The Special Interest Group is home to a diverse group of enthusiastic scholars, citizen linguists, teachers and students, working within the tradition of systemic functional semiotics. We collectively seek to understand, promote and raise awareness of the specific functions of language and other semiotic resources to express peace, compassion and empathy in everyday life and in other theatres of social engagement.

Publications and presentations | Vision Statement | Mission Statement | Glossary | SIG Meetings

PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

The PCE SIG wishes to acknowledge Professor Jim Martin and his foundational thinking on positive discourse analysis, first published in his 2004 article ‘Positive Discourse Analysis: Solidarity and change’, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 49:179-200, that makes this work of the SIG possible.

WEBINARS

The first webinar for 2026 (From shock to peaceful action) analysed a significant example of positive discourse, Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 address to Indianapolis voters on the day of his brother’s assassination.

The next webinar is on identities in climate discourse:

Deniers deny, believers believe and delayers delay – or do they?

Date: 17 September 2026, 4 pm Sydney time

Presenter: Ben Clarke, Senior Lecturer, University of Gothenburg

[Registration link to come]

Many scholars argue that issues relating to communication are an important component of understanding the environmental crises (Boykoff, 2011; Stibbe, 2021), “as much […] a problem of discourse” as of ethics or epistemology (Killingsworth & Palmer, 1992: 6). At the same time, public discussions relating to such crises have become increasingly polarised (Chinn et al., 2020), perhaps in part because of our media (ibid) and with effects that are apparent to see in our politics.

In this paper, I analyse three identity labels relating to climate change: ‘denier’, ‘believer’ and ‘delayer’. The former two are used to refer to those, respectively, who are deeply sceptical as to whether the earth’s climate is warming at an unprecedented rate, likely influenced by human activity, and those strongly convinced of this state-of-affairs. They are well established, for example within a wider frame of climate change as a religion (Woods et al, 2012). In contrast, the term ‘delayer’ has emerged in recent years, to refer to those who accept climate change science but who are disinclined for necessary action to be taken to address the issue. The data as the basis for the analysis is a corpus of all reader comments posted on The Guardian Online’s ‘climate crisis’ (previously ‘climate change’) section, from 2007 until April 2023 (see Clarke & Thompson, 2025). 

The analysis conducted is made up of two main parts, each informed by SFL frameworks, specifically transitivity (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) and the appraisal sub-system of engagement (Martin & White, 2005): (i) a conceptual analysis and (ii) an empirical emic, meta-pragmatic analysis.

The results show that all three identity labels are used by the discourse community as symbols of discursive struggle. For example, although a conceptual analysis of ‘believers’ according to the aforementioned tools would predict referents presented as engaging in internal mental activity and being open to alternative stances in the discoursesphere, rarely are they depicted as such by The Guardian Online’s readers; more often, these users represent ‘believers’ as Sayers of verbal activity with contractive dialogic engagement.

REFERENCES

Boykoff, M. T. (2011). Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chinn, S., Hart, P. S., & Soroka, S. (2020). Politicization and polarization in climate change news content, 1985-2017. Science Communication, 42(1), 112-129.

Clarke, B., & Thompson, W. H. (2025). Fast and furious: Temporal patterns of incivility in online comments. New Media & Society.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. (2014). Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. 4^th edition. London: Routledge.

Killingsworth, M. J., & Palmer, J. S. (1992). How to save the earth: The greening of instrumental discourse. Written Communication, 9(3), 385-403.

Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. (2003). The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Stibbe, A. (2021). Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live by. 2^nd edition. London: Routledge.

Woods, R., Fernández, A., & Coen, S. (2012). ‘The use of religious metaphors by UK newspapers to describe and denigrate climate change’. Public Understanding of Science, 21(3), 323-339.

Webinars usually run from 4pm-5.30pm Australian Eastern Standard time. However, we can be flexible to accommodate speakers either in different time zones or with conflicting obligations. Do you have a topic you would like to present to our group? Proposals welcome any time: see contacts below.

Past webinars and reading groups

We are committed to sharing findings on the semiotics of peace, compassion and empathy to the wider community (see our Mission Statement) and are keen to connect with research that aims to use, critique and develop our understanding of the social semiotics of peace, compassion and empathy within the tradition of Systemic Functional Linguistics.

