Otherisation through metaphors: Dogmatic and pragmatic ecologies in Belgium
(2026) Polarised Discourse: Language, Cognition and Social Practice — ISBN: [3111556247], published
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- Abstract
- Metaphors play a key role in the promotion of arguments that endorse or criticise environmental claims. Metaphor scholars have demonstrated the prevalence of the RELIGION metaphor in sceptical discourse about the climate crisis in the North American, British, and French contexts. However, these contexts significantly differ from the Belgian context. For instance, in Belgium, the enforcement of the “cordon sanitaire” represents a major limit to the spread of extremist views (including climate denial) in the mainstream media and in the public sphere. Considering these contextual factors, we address one main research question: How does the RELIGION metaphor present environmentalists as the “others” and legitimise an alternative view on the environment in Belgian media discourse? Our investigation draws on a dataset composed of 626 Belgian newspaper articles published between 2006 and 2024. We adopt the Critical Metaphor Analysis to decode the arguments derived from the RELIGION metaphor and the legitimisation strategies adopted by sceptical discourse producers. This investigation leads us to identify a distinction between “dogmatic” and “pragmatic” ecologies: Belgian journalists exploit the RELIGION metaphor to promote the latter and delegitimise the former. Our results demonstrate the particularity of legitimisation strategies in Belgian environmental discourse, which appears to be shaped by Belgian history and Belgian socio-political values.
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Auge, A. C., & Rondiat, C. (2026). Otherisation through metaphors: Dogmatic and pragmatic ecologies in Belgium. In Isabel Alonso-Belmonte, M. Dolores Porto, Manuela Romano (ed.), Polarised Discourse: Language, Cognition and Social Practice. de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/271430