Making Truth EcoCommunication in the Anthropocene

The pursuit of truth is of crucial importance in environmentalism. How can we establish shared realities that encompass biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollutions that disrupt essential ecosystems? Taking signs and repetitions as a point of departure, Eva Lilja and Mona Lilja suggest a range of basic communicative practices that could be the foundation of a semiotics of sustainability. Their book aims for an in-depth exploration of eco-strategies and expands on how we could – perhaps even should – communicate sustainability issues. Homing in on problems related to communication, Making Truth probes into the role of signs, the importance of reality effects, repetitions, scripts, emotions, and strategies of (de)politicization.

Eva Lilja is Professor emerita of Literature at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Lilja wrote the official Swedish handbook in metrics. In her latest book Rhythm in Modern Poetry (2024) she develops the theory of cognitive poetics. Lilja specializes in meaning-making processes of rhythm and signification.

Mona Lilja currently serves as a Professor in Peace and Development Research at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and as the Head of Department at the Department of Global Political Studies at Malmö University. Lilja’s area of interest is the linkages between resistance and social change as well as the particularities – the character and emergence – of various forms of resistance.