ABSTRACT
Comparisons to food have become a theme in the promotional material of companies working in Alberta’s oil sands, with the products compared to yogurt, cupcakes, coffee, and peanut butter. Multimodal and semiotic analysis reveals two figures performing rhetorical work in the sample of four ads, with the intended effect of producing positive emotional associations with oil-sands products. Since the associations are related to food, the goal is seemingly to domesticate the oil sands in the eyes of a public still weighing the benefits of development. This study reveals domestication as a rhetorical strategy within visual environmental communication and food as a ‘nature’ image which can be co-opted for the purposes of greenwashing.
