Watts Up? A Multilingual, Terminological and Semantic Analysis of Energy Community Discourses

Mariangela Albano

;Simona Maria Cocco

;Olga Denti

;Michela Giordano

;Emma Lupano

2025-01-01

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Abstract

This paper describes a research project that analyses the role of Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) as novel models of participatory energy governance and their potential to acti-vate virtuous social processes at the local level. The investigation specifically focuses on the hermeneutics of territory, examining how RECs perceive and represent the landscape and natural heritage across diverse geographical ar-eas: Sardinia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain. The methodology combines quantitative corpus analysis (us-ing the software Sketch Engine) with qualitative semantic-terminological analysis of web pages and social media. The objective is to study the role of terminological neologisms, in-tercultural variations, and ecolinguistics (including conceptual metaphors) related to sustainability in the different languages (Chinese, French, English, Italian, and Spanish). The findings offer insights into the lexical variability of envi-ronmental concepts, identifying emerging patterns within REC terminology that reflect broader societal shifts toward sustain-able practices.