Chemicals in our language - Joanna Gavins, University of Sheffield

In this episode I speak with Joanna Gavins, who is a professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Sheffield.

Joanna and I discuss the language we use and how this influences the way we think, feel and act in relation to choices we make, the environment, and chemicals. 

We start off by discussing the work Joanna has been doing at the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) on how to effectively communicate information about sustainability to consumers. We also delve into our complex relationship with nature, and how this is influenced by language.

Our conversation then moves onto chemicals. We do a deep dive into the language surrounding chemicals in modern discourse, and how this influences public perception and emerging policy. We talk about the issue of chemicals in the environment, how this relates to us, and how we might get better at talking - and thinking - about these issues.

I hope you will find this discussion as fascinating as I did!

Plastic: Unwrapped podcast - Plastic Planet | The University of Sheffield Player

Human/Nature podcast | The University of Sheffield Player

White paper: Growing the UK’s Modern Industrial Bioeconomy

Effective Communication to Advance the Modern Industrial Bioeconomy - report

Just Earth: How a Fairer World Will Save the Planet - Tony Juniper

Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction - Sadiah Qureshi

Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By – Arran Stibbe

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Prefer to read? Here is a transcript:

Chris: 00:02

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Chemical Journeys Podcast. Today I'm speaking with Joanna Gavins, who's a professor of English language and literature at the University of Sheffield. Joanna, thanks for joining me.

Joanna: 00:45

Thanks for having me, Chris. Thanks for inviting me.

Chris: 00:48

So we met last year at an event of the Bio-Based and Biodegradable Industry Association, or BBIA, here in the UK. And they were having a meeting of their regulatory network, the BB- Reg-Net, and you were chairing a session at this meeting on the use of language when it comes to sustainability and product marketing. And anyway, we began talking and we got onto the topic of podcasting. And you mentioned that you'd released a podcast about plastic, which I listened to and I really enjoyed. And then more recently, you also published one based on an essay you'd written on the relationship between humans and nature. And again, really interesting. And I'll put the links to those in the show notes. And so I thought it'd be really, really good to invite you on to this podcast to talk about chemicals, have a bit of a dive into that and discussion about the language that we use and chemicals and how that frames how we think about them. So yeah, really excited about this. Not really sure where we'll go with it, but hopefully it'll be fun. So the way I normally start these off is I invite my guests to first give a brief introduction about them, their background, and their research interests. So why don't you tell us a bit about yourself, Joanna?

Joanna: 02:02

Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to, Chris. Um so I've worked at the University of Sheffield for 25 years now. I'm a linguist. I in particular work on cognitive linguistics, which is basically an area of linguistics that looks at how we conceptualize and understand language in everyday settings and how that language reflects how we think as human beings and how we interact with our environment. And in recent years, most of my research has been focused on sustainability issues. So how the kind of language that we produce in day-to-day communication, whether that's written or spoken, can reveal how we think about ourselves as human beings and the environment that we live in, how we interact with each other and with different materials and with the natural world. And in particular, I look at how changes to the language that we use can affect human behaviour. So might influence or encourage us to adopt more pro-environmental behaviours. A few years ago I worked on a big multidisciplinary project called the Many Happy Returns Project at the University of Sheffield, where we were basically taking a multidisciplinary approach to trying to solve the problem of single-use plastic pollution. I was working with engineers and chemists and social scientists, just trying to take lots of different approaches to understanding what drives single-use plastic and how we can reduce that consumption in various different ways and encourage reuse in particular. Since then I've been working, as you say, with the Bio-Based and Biodegradable Industries Association on another multidisciplinary project called BB- Reg-Net, looking at the language that we use around biodegradable and bio-based materials, and how changes to that language might encourage further adoption and development of that sector of the circular economy.

Chris: 04:08

I think you mentioned there about how it's a multidisciplinary activity, and that's a real hot topic in the area that I'm working in now because we've realized in environmental science that we get hyper-specialised in our little silos. We need to try to make these connections in order to make progress now between even in connecting up to disciplines like toxicology and ecology is a challenge. And so for yourself, being from more of a social sciences background, it must be really interesting and challenging to interact with engineers and natural scientists. I mean, what's overall your kind of experience with that, would you say?

Joanna: 04:48

Yeah, it's been it's been really positive. Some of the most rewarding, challenging and rewarding work of my career. We've realized certainly at Sheffield, and I work in Sheffield mainly as part of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, where we do an awful lot of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work. We've realized that most of the environmental problems facing us at the moment aren't just a matter of formulating technological or scientific solutions, they're people problems. So, you know, it's all well and good inventing new technologies, new materials, new processes and systems. But if you can't understand the people who use those systems and you can't communicate with those people and convince them that this new way of doing things is the right way to do things, then there's kind of no point. So it's really important, I think, that we have that human angle always at the heart of sustainability research, and that we're always thinking about the people who are at the heart of everyday interaction with different materials or in different contexts and situations.

Chris: 05:58

Yeah, and I guess a lot of it is about the decisions that individuals make that kind of stacks up towards some of the problems that we're dealing with in this modern day. I guess that might help us also to paint a bit more of a picture of the kind of work that you're doing. If you spoke a little bit about the work that you've done with the BBIA and in the BB- Reg-Net, apologies everyone for the acronym soup. I understand that there was a white paper published late last year at a parliamentary event. So it sounds very exciting. So please.

