Methodological promises of discourse analysis in Philippine environmental research

• Main Author: Erasga, Dennis S.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Environmental management—Discourse analysis; Discourse analysis; Environmental Studies
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/4886
• Institution: De La Salle University

Two situations characterize the state of environmental investigations in the Philippines: (i) the epistemic dominance of the 'natural sciences' perspective and (ii) the paucity of local resources (which advocate the use of) or which actually employed qualitative methodologies in framing environmental issues and challenges. As to the latter, the few that are available either have utilized the traditional social sciences methodologies e.g., survey and interviews as used in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and similar endeavors or innovated by attempting to hybrid several approaches. More disconcerting is the observation that this dearth of literature has had very little understanding as to the epistemological underpinnings of qualitative approaches in general. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to address these situations by demonstrating that environmental issues are, in fact, socially constructed issues and to highlight the utility and relevance of a qualitative approach-discourse analysis (DA) in making sense of this genre of social issues.