This paper questions the discourse and rhetoric produced by ecological economics through the scientific production published in the eponym journal since its creation in 1989. I used methods of discourse analysis (Alceste and Iramuteq), on 15 241 abstracts of papers published in interdisciplinary, economic, and ecological journals printed between 1990 and April 2013. Results suggest the ecological economics discourse and the environmental economics discourse are getting closer across time. The semantic classification of cooccurrent terms used in Ecological Economics indicates a growing significance of the notion of ecosystem services, and of monetary valuation rhetoric in the recent period. I present the case against such a merger and conclude by emphasizing the need for to put this issue up for discussion within the community.