Joanna: 06:29

It was great. It was a great event, a real a wonderful kind of culmination of a couple of years of work. We had a discovery phase of the project to begin with, and then our implementation phase, both a year long. And we spent a lot of time kind of consulting with stakeholders and industry and policy makers to make sure that our research was, you know, kind of pursuing directions that they found valuable and useful. And essentially, our aim as a group was to try and assist the development and remove barriers to the further advancement and adoption of bio-based and biodegradable materials. And again, it's really important when you're doing something like that to have all different approaches and perspectives represented and that you are kind of thinking about the human beings who are uh interacting with those materials and making key decisions. So I led the communications and market understanding working group on that project, where I was looking at how do we talk about bio-based and biodegradable products, what might be some of the barriers to people's understanding of those products. I was looking at things like labelling, but also kind of standardization of terms, and just how people talk about their interactions with bio-based and biodegradable materials in everyday settings. So, really understanding not just how policymakers and industry talk about this sector, but how the general public understand it. And actually, what I found was that they don't understand it very much talk. Um, and that's really kind of the big challenge for that um sector is to overcome that lack of understanding and lack of knowledge.

Chris: 08:11

And when you say it's sort of lack of understanding, is it that they don't understand the meaning of the terms and how the products that they might choose are different from one another? Or could you sort of flesh that out a bit?

Joanna: 08:25

Yeah, i it it's a mixture of things really. So I mean one of the key stumbling blocks is that there are no kind of standard terms that are regulated in any way within the industry itself. So, you know, some people are talking and saying that a particular material is biodegradable, but not defining what that means. There's some crossover between biodegradability and bio-based products, and that causes confusion. People don't understand how the process of biodegradability works, how it relates to compostability. When you've got the the industry itself using terms and language in conflicting ways, then you can't possibly expect the general public to understand the sorts of products that are being produced and rolled out. So really it starts with the industry and making sure that everybody within the sector is talking consistently, um, defining what they mean when they use certain terms, using them clearly. Um and it's only once you've got that system up and running that you can then start to educate the public about what these terms mean and the implications of the products that they might use and that kind of thing.

Chris: 09:40

Yes, yeah, because I guess the public in many ways is probably not interested in the technical aspects of what constitutes biodegradable, they just want to know that you know that they're getting that benefit in the end, and that has been a bit of a problem with greenwashing in the past as well, right? I know you spoke about greenwashing when we met at that event because there are these terms flowing around, being thrown around that sound nice and sound great, but they're not being backed up by anything.

Joanna: 10:09

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and and I think yeah, there's there's an awful lot of greenwashing still around. I mean, there's some really good and encouraging regulation against greenwashing too, but there's an awful lot of flexibility in the language that people can use. And as you say, what the public want to know is that they can trust the claims that manufacturers and retailers are making. They don't necessarily want to know what particular chemicals or what particular processes are behind a particular product, but they do want to have some confidence that they're making the right choice in buying that product. And the other thing that they really want to know, very clearly and very importantly, is what to do with it when they've finished using it. And those are two separate things really, two separate forms of communication. One is about educating people about how these products are made and their impact on the environment, and the second one is giving clear instruction. And what we often see is that companies try a kind of broad brush approach to both of those different objectives, and that's where things get really confusing. So, for example, there's far too much information going on to labels and packaging that people can't digest when, you know, normally when they're looking at packaging, they're deciding what to do with it when they're finished with it. And all they really want to know at that point is, you know, tell me where to put it, tell me what to do with it. And people are uh, you know, trying to cram too much information in, it it is confusing, people don't know where to look for instruction and that kind of thing. And those bigger stories about kind of this is what our company stands for, this is how we make our products, need to need to be communicated somewhere else. So yeah, it's about kind of knowing your audience, having really clear aims, and putting your language in the right place and tailoring it to those particular needs.

Chris: 12:04

Yeah, no, that's really uh useful insights, and I guess there's an aspiration here to or or we're trying to sort of feel our way towards how to improve the situation, and then I guess there is the kind of implementation side of it as well in terms of will this translate into changes in the way that we communicate things on products and packaging, and and so is there any traction there? Are we seeing sort of policy changes? And is there anything also sort of directly clear to come from this white paper?

Joanna: 12:40

Yeah, well, it's early days with the white paper. The white paper, we as you say, was launched in December. It's had a it's had a really positive response so far. We had a great launch event at the House of Commons, and we're still producing reports from the rest of the project. So my own report on language use comes out next week, actually, uh the week beginning the 12th of January. So there's a very lengthy and detailed report on its way from me. And yeah, we w I think there is some really encouraging noises being made by policy makers, and some really kind of there was a positive feel in the room at our launch event. I think this is the change, you know, the changes that we are recommending are the ones that people want to see. Um, and certainly people in the industry are fully behind them. And and you know, the this is the thing is that these bio-based and biodegradable products have such great potential, but we're not realizing that potential at the moment. And I think the general public on the whole feel really positive about them and they want to buy more biodegradable and bio-based products. But in order to do that, they need to understand them better and they need to know very clearly what their benefits are so that they can make the right choices.

Chris: 13:51

So, well, I I'll just with respect to that report, we'll definitely put a link to that in our show notes. On the policy side, when it comes to biodegradability, I can understand why the messages get confused at the consumer level, because certainly from my perspective, looking at in this space, there is a lot of confusion also at the technical level and at the policy level. I guess one of the challenges that I'd seen with the BBIA's kind of remit is that you're looking at, well, as you'd mentioned, bio-based and biodegradable things not necessarily being the same thing. There's also quite a lot of focus on materials and packaging when it comes to biodegradable, and those things have their own standards that are used and their own technical criteria, which are often different to the chemicals side of things. So within chemicals, which is an area that I tend to work more, they have completely different test methods and criteria for assessing whether something is biodegradable or not, and that can really create issues when you're trying to have a meaningful discussion. And I also have even seen the danger that you know, in response to some of the problems with the way that we're communicating these things at the moment, there's almost a kind of overreaction to the point where we say, Well, we can't use biodegradable claims on products anymore, and you know, because of the way that that's been misused, but we kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of being able to make claims that are perfectly legitimate, for example, on chemicals and whether they're readily biodegradable. So it becomes very complex and technical, and I can imagine that it's going to be very challenging at the policy level, and there's going to be a lot of pitfalls there if the right knowledge doesn't come in at the right time to help these things along.

