Work

Disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies: a semantically-enhanced discourse study of 2011 Queensland Floods

Year: 2021

Type: article

Abstract: Natural disasters, such as what are known in English as ‘floods’ and ‘wildfires’, are increasingly a topic of concern due to the climate emergency, and their vocabulary and public discourses hold much to be explored through linguistics. This article inaugurates the examination of public discourse about extreme weather events through semantically-enhanced discourse studies, an approach which is based on Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and developed herein. Taking the example of floods in the particular geographic, cultural and historical environment of the Australian state of Queensland in 2011, this transtextual study draws on a public inquiry into the event and English as spoken in Australia, more broadly, along with media reports, and literature from humanities and social sciences. Five case studies of vocabulary and discourse patterns are presented to cast cultural and semantic spotlights on the public discourses. It is demonstrated that this approach can provide high resolution analysis of discourse and bring out cultural and historical factors at play in extreme weather language thereby contributing to disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies.

Source: Language Sciences

DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2021.101381

Author: Helen Bromhead

Institution: Griffith University

Language: English

Topic: Linguistics and Discourse Analysis

Subfield: Philosophy

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Climate action

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,450