Affiliation:
1. Østfold University College
2. University of Gothenburg
Abstract
Abstract
Analyses on news media data in Conceptual Metaphor Theory have highlighted several frequent metaphors used to
understand climate change including climate change is conflict. This article analyses the frequency of that conceptual
metaphor in a corpus of UK parliamentary debates on climate change. The language of political decision-makers is important to
scrutinise because this group have the social and legislative power needed to deal with the issue. Our analysis shows the
conceptual metaphor itself, and all three of its most frequent linguistic realisations (‘challenge,’ ‘impact,’ ‘tackle’),
increased in use between 2015 and 2019. Additionally, three notable semantic and pragmatic trends were observed: first, apparently
little recognition of human behaviour as a cause of climate change; second, a narrative of Us/People vs Climate Change; and third,
that political decision-makers are taking climate change increasingly seriously. Some of these findings challenge existing
knowledge and thus beg questions that require future research efforts.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Sociology and Political Science,History