SPCE SIG press, papers and publications

Etaywe, Awni. 2025. Violent extremists wield words as weapons. New study reveals 6 tactics they use. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/violent-extremists-wield-words-as-weapons-new-study-reveals-6-tactics-they-use-266053 (19 November 2025)

Etaywe, Awni. 2025. “Experts”, Mornings with Rick Hind, ABC Darwin. Radio. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/darwin-mornings/mornings/105742772. (12 September, 2025).

Language abuse in Trump’s second term: why peace, compassion and empathy matter more than ever, April 2025, in John Menadue’s public policy journal Pearls and Irritations.

Special Issue: The Social Semiotics of Peace, Compassion and Empathy. Language, Context and Text, special issue 6.1

ISFC49 Conference Harmony, Compassion and Empowerment:

• Keynote Empathic listening as a resource for enriching life: A systemic functional perspective (A/Prof Elizabeth Thomson);
• Keynote Navigating compassion development in digital activism through moral affiliation enactivism (Dr Awni Etaywe)
• Colloquium ‘Linguistics as social action: SFL scholar-activism’:
  • Letters to government that are successful in bringing about change (Shooshi Dreyfus & Joshua Han);
  • Bearing witness: social semiotic perspectives on animal vigils outside slaughterhouses (Daniel Lees Fryer); and
  • Perspectives on compassion in digital activism: Ideal victim or systemic compassion (Dr Awni Etaywe & Penny Wheeler)

ASFLA 2023 Conference: Dr Awni Etaywe

ASFLA 2022 Conference: Colloquium, The semiotics of peace, compassion and empathy in our changing world; pre-conference workshop by A/Prof Elizabeth Thomson, ‘Building Resilience Using the Semiotics of Empathy‘, drawing on and extending on a foundation of Marshall Rosenberg’s work on non-violent communication. (Video overview)

OpenLearning mini-course Connecting through talk: introduction, Elizabeth A Thomson

Reference list for works investigating peace, compassion and empathy

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VISION STATEMENT

To empower and improve all lives, we examine and celebrate the semiotics of peace, compassion and empathy through collaboration and research, teaching and training.

Mission Statement

To realise our vision, we will:

• Identify, analyse and instantiate genres of peace, compassion and empathy
  – by, for example, reading, discussing and creating texts in different professional, disciplinary and community contexts
• Share our findings on the semiotics of peace, compassion and empathy
  – through research, conference sessions, special issues, community outreach and other means of dissemination
• Apply our findings to inform the development of curricula, courses, and training resources oriented towards the language and other semiotic resources of peace, compassion and empathy and mentor junior researchers and teachers in the implementation of these resources.
• Extend and help resource the work on meaning-making practices and the communication of peace, compassion and empathy
  – by, for example, mentoring junior colleagues, researchers, students, and communities in writing grant proposals; conducting linguistic/discourse/semiotic analyses; collaborating in research projects; hosting reading–writing groups
• Connect and collaborate with other disciplines, groups, organisations, and communities of practice that practise, research and promote peace, compassion and empathy 
• Provide professional commentary on matters relevant to public discourses of peace and compassion.

GLOSSARY

We are working towards a linguistic description and definition of each of these terms.

Peace – towards a linguistic description

Compassion – towards a linguistic description

Empathy – towards a linguistic description

SIG MEETINGS

The next general meeting for the SIG is:

• 18 June 2026

The next committee meeting is

• 30 April 2026

2025 SIG Committee

• SIG Convenor: Dr Elizabeth Thomson, Adjunct Professor, University of Wollongong
• Publications officer: Dr Ingrid Wijeyewardene, University of New England
• Research Communication and Social Media officer, Dr Awni Etaywe, Charles Darwin University

MEDIA INQUIRIES AND CONTACTS

For media inquiries or those seeking professional and research-based insights from the Special Interest Group, please get in touch with the SIG Convenor, Adjunct Professor Dr Elizabeth Thomson, who can be reached via email at ethomson15@gmail.com. She is available to provide expert commentary, resources, and engage in discussions on topics related to peace, compassion and empathy, and the group’s current initiatives. If needed, Dr Thomson can also direct you to other experts within the SIG.

The members of the SPCE SIG dedicate this work towards the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal number 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels