Rebirth, Devastation and Sickness: Analyzing the Role of Metaphor in Media Discourses of Nuclear Power

Barbara Gabriella Renzi, Matthew Cotton, Giulio Napolitano, Ralf Barkemeyer
2016 Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture  
Nuclear power plays an important but controversial role in policies to ensure domestic energy security, fuel poverty reduction and the mitigation of climate change. Our article construes the problem of nuclear power in terms of social discourse, language and public choice; specifically examining the role that metaphors play in the policy domain. We empirically analyse metaphors as framing devices in nuclear energy policy debates in the United Kingdom between April 2009 and March 2013, thereby
more » ... pturing the impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. We employ documentary analysis of major UK broadsheet and tabloid newspapers, using electronic bibliographic tools to extract the metaphors. We then map these metaphors using a Type Hierarchy Analysis, which examines how elements of the target domain (energy technologies and policies) originate from a different source domain. Type hierarchies identify and categorise metaphors, defining the affectual and emotional responses associated with them, providing us with grounded insight into their role in shaping discourse and as a consequence influence public engagement with energy policy. Our analysis highlights three emergent domains of discourse metaphors and discusses the implications of their deployment. The first is Rebirth (the metaphor of Renaissance), contrasting with discourses of Devastation defined through negative-coloured metaphors both from the imagery of The Bomb and those drawn from Biblical and QurÕanic mythology (such as the metaphors of Apocalypse and Inferno), and the third is Sickness drawn from metaphors of health risk domains (Smoking and Addiction).
doi:10.1080/17524032.2016.1157506 fatcat:imgbhyuw4rdelk2f3qvsegn72u