Joanna: 15:43

I think it's an absolute minefield for manufacturers, retailers and consumers. You know, the wealth of information that is now at our fingertips and is available to us, it obviously that's a wonderful thing, but it can be hugely overwhelming as well and hugely confusing if you're not an expert in the field. So, you know, people have so much kind of noise in their lives, informational noise, and kind of cutting through that and getting an essential message across, if you're an entrepreneur or a new business or have a new innovation to push, can be a massive challenge. I think I don't know if you came to the workshop that I did for BB- Reg-Net with about labels and logos. And this was a room of 15 people working in the industry. I showed them a series of labels that are in wide circulation in the UK at the moment, and nobody in that room got all of them right, could identify what all of the labels actually meant. And some are really essential ones, often to do with compostability or biodegradability that people couldn't define them or didn't know what they were. Those are experts and specialists, so if they don't know what these symbols mean, then you know what hope has the general public really. So yeah, I agree with you. It is an absolute mindfield, and we end up in a situation, like you say, where people are running scared from making sustainability claims, and that's such a shame because that's what those products are all about, and that's why people are in that industry, and they want to make a positive impact on the environment, but they're scared of claiming that they can do that. And so what we really need is yeah, standardization of terms, really clear directives on labelling, a clear division between informational language and instructional language, and some inspiring stories that people can get invested in and really believe in and have some emotional investment in in the longer term.

Chris: 17:40

Yeah. It's one of those wicked problems, isn't it? Let's put it that way.

Joanna: 17:44

Yeah, definitely.

Chris: 17:46

And I'm sure we'll continue to bounce back and forth between correcting and then undercorrecting and overcorrecting as we go. But yeah, fingers crossed. I think getting increasing awareness so that people are able to make more responsible decisions with their own behaviour, I guess, is ultimately the goal. We want people to be informed and to make the choice with some of these things, I suppose.

Joanna: 18:14

Yeah.

Chris: 18:15

I mean, that might take us nicely on to the podcast that you did on humans and nature and the interrelationship of those two things. I don't know if you want to just give a bit of an overview of what you talked about there. I think it was a really interesting topic to delve into.

Joanna: 18:32

Yeah, thank you. It follows a theme that I've pursued in other podcasts and publications about how our language reflects how we experience the world, essentially. So the language that we use expresses our beliefs, our opinions. It can reveal all kinds of things about how we function as human beings and how our minds work. But also the language that we encounter, there's a reciprocal relationship where the language that we're encountering every day in the media, in conversation, online and so on, is at the same time shaping how we think in return. So, you know, those two things are working together constantly, and it's about understanding how if we just make small changes to how we frame certain experiences through language, how we describe ourselves as human beings, for example, and our relationship with the environment, how that could shift how we think about the environment and think about ourselves and the impact that could have on how we behave. So the the human nature podcast that I did was actually part of the off-the-shelf book festival in Sheffield. I was interviewing two authors at the festival, Tony Juniper, who'd just released a book called Just Earth How a Fairer World Will Save the Planet. And Sadiah Qureshi, who'd written a book called Vanish, which was about the history of extinction and how we frame and talk about extinction. Historically. And and those both of those books kind of really picked up on that theme of the way that we think about our actions in the world are hugely influential on other people when we start communicating about them. And how we really need to kind of have a complete restructuring of our thinking of ourselves in relation to animals and the natural world in order to really shift culture and shift behaviour. So, yeah, one of the things I was talking about in the podcast is how we tend to always, for example, talk about nature as something that we escape to. We often use metaphors like containers, you know, you're in nature. Nature is something that you visit. It's something that's away from your everyday life. And we very rarely talk about ourselves as part of nature. And we're just animals, just like all the other animals on the planet. We might be very specialized animals, but we're still animals. And and all the behaviours that we engage in day to day are having an impact on the rest of the natural world. And we we separate ourselves from it so easily through language. And that language reflects that that's how we see ourselves as something distant from nature. And nature is is in our power, if you like it, but it's also something, it's often something wild or dangerous. We rarely think of ourselves as natural creatures, as part of our environment, and essentially connected to the environment. Um, and and it's those little interesting quirks of language that really fascinate me as a cognitive linguist, what they show us about how we think and how we might change how we think by changing our language.

Chris: 21:48

No, thank you for that. And yeah, I totally agree that the way that we see nature is really impacted by the language that we use, it seems to vary from person to person. I don't know if you can comment on the last sort of, let's say, the last 10 years, it seems that for a while there we were we were getting very collectively interested in in the environment and sustainability, was having this real kind of groundswell of support. That was leading to a lot of policy change, and then I think it's obvious to most people that has had a little bit of a retreat in recent years as well. I suppose that we've spent a lot of our history and our existence developing ways to protect ourselves from some of the dangers and the hazards of nature, which is what has led to us building a lot of the environment, let's say the man-made environment that we have around us. Um but but my my thinking was that we were becoming more environmentally conscious, perhaps than say 20 or 30 years ago, much more environmentally conscious collectively around 10 years ago. Have you looked into that at all? Have you noticed anything about that? Can you comment around that?

