Nerlich, B., Forsyth, R. and Clarke, D. D. (in prep.) Climate change discourses in the US and UK: Two nations divided by a common language.
Abstract
The study of media coverage of climate change has increased steadily over the last decade or so, alongside the media coverage of climate change itself. Most studies use content analysis, some use corpus linguistics, but none has so far used methods derived from computational linguistics to study press coverage of climate change in the UK and the US. Using the search term carbon, we applied inter-term interval analysis and an analysis of short subsequences of words (n/m grams) to find overall patterns of usage as well as distinctive phraseological choices in two national newspapers, The (London) Times and the New York Times, between 2002 and 2009. Results indicate that at a superficial level the US and the UK seem to be conceptualising climate change (or global warming) in similar terms when using the word carbon and its near collocates. However, when digging more deeply into the data, differences emerge which show that the US still grapples with defining climate change as a problem, whereas the UK is busily trying to find solutions for the problem of climate change. This linguistic and conceptual gap may hamper mutual understanding and finding policies on a global level that deal with issues of climate change mitigation.
Koteyko, N. (in prep.) Managing carbon emissions: A discursive presentation of ‘market-driven sustainability’ in the British media.
Abstract
The article studies discursive (re)construction of market-based solutions to climate change through the use of ‘carbon compounds’ in the UK national newspapers between 1990 and 2009. Applying techniques of corpus-assisted discourse and metaphor analysis, carbon compounds are identified and grouped according to their frequency and chronological appearance in the corpus. The analysis then focuses on 1) finance-related compounds created and used before 1990 and 2005 2) compounds modified by low-, zero- carbon and carbon neutral which became frequently used between 2005 and 2009.
Nerlich, B. (in press). 'Low carbon' metals, markets and metaphors: The creation of economic expectations about climate change mitigation. Climatic Change.
Abstract
Dealing with the threat of anthropogenic climate change has been a challenge for policy makers for many years. In recent years, the problems posed by climate change and solutions proposed to mitigate its effects have been framed by lexical ‘carbon compounds’, such as carbon footprint or carbon trading and by one dominant metaphor, the market metaphor. Through a detailed content analysis of industry and press coverage from 1985 to the present, this paper examines the fate of one important lexical compound in this context, namely low carbon, which can be used as an adjective or a noun. Over the last two decades this lexical compound moved across and between three discourses, the steel industry, the car industry and what one might call the climate change industry. Using insights from ecolinguistics and the sociology of expectations, the paper discusses how the lexical compound low carbon in general and the metaphor low carbon future in particular came to prominence in policy discourses, especially in the UK, and how they were used to frame expectations of a prosperous low carbon future, while sidelining deeper social and cultural reflection on climate change mitigation.
Nerlich, B., Evans, V. and Koteyko, N. (in press). ‘Low carbon diet’: Reducing the complexities of climate change to human scale. Language and Cognition.
Abstract
For many years, cognitive linguists, such as Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, have studied meaning construction through language based on intricate mental mapping operations. They have in particular investigated how conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending permit human beings to reduce very complex issues to human scale. Climate change is such a complex issue. The questions we ask in this article are: How is it linguistically reduced to human scale and, in the process, made amenable to thinking and acting? And what role does blending play in this process? In order to find answers to these questions, we have analysed the emergence of lexical compounds around a recent key word in debates about climate change in the English speaking world, namely carbon. One such compound and metaphor/blend is low carbon diet. In this article we study the ways in which the use of this compound or blend in an advertising campaign, a book, and by a catering company in the United States permitted US newspapers to reduce climate change to human scale. In the following prime example of applied blending analysis we have combined and compared metaphor and blending analysis with media and discourse analysis to shed light on the linguistic framing of a real-world problem.
www.vyvevans.net/lowcarbondiet.pdf
Koteyko, N. (2010). Mining the Internet for linguistic and social data: An analysis of ‘carbon compounds’ in web feeds. Discourse and Society, 21(6) 655–674.
Abstract
The potential of the web for applied linguistic research is being increasingly recognised. As the Internet is a particularly valuable source of data on recent changes in meaning, Mautner (2005b) made a plea for more discourse analysts to work with web-based texts in order to study important social developments. Taking up this suggestion, this paper introduces an approach based on the collection and analysis of recent updates to web-based sources. The special purpose corpus compiled from the web feeds containing ‘carbon compounds’, such as, for example, carbon credit, carbon diet, carbon sinner is then studied with corpus linguistic tools to explore the online dimension of the interpretative struggle around the issue of climate change mitigation. The analysis reveals semantic associations surrounding the compounds and highlights connotational differences that signal both support and criticism of the climate mitigation initiatives proposed by policy makers and environmentalists.
http://das.sagepub.com/content/21/6/655.abstract
Nerlich, B. (2010) ‘Climategate’: Paradoxical metaphors and political paralysis, Environmental Values 19(4), 419-442.
