Eco-friendly language, sustainability claims, and power relations in green advertising discourse

As the global quest for sustainability and environmental commitment becomes more and more urgent, many consumers are now opting for products and brands aligned with their values (Mintel 2021). Indeed, according to a survey by the European Commission, 56% of average European consumers declared that "environmental concerns influenced their purchasing decisions" (EC 2021). Consequently, companies are now revising their marketing and advertising strategies in order to focus on eco-friendly claims, thus reversing the traditional image of passive consumers manipulated by advertisers (Wilke et al. 2021). In this context, the present paper investigates eco-friendly discourse and sustainability claims in a dataset of Italian food and drinks television commercials. The study considers 15 commercials recently aired in Italy for a qualitative manual analysis of textual and language features, in line with traditional CDA methods (Huckin 1997); a critical evaluation of environmental claims through a framework for greenwashing detection (Carlson et al. 1993) is also included. While attention is placed on critical aspects such as power relations between businesses and consumers, results suggest that environmental and sustainability topics are exploited in advertising to provide evidence of companies' sustainability commitment, and to please conscious consumers asking for more responsible production.