Joanna: 23:01

Yeah, I mean, I you know, lots of linguists have looked at this about how we frame the environment, how we talk about the environment. And it, you know, it's clear, I think you're absolutely right, by the way, that we did we did have a period where we seemed to be becoming much more environmentally conscious, and that was a result of scientific discovery, you know, that that was a result of data and science and facts and figures, and people could see that the earth was warming and could see that there was a problem, and that very much informed the way people were thinking and talking. However, I think most cognitive linguists would say that our fundamental way of seeing the world didn't change and didn't change enough. And so where we are now is an inevitable endpoint, or perhaps it's not even the end point, even more troubling, of a society that is built on um profit over planet and people, and that never really shifted. Um for as long as that core frame stays in place, then it's easy for our science and data about environmental damage to be ignored or overturned. You're not changing that fundamental way of seeing yourself in relation to the rest of the planet. Even the um SDGs, the sustainable development goals, and a linguist called Arran Stibbe has written a really fascinating discussion of this, are based on development. They are framed around financial gain, increase in profit, capitalist development, instead of on reduction and retreat. So for as long as even those the SDGs that are supposed to be kind of driving sustainability across the world are still framed around consumption, development, profit, then you know it's it's kind of hopeless. So really, that's the core language that we need to be changing is what do we value as human beings? What do we see success as? What does development actually mean? And is it always financial and materialistic, or could we start to shift our thinking to see gain and health and well-being um in a much more kind of personal and community sense? Um, which is what Tony Juniper's book talks about. Um another plug for Tony.

Chris: 25:31

That was the uh the Just Earth book.

Joanna: 25:33

Just Earth.

Chris: 25:34

Yeah, and in your podcast, I think you mentioned another one as well about offsets, and it was another example of how we came up with kind of like a technical trick to kind of ameliorate any sense of responsibility or guilt that we should have for our consumption.

Joanna: 25:52

Yeah, because all that all that kind of language about offsetting is about displacing your guilt and your responsibility onto somebody else, and that somebody else is normally in a community that will be most impacted by climate change, for example, or will be most impacted by poverty. And in the northern hemisphere, in the global north, we are constantly finding linguistic tricks to enable us not to have to think about the impact that we're having. We offset it onto somebody else. You tick a little box when you're, you know, booking a flight and you don't have to think about the impact that you've had on the environment or other communities elsewhere in the world.

Chris: 26:36

Yeah, and I guess a a normal human reaction then is to say, you know, don't look at me, or to have a sort of a negative response to say, an accusation or a sort of finger wagging kind of approach to this sort of thing. And I think it sounds like in general, sustainability movement has been doing some soul searching on that matter because they've been doing a lot of that finger wagging, and they seem to now they're in the midst of a backlash, and you know, we could talk for a while probably about all the different reasons and contributors to that. But you know, again, is there a kind of like a language component to this that we that could help to kind of bridge that that divide, do you think, or or or to mitigate that emotional reaction?

Joanna: 27:25

Yeah, I think I I definitely think that there is a linguistic component to it. I think language is absolutely essential to shifting people's behaviour and shifting the way people think. I think our job as linguists is to um identify and describe and analyse the language that we already use and point out where the problems are. I'm often kind of asked when I talk to people around either the BB- Reg-Net project or my work around plastics, people will say, Well, what is the right language to use? What slogan could I use? How could I talk about this? And in a lot of ways, that's not my job. I'm not a creative. I'm not in marketing or advertising, I'm not even a creative writer. And I think there are people who have much greater skill in that than I do. What I can do is show you this is the language that you're using at the moment, and this is how people are responding to it. Um, it's the job of people far more creatively minded than me to come up with the new language frames that might inspire people. But we can certainly already start to see the kinds of terms and concepts that people have negative reactions to and start to understand why that's happening. One of the main reasons why it happens is a lack of knowledge and a lack of understanding. People respond very negatively to things that they don't understand, and that's that's perfectly reasonable, I think. And so, you know, companies and organizations need to come up with inventive ways of communicating clearly with customers and with the general public in order to narrow that knowledge gap. In cognitive linguistics, we call this hypocognition, so it's basically a lack of the adequate knowledge to understand key terms and concepts. You just end up with a void, if you like, of understanding. And that's where people switch off or disengage with things because they don't understand them. And it's also where greenwashing thrives. So if people don't have a clear, standardized definition of biodegradability, for example, anyone can claim that something's biodegradable and then people lose trust in it. And you can kind of see how that cycle gets perpetuated, really.

Chris: 29:38

Yeah, it's sort of a gradual degradation that reinforces itself if you're not or a rot, let's say. Yeah. Oh no, that that that's really interesting, and I think that that that brings us nicely on to the discussion around chemicals as well, and um I I because you know that's what this podcast is really all about, the issue of chemicals in the environment. I personally work on this area quite a bit in terms of the risk assessment and the regulation of chemicals and the policy developments. But the more I look at this topic and the more I see the developments that are happening in the in the policy space, I see these interconnections with uh, you know, human society, with psychology, with politics, with health, um, and and you know, there's almost infinite depth and complexity to that. And so my hope is with the podcast to try and bring in this expertise to start to kind of uncover different areas, and I'm hoping that in time kind of a corpus of of knowledge and insights will kind of emerge from from from what we're doing here. So, yeah, I guess the first thing to kind of get your view on is is is you know where are you in terms of of chemicals and and what what do you think about them? Because I'm I'm aware you you work on you know you work with the BBIA relates to that, and also you've you've looked at plastics in the past, but you know, perhaps let's kick off. I'll let you start on on chemicals.

