This paper focuses on the ECOSYSTEM HEALTH metaphor which has long prevailed in environmental communication. Following the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we propose a contrastive view on the use of the ECOSYSTEM HEALTH metaphor in environmental discourse: we distinguish the metaphorical expressions used before the pandemic from the ones used during the pandemic. This distinction is aimed at identifying the new arguments promoted by COVID-19 metaphors. The publications released by the international environmental organization Extinction Rebellion are of particular interest. Through a detailed analysis of texts published between January and July 2020, we show that the impact of COVID-19 has modified our understanding of the ECOSYSTEM HEALTH metaphor. While environmentalists used to depict the environment as a SICK BODY prior the pandemic, the occurrences discussed below demonstrate that COVID-19 metaphors highlight the human characteristics associated with the source domain HEALTH.

Main interests: My research interests focus on the areas of metaphor/ metonymy (interpretation, understanding, production, adaptation). I rely on metaphor scenario and corpus analysis to focus on the functions of metaphors in context. I also focus on the fields of historical linguistics and applied linguistics. How metaphor scenarios can reveal socio-cultural variations of meaning: across-linguistic perspective on the "NURTURING PARENT" and the "STRICT FATHER" frames Words: 10,226

This paper proposes to investigate the varying implications of the war metaphor in scientific publications discussing the COVID-19 pandemic. The corpus under study is composed of articles retrieved from the international scientific journal Nature, the weekly magazine New Scientist, and the international agency World Health Organisation. With a focus on three main characteristics of the pandemic – body health, medical solutions, and global impact of the virus – the present study asks to what extent the use of the war metaphor can vary to offer different viewpoints on the pandemic. The particular view on the virus – through metaphorical use – depends on the readers each publication targets, the pressure to find solutions, the editorial requirements, and the aim of the publication. We conclude that the war metaphor may not systematically be associated with disputable interpretations (as reported in literature), it also serves an explanatory function.

This article investigates the different roles attributed to humanity in the climate change debate, through the depiction of the greenhouse effect. Our hypothesis is that the stance associated with different genres will not only demonstrate different conceptualisations of the greenhouse effect but also convey different views on humans’ capacity (or lack of capacity) to mitigate climate change. The corpus under study is composed of texts pertaining to three genres which display particular viewpoints: scientific papers present a documented view on the phenomenon, online forum discussions present exchanges between users who endorse or question particular characteristics of the Greenhouse, and sceptical newspaper articles explicitly deny the existence of an anthropogenic phenomenon. Through a corpus-based, cognitive and pragmatic analysis of the metaphorical expression greenhouse effect, the research shows that humans’ place(s) in the Greenhouse is a significant part of environmental argumentative strategies.

We investigate the different interpretations related to the metaphorical imprint of climate change in English and French media discourses. This cross-linguistic perspective is motivated by the particularities of both languages which have been assumed to promote different understandings of climate change-related concepts. We focus on the metaphor carbon footprint whose meaning can be compared to another climate change metaphor in English: fingerprint . These two source domains share a highly specific and concrete meaning interpreted from lexical constructions enabled by the English language. In French, however, such a specification cannot be interpreted from the meaning of the metaphor empreinte carbone ( carbon imprint ) which defines a similar concept. We rely on visual representations of these metaphorical expressions in English and French to discuss the characteristics associated with each source domain: we show that visual metaphors can contradict expectations emerging from the interpretations of verbal metaphors.