Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-25T00:11:37.405Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Low carbon diet: Reducing the complexities of climate change to human scale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2014

Brigitte Nerlich ,
Vyvyan Evans  and
Nelya Koteyko
Brigitte Nerlich
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
Vyvyan Evans
Affiliation:
Bangor University
Nelya Koteyko*
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
*
Correspondence addresses: brigitte.nerlich@nottingham.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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. Their research suggests that conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending permit human beings to reduce very complex issues to human scale. Climate change is such a complex issue. We ask: How is it linguistically reduced to human scale and, in the process, made amenable to thinking and acting? To address 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 how the use of the compound ‘low carbon diet’ 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. 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, that is, we engaged in applied blending analysis.

Keywords

lexical compoundsclimate changeconceptual metaphorconceptual blendingmedia analysis
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 45 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aitchison, J. 2003. Words in the mind: An introduction to the mental lexicon, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Alexander, R. 2008. Framing discourse on the environment: A critical discourse approach. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benczes, R. 2006. Creative compounds in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Brône, G. & Coulson, S.. 2010. Processing deliberate ambiguity in newspaper headlines: Double grounding. Discourse Processes 47. 212–236.Google Scholar
Brône, G. & Feyaerts, K.. 2005. Headlines and cartoons in the economic press: Double grounding as a discourse supportive strategy. In Erreygers, G. & Jacobs, G. (eds.), Language, communication and the economy, 73–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Cameron, L. & Deignan, A.. 2003. Combining large and small corpora to investigate tuning devices around metaphor in spoken discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 18. 149–160.Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, J. 2005. Politicians and rhetoric. The persuasive power of metaphor. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave-MacMillan.Google Scholar
Coulson, S. 2001. Semantic leaps: Frame-shifting and conceptual blending in meaning construction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, V. 2009. How words mean: Lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, V. & Green, M.. 2006. Cognitive linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Fairclough, N. & Wodak, R.. 1997. Critical discourse analysis. In van Dijk, T. (ed.), Discourse as social interaction, 258–284. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. 1994. Mental spaces. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. 1997. Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M.. 1998. Principles of conceptual integration. In König, J.-P. (ed.), Discourse and cognition, 269–283. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. & Turner, M.. 2002. The way we think. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Feyaerts, K. & Brône, G.. 2005. Expressivity and metonymic inferencing: Stylistic variation in nonliterary language. Style 39. 12–36.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. 1976. New rules of sociological method: A positive critique of interpretive sociologies. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Gore, A. 2006. An inconvenient truth. New York: Rodale Press.Google Scholar
Hulme, M. 2008. Amid the financial storm: redirecting climate change. http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/amid-the-financial-storm-redirecting-climate-change (accessed 12 December, 2008).Google Scholar
Hulme, M. 2009. About climate change. Interview with Rorotoko. http://www.rorotoko.com/index.php/article/mike_hulme_book_disagree_climate_change_controversy_inaction_opportunity/ (accessed 13 June, 2010).Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Koteyko, N., Thelwall, M. & Nerlich, B.. 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.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M.. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar, Volume 2. Standford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
MacKay, D. J. C. 2009. Sustainable energy—Without the hot air. Cambridge: UIT Cambridge Ltd. http://www.withouthotair.com/ (accessed 13 June, 2010).Google Scholar
Moder, C. L. 2008. It's like making a soup: Metaphors and similes in spoken news discourse. In Tyler, A., Kim, Y. & Takada, M. (eds.), Language in the context of use: Cognitive approaches to language and language learning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Nerlich, B. 2010. Climategate: Paradoxical metaphors and political paralysis. Environmental Values 19(4). 419–442.Google Scholar
Nerlich, B. & Clarke, D. D.. 2001. Ambiguities we live by: Towards a pragmatics of polysemy. Journal of Pragmatics 31(1). 1–20.Google Scholar
Nerlich, B. & Koteyko, N.. 2009a. Compounds, creativity and complexity in climate change communication: The case of ‘carbon indulgences’. Global Environmental Change 19. 345–353.Google Scholar
Nerlich, B. & Koteyko, N.. 2009b. Carbon reduction activism in the UK: Lexical creativity and lexical framing in the context of climate change. Environmental Communication 3(2). 206–223.Google Scholar
Nerlich, B. & Koteyko, N.. 2010a. Low carbon diet: Reducing the complexities of climate change to human scale. In Soares da Silva, A.et al. (eds.). Comunicação, Cognição e Media 1. 141–156. Braga: Publicações da Faculdade de Filosofia Universidade Católica Portuguesa.Google Scholar
Nerlich, B. & Koteyko, N.. 2010b. Carbon compounds: Lexical creativity and discourse formations in the context of climate change ESRC End of Award Report, RES-062-23-1256. Swindon: ESRC.Google Scholar
Nisbet, M. 2009. Communicating climate change. Why frames matter for public engagement. Environment Magazine 51(2). 12–23.Google Scholar
Poletta, F. 2008. Culture and movements. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 619. 78–96.Google Scholar
Pragglejaz Group. 2007. MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 22. 1–39.Google Scholar
Ryder, M. E. 1994. Ordered chaos: The interpretation of English noun-noun compounds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sweetser, E. 1999. Compositionality and blending: Semantic composition in a cognitively realistic framework. In Redeker, G. & Janssen, T. (eds.), Cognitive linguistics: Foundations, scope and methodology, 129–162. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Turner, M. 2009. The scope of human thought. http://onthehuman.org/2009/08/the-scope-of-human-thought/ (accessed 3 January, 2010).Google Scholar
Warren, B. 1978. Semantic patterns of noun-noun compounds. Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Google Scholar