Joanna: 31:10

Well, well they're all bad, are they? All chemicals are bad. That's what I know about chemicals from from the research that I've I've done. And this is very brief research, I should say, but it we you know, you and I had a bit of a chat online about it, and it's something I've noticed throughout my work, both with plastics and with biodegradable and bio-based materials, that there is this automatic negative association with the word chemicals. And so I should explain a little bit about some of my methods as a linguist. So I look at kind of how we, you know, language and how we think, but I also use certain linguistic methods that enable us to look at huge bodies of language fairly swiftly and effectively. So this area of linguistics is called corpus linguistics, and essentially a corpus just means a body of language data. And as in corpus linguistics, we're often dealing with millions of words, even billions of words at a time. And computer software enables us to analyse that language uh comparatively easily. On the BB- Reg-Net project, on the Many Happy Returns project, we were using corpus linguistics to gather together linguistic evidence and look for patterns of use in it and see what those patterns could tell us about how people think and how they behave. Um, for example, looking at key terms in bio-based and biodegradable materials like bio-based, compostable, and so on. I looked in some really big corpora, big data sets of language to see how people were actually using those terms. And what I found and what's in the paper that will be released next week, it really shows how little understanding there is in the general public of those terms and actually how the majority of language use around them is taking place still just within industry. They're not in common circulation in everyday language, they're very unusual terms. So I used kind of similar methods when you and I got chatting about chemicals. I thought, well, I'll go and have a look at at some hopeless linguistics and and see what I can find about chemicals because my my sense of it is that everybody just thinks they're automatically terrible things and they must be avoided at all costs. And there's no kind of a reflection in our everyday language of the fact that the whole planet is made of chemicals, you know, and chemicals are completely unavoidable in our day-to-day lives. So I went and had a look at two different corpora of language. So the first one that I looked at is the British National Corpus, and this is a data set of more than a hundred million words that were gathered from both spoken and written sources between the 1980s and 1993. So it's a it's quite an outdated corpus now. But I thought it would be interesting, and it's it's an easy corpus to look at, and it does give us kind of quite a big section of time, you know, over more than 10 years of of everyday British English language use. So I can I can use computer software to go and look at that huge data set of language, and it will tell me things like what are the most frequent words in that data set. I can look at individual words and see not just how often they're used, but what other terms and concepts they're used with, what you know, what sorts of ideas are they associated with. I can even look at strings of language, longer sentences and so on, and and get a picture of how they're being used in uh yeah, in context and because we get how things are positioned grammatically can tell you a lot about how people think about particular concepts. But I just had a really quick look at the at chemical as a noun in the British National Corpus, and there are 4,830 occurrences of that noun, which isn't very many really in a corpus of over a hundred million words. But what was interesting was seeing what words are used to modify that noun to describe it. And I wonder if you could guess Chris what the top hit is. So what what word do you think is most often used to describe chemicals?

Chris: 35:36

I'd say if it was from today's language, I'd probably say toxic or something like that.

Joanna: 35:42

Yeah, yeah, spot on. Yeah. Yeah. So toxic is used to m to describe, you know, as in toxic chemicals 84 times amongst that 4,830. Um so I then went, I thought, oh, that's really interesting. That's what I thought too. So I then went and looked at an even bigger corpus and uh and it's much more up to date. So this is the N101021 corpus. This is over 52 billion words that were gathered from the internet between 2020 and 2021. It's an interesting data set because it's massive, but it's also quite a noisy data set. So it's just scraped language from the internet. There's quite a bit of mistakes and noisy data in it. It's only one year, and it's so huge, massively ranging, that it's quite a messy data set from our point of view. However, it's still fascinating. I looked in the N101021 corpus, and there are just under two and a half million occurrences there of the noun chemicals, and once again, toxic is the top uh modifier. There's 55,442 instances of toxic chemicals in one year on the internet. Um, I found that really interesting. So there's clearly not been a great deal of change between the early 1990s and 2021. Um, do you want to know the other ones? The top ten?

Chris: 37:13

Well, I gotta just comment, yeah, toxic. I mean, I suppose it they're not incorrect because all chemicals are toxic. That's just a fact. It's but it is the dose that makes the poison. I have to get that one in. But yeah, carry on.

Joanna: 37:26

So um we have so toxic is in first place, other is in second place, that's a pretty neutral term, just other chemicals. Then we have harmful, hazardous, harsh, dangerous, industrial, certain and many, again, quite neutral, and then synthetic. And uh what I found was really interesting, so the great thing about the N101021 corpus is that it's tagged for the kind of domain of experience where this language came from. So we've there's I can't remember how many tags there are now, I'd have to look it up. But there's things like news websites, beauty and cosmetics, science and technical writing, home and family. So most of the corpus is organized, so you can actually see where this language is being produced. And what I found really interesting was that all of the neutral terms, so other certain, many, and industrial, were all concentrated in science and technology writing. So clearly people with expertise, with that bit of wider knowledge, are using much more neutral language to talk about chemicals. The really negative terms like toxic, harmful, hazardous, harsh, they were concentrated in home and family, beauty and fashion. So it's clear then that when the concept of chemicals is being talked about as an everyday product that people are buying to use in their homes, on their hair, on their faces, that's where public concern really kind of shows itself and it's much more negatively evaluated. Um, so that tells us so much about what just a little bit of knowledge can do to how you perceive chemicals. Where, you know, and of course, you as an expert immediately chime in, well, yes, strictly speaking, they are all toxic, but it depends on, you know, and you have that knowledge, so you have a much more neutral, balanced, measured understanding. But us that you have this issue of hypocognition where the the you know, the vast majority of the general public have very, very limited knowledge about chemicals and how they work and what they are. That's where you get yeah, negative perception, distrust, greenwashing again, you know, when you get kind of chemical free as a claim on a on a shampoo bottle or something. And that stuff's allowed. To thrive because people don't know any better and they're already suspicious and already fearful.

