Relationality and Posthuman Motoring in Human-generated and Non-human EV Discourse in Australia
Relationality and Posthuman Motoring in Human-generated and Non-human EV Discourse in Australia

Summary/Abstract: Cultural attitudes towards electromobility and electric vehicles (EVs, hereafter) can be traced by investigating the discursive features of available written texts. Wodak and Meyer (2001) structure discourses according to the complexity of knowledge from which they arise. Against this theoretical background, the paper presents a sampled discursive analysis of a small, randomly selected EV-themed corpus of e.g. official documents, car magazines, car brochures, AI-generated content, internet webpages, etc. While the global transition to zero-emission mobility appears inevitable, it is language that shapes relational opinions and attitudes. The collected texts show the relational impact of EV-themed narratives on the wide group of EV stakeholders in the posthuman era of car development. Context is crucial in discourse analysis because it reflects the social situation and employs different types of language use, e.g. newspaper discourse, advertising discourse, legal or administrative discourse. The research sample, however, has to be narrowed down to show one aspect or a few in order to demonstrate the status of knowledge on the subject or show the style in which knowledge is conveyed to the recipients or at least to initiate a change in thinking. Australian EV-themed discursive samples can be categorized into three, partly overlapping, groups – prescriptive, descriptive and persuasive. Relationality as a concept and model, presented on the prescriptive, descriptive and persuasive model in the contemporary motoring may be adopted in different discursive areas affected by posthumanism.

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