Abstract
Climate scepticism in the sense of climate denialism or contrarianism is not a new phenomenon, but it has recently been very much in the media spotlight. When, in November 2009, emails by climate scientists were published on the internet without their authors’ consent, a debate began in which climate sceptic bloggers used an extended network of metaphors to contest (climate) science. This article follows the so-called ‘climategate’ debate on the web and shows how a paradoxical mixture of religious metaphors and demands for ‘better science’ allowed those disagreeing with the theory of anthropogenic climate change to undermine the authority of science and call for political inaction with regard to climate change.
eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1371/1/Nerlich_final_26_5_2010_(2).pdf
Nerlich, B., Koteyko, N. and B. Brown (2010). Theory and language of climate change communication. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change: DOMAIN 6: Perception, Behaviour and Communication of Climate Change, edited by L. Whitmarsh and M. Hulme, Vol. 1, 97–110.
Abstract
Climate change communication has become a salient topic in science and society. It has grown to be something of a boom industry alongside more established ‘communication enterprises’, such as health communication, risk communication and science communication. This article situates the theory of climate change communication within theoretical developments in all three fields. It discusses the importance of and difficulties inherent in talking about climate change to different types of public using a various types of communication tools and strategies. It engages with the difficult issue of the relationship between climate change communication and behaviour change and it focuses in particular on the role of language (metaphors, words, strategies, frames and narratives) in conveying climate change issues to stakeholders. In the process, it attempts to provide an overview of emerging theories of climate change communication, theories that, quite recently, have begun to proliferate quite dramatically. We end with an assessment of how communication could be improved in light of the theories and practices discussed in this article.
wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WiresArticle/wisId-WCC2.html
Koteyko, N., Thelwall, M. and B. Nerlich (2010). From carbon markets to carbon morality: Creative compounds as framing devices in online discourses on climate change mitigation. Science Communication, 32(1): 25–54.
Abstract
In this article, we study the role of the 'carbon compounds' as tools of communication in different online discourses on climate change mitigation. By combining a quantitative analysis of their occurrences with a qualitative analysis of the contexts in which the compounds were used, we identify three clusters of compounds focused on finance, lifestyle, and attitudes, and elucidate the communicative purposes to which they were put between the 1990s and the early 21st century. This approach may open up new ways of analyzing the framings of climate change mitigation initiatives in the public sphere.
scx.sagepub.com/content/32/1/25.abstract
Nerlich, B. and Koteyko, N. (2010). Carbon gold rush and carbon cowboys: A new chapter in green mythology? Environmental Communication, 4: 1, 37- 53.
Abstract
Individual and collective efforts to mitigate climate change in the form of carbon offsetting and emissions trading schemes have recently become the focus of much media attention. In this paper we explore a subset of the UK national press coverage centered on such schemes. The articles, selected from general as well as specialized business and finance newspapers, make use of gold rush, Wild West and cowboy imagery which is rooted in deeply entrenched myths and metaphors and allows readers to make sense of very complex environmental, political, ethical, and financial issues associated with carbon mitigation. They make what appears complicated and unfamiliar, namely carbon trading and offsetting, seem less complex and more familiar. A critical discussion of this type of imagery is necessary in order to uncover and question tacit assumptions and connotations which are built into it and which might otherwise go unnoticed and unchallenged in environmental communication.
eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1243/
Nerlich, B. (December, 2009). The 'world's first carbon budget': Brigitte Nerlich laments a lost opportunity. People & Science (The British Science Association).
Nerlich, B. and Koteyko, N. (2009). Compounds, creativity and complexity in climate change communication: The case of ‘carbon indulgences’. Global Environmental Change, 19: 345-353. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.03.001
Abstract
This article deals with climate change from a linguistic perspective. Climate change is an extremely complex issue that has exercised the minds of experts and policy makers with renewed urgency in recent years. It has prompted an explosion of writing in the media, on the internet and in the domain of popular science and literature, as well as a proliferation of new compounds around the word ‘carbon’ as a hub, such as ‘carbon indulgence’, a new compound that will be studied in this article. Through a linguistic analysis of lexical and discourse formations around such ‘carbon compounds’ we aim to contribute to a broader understanding of the meaning of climate change. Carbon compounds are used here as indicators for observing how human symbolic cultures change and adapt in response to environmental threats and how symbolic innovation and transmission occurs.
eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1303/
Nerlich, B. and Koteyko, N. (2009). Carbon reduction activism in the UK: Lexical creativity and lexical framing in the context of climate change. Environmental Communication, 3 (2): 206 - 223.
Abstract
This article examines discourses associated with a new environmental movement, ‘Carbon Rationing Action Groups’ (CRAGs). This case study is intended to contribute to a wider investigation of the emergence of a new type of language used to debate climate change mitigation. Advice on how to reduce one’s ‘carbon footprint’, for example, is provided almost daily. Much of this advice is framed by the use of metaphors and ‘carbon compounds’ - lexical combinations of at least two roots - such as ‘carbon finance’ or ‘low carbon diet’. The study uses a combination of tools from frame analysis and lexical pragmatics within the general framework of ecolinguistics to compare and contrast language use on the CRAGs’ website with press coverage reporting on them. The analysis shows how the use of such lexical carbon compounds enables and facilitates different types of metaphorical frames such as dieting, finance and tax paying, war time rationing and religious imperatives in the two corpora.
eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1302/
Press release: Carbon Compounds: The language of climate change
University of Nottingham: