Metaphors and political arguments in environmental debates: “Our house is still on fire”

Auge, Anais Camille
(2024) Political discourse analysis: legitimisation strategies in crisis and conflict — ISBN: [9781399523189], p. 187-204, accepted/in-press

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The paper investigates the argumentative function of metaphors in political debates about climate change. On the one hand, the metaphorical depiction of political arguments promotes a particular viewpoint on the environmental crisis (e.g., climate change perceived as the ENEMY of humanity). Such figurative depictions may be necessary to communicate about this complex issue (Van der Hel, et al. 2018). On the other hand, this metaphorical depiction provides enough ground for opponents to highlight the inaccuracy of the figurative mapping (e.g., humanity as the ENEMY of the planet and climate change as a WEAPON). The main research question addressed in this paper is: how are metaphor source domains exploited and questioned to convey different environmental arguments? To address this question, I focus on metaphorical occurrences related to the scenario THE EARTH AS A HOUSE (ON FIRE). Indeed, this scenario can be observed in a plurality of texts produced by different political leaders (from left-wing to right-wing politicians) and by different climate change activists. I study the wide range of arguments promoted by these different uses of the scenario in the texts (e.g., Emmanuel Macron’s arguments opposed to Greta Thunberg’s). Drawing on Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black 2011) and metaphor scenarios (Musolff 2016), this paper shows how environmental debates may revolve around the political use and mis-use of a metaphor.
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Auge, A. C. (2024). Metaphors and political arguments in environmental debates: “Our house is still on fire”. In Robert Butler (ed.), Political discourse analysis: legitimisation strategies in crisis and conflict (p. p. 187-204). Edinburgh university press. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/235580