Contrasting the Reader Positioning Strategies in the Environmental Discourse of Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace France.

This paper examines differences in persuasive strategies in environmental activist campaign emails from Greenpeace UK (GR-UK) and Greenpeace France (GR-FR), focusing on how each positions the imagined reader in relation to the author. Analyzing 50 emails, the study finds that GR-UK adopts an "identifying" stance, portraying writer and reader as equals with shared roles and high affiliation, using inclusive pronouns, direct imperatives, and naming specific corporate targets. In contrast, GR-FR employs an "authoritative" stance, maintaining a clearer social distance by separating writer and reader roles, using exclusive pronouns, ventriloquized first-person directives, and more generalized references to third parties. These differences are linked to sociocultural norms influencing how each organization mobilizes readers toward environmental action, highlighting the interplay of linguistic features such as deny, counter, concur, pronoun use, and directive forms in constructing reader alignment and affiliation.