Nelya Koteyko

From Carbon Markets to Carbon Morality: Creative Compounds as Framing Devices in Online Discourses on Climate Change Mitigation:

Lexical combinations of at least two roots around “carbon” as the hub, such as “carbon finance” or “carbon footprint,” have recently become ubiquitous in English-speaking science, politics, and mass media. They are part of a new language evolving around the issue of climate change that can reveal how it is framed by various stakeholders. In this article, the authors study the role of these “carbon compounds” as tools of communication in different online discourses on climate change mitigation. By combining a quantitative analysis of their occurrences with a qualitative analysis of the contexts in which the compounds were used, the authors identify three clusters of compounds focused on finance, lifestyle, and attitudes and elucidate the communicative purposes to which they were put between the 1990s and the early 21st century. This approach may open up new ways of analyzing the framings of climate change mitigation initiatives in the public sphere.

Contesting Science by Appealing to Its Norms Readers Discuss Climate Science in the Daily Mail

This study examines the rhetorical aspects of social contestation of climate change in reader comments published in the Daily Mail, subsequent to climategate. The following themes are reported: (1) denigration of climate scientists to contest hegemonic representations, (2) delegitimization of pro–climate change individuals by disassociation from science, and (3) outright denial: rejecting hegemonic social representations of climate change. The study outlines the discursive strategies employed in order to construct social representations of climate change, to contest alternative representations, and to convince others of the validity of these representations. It examines how social representations of science are formed, maintained, and disseminated.

'Oh dear, should I really be saying that on here?': Issues of identity and authority in an online diabetes community.

We explore peer-to-peer discussions which took place in a UK-based diabetes ‘Virtual Clinic’ online community. In particular, we seek to understand the rhetorical nature and content of exchanges over a period of six months from the community’s inception. Data were captured weekly and analysis based on thematic discourse analysis. Two key issues emerged regarding how the community shaped the nature of the discussion forum. First, the identity of the forum was established, and boundaries drawn about what was, and was not, acceptable. Second, participants sought to present themselves as reliable and authoritative sources of information. Internet discussion communities are shaped in important ways early on by the community of users, including how the character and focus of discussion is formed, and how both information and users can be constructed as authoritative and reliable.

Mining the internet for linguistic and social data: An analysis of 'carbon compounds' in web feeds

The potential of the Web for applied linguistic research is being increasingly recognized. As the internet is a particularly valuable source of data on recent changes in meaning, Mautner (2005b) made a plea for more discourse analysts to work with Web-based texts in order to study important social developments. Taking up this suggestion, this article introduces an approach based on the analysis of recent updates to Web-based sources. A special purpose corpus, compiled from Web feeds containing so-called lexical ‘carbon compounds’, such as, for example, carbon credit, carbon diet, carbon sinner, is studied with corpus linguistic tools to explore the online dimension of the interpretative struggle around the issue of climate change mitigation. The analysis reveals semantic associations surrounding the compounds and highlights connotational differences that signal both support and criticism of the climate mitigation initiatives proposed by policy makers and environmentalists.

The 'moral careers' of microbes and the rise of the matrons: An analysis of UK national press coverage of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) 1995-2006

This paper examines similarities and differences in media discourses relating to methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at three important points in the development of the bacterium and its perception by the public over the last decade. We analyse three increasingly large sets of texts from the national media using a variety of complementary qualitative and quantitative methods. As such this paper exploits, develops and empirically assesses an emerging methodological trend in applied linguistics, namely the convergence of critical metaphor analysis, with corpus linguistics and science and technology studies. Using this, the study identifies a shifting media narrative that involves changes in dramatis personae over the decade. First, personified forces of nature, doctors and hospitals are engaged in a battle of evil against good, but also intelligence over stupidity. Second, we are presented with victims of personified bacterial forces and doctors and hospitals cast as perpetrators of crimes of omission by not cleaning hands or wards. Third, the malignant forces of politics try to exploit the evil forces of nature for their own ends while a mediator between the doctors and the potential victims of MRSA emerges and is given political and symbolic power: the modern matron.

