COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesKey themes emerged from our literature search: individual focus, middle class target audience, shock tactics, andtop-down approach For the purpose of the conference, we gave an example of a chapter from a UK governmentreport on sustainability, Helping people make better choices (DEFRA, 2005), a government-sponsored televisionadvert developed by ACT ON CO2 called Bedtime stories (October 2009), and an advert developed by anindependent climate change organisation, The Energy Savings Trust, called Meet Dave (September 2009).The DEFRA text demonstrated how language and lexical choices are utilised in climate crisis communication, andhow individual, middle class focus is constructed and reinforced. Investigating the usage of ‘we’ in the DEFRAdocument revealed that in total the word appeared 36 times. At the beginning, there were 20 instances of ‘we’ inthe first three pages, whereas in the latter half of the document the highest frequency ‘we’ was three on one page(see figure 1.). Literature suggests that the repeated presence of this pronoun can communicate commonalityand communality whilst also refutation and authority (Helmbrecht, 2002). Accordingly, proposals that focused ongroup interests opened the document. As the reader progresses through the document, the message becomesmore individual- and government-focused with only tokenistic references to community.Figure 1. The frequency of ‘we’ in Helping people make better choicesFrequency8765432101 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18PageThe use of 'we'Thus, it was clear that the writer was trying to achieve a sense of collaboration and community support at the startof the document, to lure the reader in, implying an inclusive agenda. Inclusive ‘we’ personalises the text, with afriendly, ‘intimate’ tone forming a bond between writer and reader (Inigo-Mora, 2004). In comparison exclusive‘we’, referring solely to the writer and persons associated with the writer (ibid., 2004), was used through the restof the paper.To demonstrate the theme of the individual and middle class focus the Energy Savings Trust advert was shown.The house interior and its animated character ‘Dave’ represented middle class stereotypes. For example, ‘Dave’wears a v-neck jumper, shirt and tie, and spectacles, and the interior of the house had patterned wallpaper,wooden floors, and items such as video games, music stereo and hair dryer. The message was for individuals in56