Chris: 40:05

Yeah, I've definitely noticed that that's where a lot of the fear well, yeah, there's a real fear component with chemicals, isn't there? Because it is something that's hard to understand. You can't see them, you know that they're out there in the environment, you're afraid that they could cause you harm because you're reading things about them. I wonder if you can comment also. So I I've heard it in the past that chemicals is described as the it's sort of the Cinderella of environmental concerns, in that you know, it seems to be the thing that you know when people do get engaged with it, they get really, really energized about it, but they perhaps there is that low level of engagement, and actually, is that also linked to hypocognition that people just can't get their heads around it so they can't be bothered and they just get disengaged from it?

Joanna: 40:59

Yeah, I think they'll either get disengaged from it or will have quite a simplistic black and white attitude towards it. So you see so many adverts, such and such a product doesn't have any of those nasty chemicals in it, um, those harsh chemicals. And that is so lazy that description of a material or a product, and yet people are satisfied by it because it fits their existing point of view. So you have that element of confirmation bias as well, is that if you have an existing frame of chemicals, which is they are all bad, they are all negative, no matter in what dose, no matter in what form, then you will, as a human being, naturally only notice messages and language that confirm that. It's much harder to get people to see things completely afresh or from a completely new perspective. That's a huge challenge. Because most of the language that they're encountering day-to-day is just reinforcing the knowledge frames that they already have. Um and we get these big cultural narratives that just get perpetuated and perpetuated because the core frames never change. If a company sees that somebody else's marketing campaign has been successful, if they're claiming there are no nasty chemicals in our shampoo, for example, then they will m more than likely copy it or do something very similar and play into that wider cultural way of seeing things instead of doing something radical and new and experimental, which has a much higher risk factor.

Chris: 42:37

Oh yeah, they take the easy shortcuts. Yeah, because people are looking for trusted authorities to point them in the right direction and give them the give them the answer, essentially. But I guess that's how we end up with trust being degraded and we get a little bit in the situation that we are now where we don't know whether up is down and you know, polarized beyond belief.

Joanna: 42:59

Yeah, we had the same it we we came across exactly the same problem when we did our project on plastics, which was you know, people wanting to go plastic free, and that's become such a buzz phrase and seen such as a positive thing um amongst sustainably minded people. But when you actually confront people with the reality of okay, plastic free, so then take off your jumper, you can take off your glasses, get rid of your laptop, that's plastic too, your smartphone out of the window. And people don't actually have that depth of understanding of the amount of plastic they actually use in their everyday lives and where it can be found, and that you know, plastic has many different forms and many different uses, and we can interact with it in lots of different ways that aren't necessarily all as disastrous for the environment as throwing away a plastic wrapper, for example. It's that kind of complexity of understanding and knowledge that's the key, but how we achieve that is such a huge challenge.

Chris: 44:06

Yes, and I've seen that plastic debate evolve over the last f few years, you know, a short amount of time uh to kind of absorb the issue of chemicals and sort of become enmeshed with it because people have started talking about the additives that are used in plastic because a piece of plastic is not just a polymer, but it's all the additives that you put into it to give it the specific properties, and yeah, there's been a lot of discussion going on about what are these additives, you know, who's keeping track of them, are they being used responsibly, are they causing problems for the environment? So, yeah, I it's an interesting one because uh yeah, plastic is such a hot topic right now, but you do have these kind of pockets of uh you know different opinions that are often very strongly contrasting, but also do seem well-founded and legitimate. So it's a real challenging one to kind of navigate.

Joanna: 45:06

Yeah, one of the things that we were campaigning quite hard for at the end of Many Happy Returns, and we continue to is trying to get people to see plastic as a precious earth resource, something that you know it's taken a considerable amount of energy and an environmental impact to produce. So now it's out there and it's never gonna go away. You need to look after it and you need to use it as many times as you possibly can in order to minimize that impact. Rather than seeing plastic as, well, I mean, the words that are associated mainly with plastic are things like cheap, rubbish, crap, you know, and and that's a real problem if that's how people see plastic and they have this negative reaction to it, how are you ever going to convince them that they need to cherish it, wash it, keep it, reuse it, repurpose it? And it's a similar thing with chemicals. So, you know, kind of how can we start talking about chemicals in a way that adds some complexity and a better understanding of what chemicals are, where they come from, how they are used, um, so that we can improve on that situation where they're simply uh they all they do is get a negative reaction uh and and people then either avoid talking about it or make, you know, inaccurate claims about it. It's about reframing chemicals as something often essential, um, you know, something that it is part of our kind of everyday lives, and that it requires a nuanced understanding before you can make any judgments about whether they're good or bad. Um and the current kind of black and white discourse, it's all toxic, it's all harsh, it's all hazardous, isn't helpful.

Chris: 46:54

Yeah, and I was thinking about the list of terms that you or the words that you gave earlier, and synthetic was the last one I think that you mentioned. Um that's often used as a kind of distinguishing aspect in terms of distinguishing a good chemical from a bad chemical because people say, well, there are not lots of natural chemicals, I mean everything's made of chemicals, right? So so the fact that something's natural doesn't necessarily mean that it's good or that it's safe. And your podcast about the relationship between humans and the environment got me thinking about this, and because the more I think about it, the less of a clear line it is to call something synthetic and therefore you know something other. Because it it are they not simply sort of extensions of our tool making behaviour and our technology that we've developed over time? You know, you can trace this back to the early days where we were perhaps beginning to cook with fire and or smelting metal and things like that, right?

Joanna: 47:59

So imagine if you served a a meal to your dinner guests and said, Here's your synthetic dinner with all the additives that I put in it. You know, what do you mean by an additive? What do we mean by synthetic? You know, and it these words become, yeah, like you say, kind of lazy shortcuts to just a negative perception. Um, and actually you know, we need to be framing these things much more carefully to overcome those reactions, I think.

