A climate for metaphors : an inquiry into the cognitive and discursive power of climate change metaphors, supported by a diachronic critical metaphor analysis of opinion articles published in three US newspapers
(2020) HEKM51 20191Human Ecology
- Abstract
- The news media remains as one of the most important sources of societal uptake of climate change information. Its potential to covertly shape public perception and attitudes regarding climate change is therefore considerable but difficult to assess. This thesis underscores the discursive and cognitive role of metaphor in this dynamic by using a framework that combines the theory of conceptual metaphor and the concept of generative metaphor, and by applying the method of critical metaphor analysis on a corpus of 300 opinion articles published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today during 2007 and 2017.
The findings indicate a significant clustering of metaphors drawing on the conceptual domains of war and journeys to... (More) - The news media remains as one of the most important sources of societal uptake of climate change information. Its potential to covertly shape public perception and attitudes regarding climate change is therefore considerable but difficult to assess. This thesis underscores the discursive and cognitive role of metaphor in this dynamic by using a framework that combines the theory of conceptual metaphor and the concept of generative metaphor, and by applying the method of critical metaphor analysis on a corpus of 300 opinion articles published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today during 2007 and 2017.
The findings indicate a significant clustering of metaphors drawing on the conceptual domains of war and journeys to metaphorically portray efforts to address climate change. This clustering is however not constant between the years, thus implying the presence of an underlying shift in climate change discourse. Metaphoric compounds such as ‘carbon market’, and metaphors of cleanliness are also found to be salient and diachronically significant in the corpus.
This thesis furthermore provides evidence of how the use of metaphors in the articles tacitly structure and sustain a recurring narrative based on non-zero-sum storylines of climate change mitigation, indicating thus a discursive affinity with the ideas of sustainable development and ecological modernization. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9003769
- author
- Ravn, Kenneth LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- HEKM51 20191
- year
- 2020
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- climate change, political ecology, media, cognition, metaphor, discourse, sustainable development, ecological modernization
- language
- English
- id
- 9003769
- date added to LUP
- 2020-06-16 15:43:54
- date last changed
- 2020-06-16 15:43:54
@misc{9003769,
abstract = {{The news media remains as one of the most important sources of societal uptake of climate change information. Its potential to covertly shape public perception and attitudes regarding climate change is therefore considerable but difficult to assess. This thesis underscores the discursive and cognitive role of metaphor in this dynamic by using a framework that combines the theory of conceptual metaphor and the concept of generative metaphor, and by applying the method of critical metaphor analysis on a corpus of 300 opinion articles published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today during 2007 and 2017.
The findings indicate a significant clustering of metaphors drawing on the conceptual domains of war and journeys to metaphorically portray efforts to address climate change. This clustering is however not constant between the years, thus implying the presence of an underlying shift in climate change discourse. Metaphoric compounds such as ‘carbon market’, and metaphors of cleanliness are also found to be salient and diachronically significant in the corpus.
This thesis furthermore provides evidence of how the use of metaphors in the articles tacitly structure and sustain a recurring narrative based on non-zero-sum storylines of climate change mitigation, indicating thus a discursive affinity with the ideas of sustainable development and ecological modernization.}},
author = {{Ravn, Kenneth}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{A climate for metaphors : an inquiry into the cognitive and discursive power of climate change metaphors, supported by a diachronic critical metaphor analysis of opinion articles published in three US newspapers}},
year = {{2020}},
}