Signs of Environmental Destruction: An Eco-Semiotic Approach to Elise Thompson’s The Magic of our Lan

Abstract

This paper takes the idea of ecological concerns and aims to explore that how Elise Thompson addresses genuine issues such as deforestation, water scarcity, climate change in the contemporary era. Thompson in her recent short story, The Magic of Our Lands, depicts a fictional world that paints a real face of contemporary societies. The tale is a satirical persona of people’s desires to be modern and advance in every aspect of life. However, this modernism is maintained by eradicating the balance of the environment and misusing the natural objects like trees. Thompson, to address these issues, aesthetically articulates various linguistic signs that need to be interpreted further. For this, this paper utilizes ecocriticism as a critical framework which offers a specific lens; eco-semiotic that belongs to language and signs. Hence, the analytical part, by employing eco-semiotic framework, attempts to analyze the linguistic signs embedded in Thompson’s narrative. Moreover, the analysis reveals that Thompson, through her characters particularly Ella, criticizes the contemporary priorities of people and educates her reader on how to save and care nature.