts. However, few studies have specifically focused on the NDCs of African countries as a whole, leading into the situation in which their positions and voices are largely underrepresented in the current climate negotiation. Using a combined method of positioning theory and critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to explore the African countries’ positioning in the climate change agenda by examining the discursive narratives around three prominent thematic categories in their NDCs, i.e. responsibility, vulnerability and conditionality. It is found that the African countries intend to position themselves as non-villains, victims, and demi-heroes by strategically highlighting their insignificant historical responsibility, exceptional vulnerability, and conditionality of implementation on the external support from the international community. Furthermore, it is argued that the commonality of their self-positioning is conducive to forming a collective identity to resist the hegemonic discourses of inequality and struggle for equity in the current climate negotiation.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• NDCs
• African countries
• CDA
• positioning theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The UNFCCC website: https://www4.unfccc.int/sites/NDCStaging/Pages/All.aspx (retrieved on Dec. 23th, 2021)

2 Available on the IPCC website: https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/ (retrieved on Feb. 12th, 2022)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (21WSHB 014 and 21BYY004) and the Youth Talents Plan of Shanghai University.

Notes on contributors

Xufeng Zhu

Xufeng Zhu, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the School of Foreign Languages at Shanghai University. His research mainly focuses on social/cultural pragmatics and discourse studies, with particular interests on conflicts, poverty, and other social problems.

Xin Shang

Xin Shang is a professor of Linguistics and Dean of the School of Foreign Languages at Shanghai University. His research interests include semantics, contrastive linguistics, and translation. His recent publications have appeared in Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, Journal of Foreign Languages, Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research, etc.