Crying wolf? Biosecurity and metacommunication in the context of the 2009 swine flu pandemic

This article explores how the 2009 pandemic of swine flu (H1N1) intersected with issues of biosecurity in the context of an increasing entanglement between the spread of disease and the spread of information. Drawing on research into metacommunication, the article studies the rise of communication about ways in which swine flu was communicated, both globally and locally, during the pandemic. It examines and compares two corpora of texts, namely UK newspaper articles and blogs, written between 28 March and 11 June 2009, that is, the period from the start of the outbreak till the WHO announcement of the pandemic. Findings show that the interaction between traditional and digital media as well as the interaction between warnings about swine flu and previous warnings about other epidemics contributed to a heightened discourse of blame and counter-blame but also, more surprisingly, self-blame and reflections about the role the media in pandemic communication. The consequences of this increase in metacommunication for research into crisis communication are explored.

Carbon Reduction Activism in the UK: Lexical Creativity and Lexical Framing in the Context of Climate Change

This article examines discourses associated with a new environmental movement, “Carbon Rationing Action Groups” (CRAGs). This case study is intended to contribute to a wider investigation of the emergence of a new type of language used to debate climate change mitigation. Advice on how to reduce ones “carbon footprint,” for example, is provided almost daily. Much of this advice is framed by the use of metaphors and “carbon compounds”—lexical combinations of at least two roots—such as “carbon finance” or “low carbon diet.” The study uses a combination of tools from frame analysis and lexical pragmatics within the general framework of ecolinguistics to compare and contrast language use on the CRAGs’ website with press coverage reporting on them. The analysis shows how the use of such lexical carbon compounds enables and facilitates different types of metaphorical frames such as dieting, finance and tax paying, war time rationing, and religious imperatives in the two corpora.

Carbon Gold Rush and Carbon Cowboys: A New Chapter in Green Mythology?

Individual and collective efforts to mitigate climate change in the form of carbon offsetting and emissions trading schemes have recently become the focus of much media attention. In this paper we explore a subset of the UK national press coverage centered on such schemes. The articles, selected from general as well as specialized business and finance newspapers, make use of gold rush, Wild West, and cowboy imagery which is rooted in deeply entrenched myths and metaphors and allows readers to make sense of very complex environmental, political, ethical, and financial issues associated with carbon mitigation. They make what appears complicated and unfamiliar, namely carbon trading and offsetting, seem less complex and more familiar. A critical discussion of this type of imagery is necessary in order to uncover and question tacit assumptions and connotations which are built into it and which might otherwise go unnoticed and unchallenged in environmental communication.

The Dead Parrot and the Dying Swan: The Role of Metaphor Scenarios in UK Press Coverage of Avian Flu in the UK in 2005-2006

This article takes two events in the ongoing story of a predicted UK avian flu epidemic—“the dead parrot” (October 2005) and “the dying swan” (April 2006)—and examines the role and use of three interconnected metaphor scenarios (related to the notions of “journey,” “war,” and “house”) in the UK press coverage about avian influenza in 2005 and 2006. These represent fundamental descriptive and explanatory structures that derive from culturally or phenomenologically salient objects or experiences, and which allow journalists, scientists, and policymakers to reduce the complexity of the threat posed by a disease and to promote risk-management strategies for the disease that appear to make instinctive or intuitive sense to experts and the public. Although similar metaphor scenarios may be used over time, the kinds of reporting they are associated with and the policy scenarios that result from these framings differ depending on the perceived proximity of the disease threat.

Expectations in the field of the Internet and health: an analysis of claims about social networking sites in clinical literature

This article adopts a critical sociological perspective to examine the expectations surrounding the uses of social networking sites (SNSs) articulated in the domain of clinical literature. This emerging body of articles and commentaries responds to the recent significant growth in SNS use, and constitutes a venue in which the meanings of SNSs and their relation to health are negotiated. Our analysis indicates how clinical writing configures the role of SNSs in health care through a range of metaphorical constructions that frame SNSs as a tool, a conduit for information and a traversable space. The use of such metaphors serves not only to describe the new affordances offered by SNSs but also posits distinct lay and professional practices, while reviving a range of celebratory claims about the Internet and health critiqued in sociological literature. These metaphorical descriptions characterise SNS content as essentially controllable by autonomous users while reiterating existing arguments that e-health is both inherently empowering and risky. Our analysis calls for a close attention to these understandings of SNSs as they have the potential to shape future online initiatives, most notably by anticipating successful professional interventions while marginalising the factors that influence users’ online and offline practices and contexts.