Dynamic terms across languages and domains. The case of Climate Change Communication

Climate change communication is a highly dynamic and interdisciplinary domain, spanning disciplines such as climatology, law, and social sciences, as well as scientific and political discourses and genres. This scientific and discursive complexity is likely to correspond to a lexical dynamism, as climate change communication is, relatively speaking, a recent phenomenon (Gjesdal & Lyse, 2016). Moreover, climate change discussions play out over a range of national, European and international contexts, further complicating the communication (Kristiansen, 2014). How does this interaction of contexts affect the translation and formation of climate change terms? Moreover, how does the terminology use vary across the discourses and genres? In this presentation, we will consider the formation and translation of climate change terms in Norwegian, using the concepts of mitigation and adaptation as a case. Norwegian is a relatively small language community, and has an established national language policy; however, little active language planning and terminology work is carried out. Norway is a major global player in petroleum production. At the same time, the country aims to play a role in climate change negotiations internationally (Fløttum & Espeland, 2014). The need for a climate change terminology in Norwegian is therefore urgent, for political as well as language planning reasons. A challenge in the Norwegian context is the transparency of terms, in order to assure the comprehension of terms across domains, e.g. scientific and political discourse, and across specialized and general discourses. In 2010, the Norwegian Language Council carried out a survey to see how well ten expressions used regularly in the on-going climate debate are understood in society in general (Norwegian Language Council, 2010). Whereas terms such as ‘global oppvarming’ (‘global warming’) were well understood, the survey indicated that less than 50 per cent of the respondents understood the terms ‘drivhuseffekt’ (‘greenhouse effect’) and ‘klimaskeptiker’ (‘climate sceptic’). The question of climate change terminology is therefore both urgent and timely. Consequently, the Norwegian Language Council is currently in the process of standardising climate change terminology for Norwegian, and has established an expert group to work on this project. However, a de facto process of terminologisation and secondary term formation has been ongoing for several decades. In this process, several major players can be identified. First, the Norwegian Environment Agency is an important agent in the process of climate change term formation, as it is responsible for the translation and dissemination of documents related to the UN efforts on climate change, as embodied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Second, research communities related to climate change, in particular in the natural sciences are important players. Their efforts on term formation is also further disseminated to the general public via science popularisation. Political discourse, represented by parliamentary debates, is also an interesting outlet for climate change communication and inter alia for the dissemination of new terms. Finally, newspaper discourse is an interesting source in order to observe the eventual stabilisation of climate change terms. This entails the necessity of considering a wide range of materials and domains in the observation of term formation.