Bromhead, Helen. (2021). Disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies: a semantically-enhanced discourse study of 2011 Queensland Floods. Language Sciences 85
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2021.101381
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 Meta- language (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 hu- manities 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 demon- strated 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.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
