Metaphorical Structuring in Critical Global Issues (theme session)

Metaphorical structuring in critical global issues This panel explores metaphorical structuring of discourses about critical global issues within health, climate action, and gender equality, defined as UN sustainability goals. We focus on metaphorical conceptualizations of selected aspects of these issues, using a range of established theoretical and analytical approaches to framing and metaphor. We reflect on the effects these conceptualizations might have on beliefs about causality, how they might lead to self-defeating behaviors and strategies, what they selectively hide and reveal, and whether it is in the interest of problem solvers to flexibly alternate between complementary framings of the crisis or problem. • Drawing on conceptual blending theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2002), the first talk presents a case study of metaphorical conceptual integration in interdisciplinary communication about the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that the (viral) pandemic response is conceptualized as a (viral) cybersecurity response, which serves as a call to action among experts. • The second talk examines how metaphorical conceptions of fossil fuels diverge in oil industry advertising (demand-side mappings) vs. calls to action produced by climate change activists (supply-side mappings). The mappings range from the Fossil Fuel Savior frame (Supran & Orreskes 2021) to portrayals of fossil fuels as poisons, drugs, and even trapped monsters–in appeals from 350.org. • The third talk investigates how we metaphorically and not-so-metaphorically talk about carbon emissions in climate discourse. We analyze nominal compounds with “carbon” (e.g. carbon footprint), the levels of concreteness and metaphoricity they carry, and how they hide or designate agency (Lakoff 2010). • The fourth talk explores conflict between divergent spatial metaphors that (re)construct competing ideologies of how racism operates (Hill 2008). We focus on conflict between metaphors that construe racism as a removable object and those that emphasize the embeddedness of racism in societal structures. • Through the lens of feminist critical discourse analysis (Tolmach-Lakoff 1973), the fifth talk explores the range of metaphors used to describe female academics. We identify a semantic cluster of metaphors drawing from fairy tales, folklore and myth, and discuss how these metaphors contribute to the shaping of women’s position in academia. We invite discussion of the potential effects of these conceptualizations, the compatibility or incompatibility of differing conceptual framings of the crisis under study, and why some of these effects might or might not be desirable in the quest for a safer, more just, and more sustainable (co)existence. Finally, we reflect on what we might gain, as researchers and global citizens, by working together in a transdisciplinary fashion, as manifested in the composition of this panel. References Fauconnier, G.; Turner, M. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. 2002. New York: Basic. Hill, J. H. (2008). The Everyday Language of White Racism. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucb/detail.action?docID=416532 Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment. Environmental Communication, Vol. 4 (1), 70-81. Supran, G., & Oreskes, N. (2021). Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications. One Earth, 4(5), 696-719. Tolmach-Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and Woman’s Place. Language in Society, 2(1), 45-80.