Inclusion of the Plant Kingdom in Communication About Reforesting

This chapter presents some of the results from a research project on the way in which plant beings – forests, in particular – are present in communications from organizations, in the specific case of organizations devoted to promoting reforesting. It also presents a multimodal semiotic analysis of the strategic communication developed in support of reforestation projects. The chapter focuses on a French organization which is particularly prominent in the field: Reforest'Action, which has enacted thousands of reforesting projects all over the world. Humans and ecosystems are obviously the main beneficiaries of the actions of the enterprise, which clearly sets out the cascade of benefits which come from its reforestation activities. A fertile field for the study of communicational and organizational practices surrounding reforestation is open to researchers in discourse science and information and communication sciences, to identify the discursive forms in which trees and forests are mobilized in speaking about reforestation.