A Critical Discourse Analysis of Ecological Identities in the Iranian Society: A Constructivist Grounded Study

Environmental issues are mainly the result of human behavior, so paying attention to the knowledge, attitude and real intentions of people about environmental issues and how to deal with them is very important in the study of environmental behaviors. The purpose of this study is to investigate Iranian students' ecological identity in light of critical discouse analysis. Inspired by the critical discourse analysis of Fairclough (2015) and the theory of Botkin and Keller (2011) as a theoretical framework, this study uses Charmaz' (2008) Contructivist Grounded Theory. The participants were 20 BA, MA and PhD EFL language learners from Hakim Sabzevari University. Using semi-structured interviews, the data were collected and participants' voices were recorded. Then, the data were coded based on the three levels of grounded methodology. The codification process resulted in 187 initial codes, 18 sub-codes, 6 important themes, and the final selective code of ecological identity. Based on the extracted constructs, namely the importance of environment, nature tourism, memories of nature, responsible behavior, environmental literacy and environment concerns, a model was proposed which corresponded with the principles of Botkin and Keller' theory.