Discursive construction of environmental sustainability in the 2024 Indonesian presidential debate: Critical discourse and ecolinguistic analysis

Abstract

Background: Environmental sustainability has emerged as a contested discursive arena within Indonesia’s contemporary political communication, particularly during the 2024 presidential debates where competing visions of development, ecological ethics, and national progress converge. This study examines how sustainability is linguistically constructed and ideologically negotiated through an integrated framework combining Critical Discourse Analysis and ecolinguistics. Drawing on a corpus of official debate transcripts, the research analyzes lexical patterns, metaphors, narrative structures, and discursive strategies that shape competing sustainability imaginaries. Methods: Quantitative corpus mapping identifies the prominence of key environmental lexemes, while qualitative interpretation reveals how technocratic and justice-oriented discourses legitimize divergent pathways toward ecological transition. Findings: The findings indicate that sustainability is predominantly framed through technocratic modernization narratives, with hilirisasi functioning as a master signifier that aligns environmental rhetoric with economic rationality. In contrast, agrarian and ethical discourses introduce counter-narratives grounded in stewardship, moral accountability, and socio-ecological justice. These discursive tensions demonstrate how political language actively shapes sustainability governance by influencing policy legitimacy, public imagination, and the perceived boundaries of environmental action. Conclusion: The study concludes that sustainability within the debates operates simultaneously as ideological performance and governance narrative, reflecting broader struggles between neoliberal developmentalism and ecological ethics in the Global South. Novelty/Originality of this article: By integrating CDA and ecolinguistic perspectives, this research advances critical sustainability discourse studies and highlights the importance of linguistically informed approaches to environmentally responsible political communication.