Climate change in the UK press: Examining discourse fluctuation over time

IF 3.6 1区文学 Q1 LINGUISTICS

Applied Linguistics Pub Date : 2023-03-22 DOI:10.1093/applin/amad007

Mathew Gillings, Carmen Dayrell

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the discourses around climate change in the UK press from 2003 to 2019. Our main goal is to investigate how the media discourse developed during a period of significant world events, whilst also exploring the change in the UK public’s perception of the problem. We combine the novel technique of Usage Fluctuation Analysis (UFA, McEnery et al. 2019) with corpus-assisted discourse analysis to track the fluctuation in the usage of the phrases climate change and global warming over this 17-year period. Thus, in addition to offering a methodological contribution by applying UFA to a relatively small specialized diachronic corpus, this article offers new insights on how the discourse evolved. Results indicate that the tabloids and broadsheets offer a surprisingly similar image of climate change discourse, both showing two major discoursal shifts. From an overall prevalence of articles advocating for the climate change cause, the discourse incorporated voices of climate sceptics from 2008 onwards, moving on to increased coverage and awareness of the problem in recent years when the public started to engage in it more heavily.

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英国新闻界的气候变化:考察话语随时间的波动

本文考察了2003年至2019年英国新闻界关于气候变化的论述。我们的主要目标是调查媒体话语在重大世界事件期间是如何发展的，同时也探讨了英国公众对这个问题的看法的变化。我们将使用波动分析的新技术(UFA, McEnery et al. 2019)与语料库辅助话语分析相结合，跟踪了这17年间气候变化和全球变暖这两个短语的使用波动。因此，除了通过将UFA应用于相对较小的专业历时语料库提供方法论贡献外，本文还提供了关于话语如何演变的新见解。结果表明，小报和大报提供了令人惊讶的相似的气候变化话语图像，都显示了两个主要的话语转变。从2008年开始，倡导气候变化事业的文章普遍流行，话语中加入了气候怀疑论者的声音，近年来，随着公众开始更多地参与其中，这一问题的覆盖面和意识有所增加。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Applied Linguistics LINGUISTICS-

CiteScore

7.60

自引率

8.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Applied Linguistics publishes research into language with relevance to real-world problems. The journal is keen to help make connections between fields, theories, research methods, and scholarly discourses, and welcomes contributions which critically reflect on current practices in applied linguistic research. It promotes scholarly and scientific discussion of issues that unite or divide scholars in applied linguistics. It is less interested in the ad hoc solution of particular problems and more interested in the handling of problems in a principled way by reference to theoretical studies.