The discourse of minimalist lifestyle: A corpus-based approach

The climate crisis era has seen an upsurge in popular cultural narratives that implicitly challenge principles of economic productivity, consumption and growth by deploring a so-called 'world of too much'. This article discusses minimalism as examples of anti-consumer-oriented social practices and investigates how the notion of minimalism is represented in a large corpus of English language blogs. The research employs the corpus-linguistics approach of critical discourse analysis. The article argues that discourse of minimalism is paradoxical in that it resists yet at the same time promotes capitalist cultures of growth. In a broader perspective, it constitutes a niche and subversive phenomenon efficiently integrated into the market logic that is seemingly contested by minimalists. On the other hand, it cannot be discredited as a means towards redefining oneself and form of individual conversion. It can result in a new sensitivity to the challenges of late modernity.