Chris: 48:28

Yeah, yeah, and in that connectedness to or being part of the environment, I think we often think about ourselves as almost kind of like closed vessels that kind of move through the world and don't really exchange with it, you know, or want to keep out, we want to keep germs out, we want to keep, you know, anything out that we wouldn't necessarily want, and we don't really realise that we're kind of constantly exchanging you know, through breathing, through our excretions, through the food and water that we drink, and then even, you know, we're not even a single organism. We have a microbiome that lives on our skin and in our gut and things like that. So yeah, uh it does become quite a rabbit hole to go down when you start thinking about it. But I think that's part of it as well. People don't see themselves as part of the environment, and so to what extent should we consider the society that we've built, including all of the chemical technology, an extension of ourselves and part of the environment?

Joanna: 49:28

Yeah, well, we created it, so you know, it is an extension of us. But you're right that most of the way that we talk about ourselves and our bodies in particular is is yeah, as closed-off containers. That's a really kind of common uh way of framing our embodied experience in the world that we are yeah, individual, discrete containers. Things come in, things go out, um, but you you have boundaries and you're cut off from the rest of the world to an extent. And and there are good reasons for that, you know, and it that's to do with our how we experience the world from when we're babies. You know, we we put things in our mouths, we excrete things, we and we also see other things around us acting as containers and objects in the same way, and we base our understanding on that. And that's just how we grow up and how we evolve as adults and human beings. But yeah, uh equipping people with a more complex understanding of themselves and their bodies can really challenge that perception, um, and could be the basis of a new way of talking about our relationship with the environment. Mm-hmm.

Chris: 50:34

Yeah, and another thing that's kind of occurred to me in recent years is that we're kind of almost we're we're sort of and I feel that this has been brought on a little bit by the sustainability kind of shift because of other things that have led us, most notably climate change, that's led us to think about well, how can we have a more sort of circular economy and reduce our kind of linear, kind of make, use, dispose um kind of approach. But that has really come come to the chemicals world in a big way because a lot of the decisions that we took when we decided what we would do about chemicals and how we would manage them was very much from a kind of linear, linear sort of mindset and also something of what's called a risk, a risk-based approach. I don't know if you're familiar, but you know, we have risk assessment, so we sort of tried to see how toxic a chemical is, and then we tried to understand how much of that chemical might end up in a certain place or situation, or you know, a certain receptor person or an animal, and determine whether one was likely to be higher than the other, and therefore that you might see an effect, you know, a detrimental effect on an ecosystem or on a population. And that was the kind of basis by which we set up the whole game of chemicals, and it seems to be almost being there's a sort of a revisiting being triggered, and that perhaps is in part because of an increased public awareness and interest in the environment. Because I see things in the media, for instance, where people are kind of kind of outraged that there are chemicals out there or that chemicals can get into drinking water, but you know, that's something that the experts of you know from across industry, government, academia have all kind we've all kind of known, you know, we've all kind of said, okay, but we're developing and that's good. Whereas now it's almost like people the chickens are coming home to roost, in that it's a second time I've used that analogy in consecutive podcasts, but you know, that people say, Oh, hang on a minute, and we don't like this. And you know, I've also heard it described as even kind of a colonial act that chemicals get emitted into the environment, you know, because of someone else's made the decision that it's of benefit. So it does seem that the people who let's say the old guard who had the risk assessment concept, they're all kind of they don't really know how to engage with this discussion because they're so taken aback by what's happening and they can't understand where this is coming from. And in some ways, it's you know, it's sort of crept up and no one's been articulating the precepts for what got us to where we are today.

Joanna: 53:24

I think there's always going to be a time lag, isn't there, between you know technological innovation and the general public catching up with that kind of knowledge and if and if you know this the sort of shift in thinking that you're talking about could take decades for everybody else to get their heads around. Um, but we need to make sure that we're making an effort to do that. I mean, and and people can do it. People can completely shift how they think about their behaviour and how they interact with one another. I mean, you only need to look at how our behaviour changed during COVID, for example. In a pretty short space of time, um, you know, uh we radically changed how we behave in communities and individually and environmentally and so on. The same thing happened during wartime when you think of the kind of reuse, repair, repurpose culture that really flourished during the Second World War. So those changes are possible. It is possible to to really shift how people see themselves and how they behave and the choices that they make, but it requires a concerted, consistent effort across an organization or industry or culture to achieve that.

Chris: 54:42

Yeah, and is that is it a cultural shift, do you think that how is the best way to bring about that kind of education and yeah, yeah, I I get the sense that kind of top-down approaches are kind of out the window now in the in the you know, kind of this there's so little trust in authority these days, um and a lot of you know people kind of just giving up on on on and and you know, with with with global politics and global events, people are getting quite pessimistic in general, and there's also things like cost of living that's impacting people, and they're kind of saying, Oh, to hell with it all. Um so yeah, I mean that's it's all sounds quite bleak, but do you do you have any thoughts on how we could redress that?

