ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors take up critical language awareness theme to consider the ways in which language is used to shape public awareness of key social issues such as sustainability and democracy. They demonstrate how the concepts such words represent and the associations between these and other ideas are not given, but are the result of prolonged and occasionally intense processes of negotiation. Such negotiation takes place amongst diverse groups and interests within government and the civic sphere and is played out across various media. The authors consider some examples of contested ideological meaning within the civil sphere and between the civil sphere and politicians. They draw heavily, but in different ways, on the theoretical concept of hegemony, most famously developed by the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. The authors describe the semiotic processes of dismantling, transforming and restructuring the socio-political and economic status quo.
