The Politics of Nature: Constructing German Reunification During the Great Oder Flood of 1997

Abstract

Natural disasters like earthquakes, tornadoes, hailstorms and floods always lead to massive media coverage, as a close look in the fait divers of daily newspapers proves. They seem to have a short-lived but extreme effect on society as well as on the media. One point that is often neglected is the fact that disasters occur in unique socio-historical contexts which determine the patterns of interpretation. This also seems to be the case concerning the Great Oder Flood of 1997, inasmuch as the disaster occurred within the singular process of German Reunification. The Oder Flood occurred at the time Reunification was really being experienced, and therefore efforts to dam the rising waters were metaphorically interpreted, especially in the German newspapers, as the joint fight of East and West against the flood. The flood gained its political dimension particularly via different types of metaphors that blend synchronic domains of discourse. This paper investigates the metaphorical patterns underlying the news coverage of the Flood in order to trace their constitutive role in the 'news speak'. The main hypothesis is that the metaphorical discourse about the disaster and nature in general serves as a metaphorical reservoir for illustrating and legitimising the abstract political process of the German Reunification. KEYWORDSGermany, Oder flood 1997, mass media, language of news media, metaphors, construction of national identity

Poetic Justice? Rural policy clashes with rural poetry in the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK

“…Given the increasing awareness of the cultural production and framing of space, environmental studies, cultural geography and rural studies have in the last decade begun to converge with research in linguistics in general and metaphor in particular (Harre´et al, 1999, p. 91;Do¨ring, 2003;Fill, 2003;Nerlich, 2003;Nerlich et al, 2002). In this context poems can be used as a source for gaining access to lived to experience, to 'metaphors we live by' (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) or to myths we live by (Midgley, 2003).…”

Mud, metaphors and politics: Meaning-making during the 2021 German floods

“…One of the pioneers of this type of study has been Martin Döring, who wrote a thesis and several articles about German floods, media reporting, metaphors, and German politics from around 2003 onwards, focusing on the Oder floods of 1997 (Döring, 2003(Döring, , 2005(Döring, , 2017. Alongside this research, a research project was devoted to studying the 'floods of images' that emerged after the Elbe floods in 2002, a project led by the anthropologist Werner Krauss.…”

“…As Döring pointed out in relation to the Oder floods of 1997:A close look at the newspaper coverage during the Oder flood in 1997 shows clearly that personifications, for instance, play a central role in understanding what happened. Thus, the river is metaphorically conceptualised as a kind of being or person which is acting intentionally (Döring, 2003: 200).…”

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

“…Ecolinguists have used critical discourse analysis to study, talk, and write texts about the environment and environmentalism in order to reveal underlying ideologies (e.g., Harré, Brockmeier & Mühlhäusler, 1999;Killingsworth & Palmer, 1992). They have also used insights from cognitive linguistics to study metaphorical framings (Döring, 2003). However, they have so far not studied the influence of compounds on environmental discourses or the influence of environmental discourse on the emergence of new compounds.…”