The language of environmental and social accounting research: The expression of beauty and truth

This paper develops an accountability vision using Hans-Georg Gadamer's (1975a) Truth and Method and Charles Taylor's (2016) The Language Animal and A Secular Age (2007). The paper argues accountability to beauty and nature is important to emancipating accountability, enabling the creation of a richer, encompassing narrative that is relevant to the public, with no special priority assumed for investors and creditors. The paper critiques accounting researchers' use of the methods of the natural sciences advocating 'correspondence to some presumed reality' over and against a more 'interpretivist' and mature view that truth is a property of language (see, Taylor, 2016). A transformation in accounting involves narrating and reporting corporate impacts on the natural environment while recognizing that corporate language perpetuates the logic of that particular social sphere. Through an evaluative reformulation of accounting the designative, instrumental and neoliberal framework is criticised for ignoring concepts such as beauty, intrinsic value and truth. The paper aligns with the hermeneutic-interpretivist tradition developed by Gadamer and Taylor through expressive language whether in the form of written words, speech or images to convey that nature is more than a standing reserve for consumption.