Joanna: 55:35

I think you're right. I think there is a bit of an end-of-days mentality at the moment, isn't there, that's that's a challenge. But um, I I mean, uh this may be changing, but some fairly recent research has shown, for example, in eco-labelling, that people have the greatest trust in eco-labels that are backed up by um governmental or official bodies. So even though people might express distrust of organisations or government or that kind of thing um quite a bit these days, the research to date has shown that that's not being played out in their choices and behaviour. So, you know, uh an eco-label that is nationwide backed up by some kind of official organisation is much more likely to have positive evaluation and compliance um in the general public than one that's just kind of made up by a particular company. So, and again, I would come back to that what we started with at the beginning of the podcast about knowing what your aims and your purpose are. So, you know, if you're trying to just control what somebody does with something when they're finished using it, then you need really clear, quite brief, directive language. It doesn't matter, you know, it people don't want to know at that point what something's made of, how it was produced or anything. They just want to know what to do with it. However, if you're giving essential information perhaps to do with hazard or risk, then you know, that also needs to be clearly expressed and articulated, but can be slightly more complex. The the the key thing I think in terms of changing mindsets and changing cultures is the much more extended language that we can use in different contexts like on websites, in marketing campaigns, on social media, and that's the stuff that really starts to shift people's thinking. And we note that different forms of language are effective in different situations. So for example, we know in giving instruction negated language can be really effective. So do not put this in your compost bin, for example, is much more likely to get a piece of compostable material in the right place than you know, if you frame that positively, for example, place with household waste. So telling people not to do things is easier to understand than telling them to do things, interestingly. But positive language, aspirational language, is much more effective in building a brand, in inspiring people, in convincing people that an overall um movement or message is of value. So, you know, that you're this is why it's so essential to tailor make your language to the situation, because the language that you use will be different depending on what you're trying to achieve.

Chris: 58:51

No, that's really interesting. I can totally see how the different framing could be important there. I guess now we're in the digital age and even the AI age, this potential to convey more information without needing everything to go slapped on a label of a product or in a massive manual that gets shipped with the product is probably a good thing. Do you do you have any more thoughts about how AI and social media might sort of combine with all of this or is already combining with all of this?

Joanna: 59:23

Uh yeah, thoughts on AI. I have thoughts on AI and what it's doing to language, particularly online, um, because the you know, increasingly the language that we encounter online is just AI slop, you know, and it's interestingly in my own field of of research has had a big impact. So we, you know, we can no longer rely actually on you know the N1010 corpus in 2021. It was probably the last moment where that sort of language could be considered to be an accurate representation of human language use, because now so much online. Languages AI generated, we can't be sure what we're looking at anymore. So, yeah, I have some quite strong opinions on AI. And that and again, that's something that you're up against, is is you know, one thing we s definitely know as linguists is that it's very difficult to control people's language use. Um you know, attempts have been made over centuries to prescribe the language we use, how we spell it, you know, you'll remember being corrected for poor grammar in school and all of that kind of thing. And we know that most of those efforts at prescription just don't work. So I think the way that social media um can be harnessed is by recognising what current trends are gaining traction that have positive association and trying to, you know, yeah, use those to your advantage as far as possible, I think. Some companies are really good at doing that, they see a trend and hop on the back of it, or they shape trends themselves, that's much more difficult. Um but for me, you know, AI is another danger to clear communication, yeah.

Chris: 01:01:17

And it's gonna degrade people's ability to really emote with language and communicate beyond conveyance of grey information, I imagine. Yeah. And maybe that'll be a dividing line between there'll be this abundance of grey information and that we'll be information already even more information rich than we are today, for useful information, and then there'll be a separate kind of appreciation perhaps for the beauty of language and a separate space for that. I don't know.

Joanna: 01:01:53

Lets hope so.

Chris: 01:01:54

Oh gosh, yeah. Um yeah, well, thank you for this, Joanna. This has been a really fascinating discussion with you, and uh I knew it would be, and I'm sure we could talk for hours about this. I guess one thing that kind of came to me when we were talking about the use of language and and in particular around chemicals, is that my sense is that chemicals was one of those areas that kind of bumbled along out of the public eye, and we had all this development and we enjoyed all the benefits of that, but something has happened and that things are coming under a lot more scrutiny, and also a lot of the old assumptions are either being challenged or have not been adequately communicated to um the right people. Um, and I also get the sense that because of that, there's been a kind of an assailance kind of mindset of the chemicals industry, it's kind of being defensive, it's looking to kind of just bound down the hatches and and mitigate, you know, some of the policy pain that's already baked in. And so, but hearing from you that you know there's a need to kind of motivate people as well, rather than just kind of wag fingers and say, no, you're wrong. Maybe there is an inspiring message in there as well that brings people back to thinking about the benefits of things, or that you know, perhaps there may be some some drawbacks to the direction that we seem to be barreling forward uh towards. Um, so yeah, but I'm I'm sure I'll ponder this more after our discussion and yeah, we'll see we'll see how things unfold. So, with that, Joanna, I just want to thank you. I normally ask two rapid fire questions before we close. So the first one is what is the big goal that you're working towards in the coming months?

Joanna: 01:03:42

Oh, okay, yeah, releasing some training materials for businesses and organizations on how to communicate effectively. It is based very much on bio-based and biodegradable materials, but they should be applicable across lots of different contexts. And I would say as well that the report that's released next week, I'm hoping that your podcast viewers and listeners will find things in there that they can see you know apply much more broadly.

Chris: 01:04:11

Oh no, that's that sounds fantastic. Yeah, I look forward to seeing some of that material. I think there'll be some really relevant and unique insights in there, so that sounds great. And then also, if you had one piece of advice that you'd give either to yourself or somebody else starting out in their career, what would it be?

Joanna: 01:04:30

Oh goodness. Um just stay open-minded. Yeah, I've been doing my job for 25 years, but the work that I've done most recently on sustainability came along in the last ten years, and I couldn't have imagined myself doing this stuff ten years ago, and actually it's been the most rewarding work of my career. To keep your mind open.

Chris: 01:04:55

That's really good advice. Okay, well thanks thanks so much, Joanna, and thanks to everybody who's been listening. Your time's really precious, and so I'm really glad that you've spent it with us. If you've enjoyed this, please like, comment, subscribe, and share this episode with people that you work with, your friends and family. If you've enjoyed it, do go look back to all the previous episodes of the past year as well, because I hope that you'll find other really interesting conversations and insights in there. Uh so thanks very much, Joanna.

Joanna: 01:05:28

Thank you, Chris.

Chris: 01:05:29

Take care.