Les métaphores délibérées dans le discours politique sur le changement climatique : le cas de la COP 21, en 2015, à Paris

Details

Supervisors

Hambye, Philippe

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en linguistique, à finalité spécialisée: Linguistics and its Applications for a Multilingual Society

Abstract

enUnderstanding the use of metaphors in argumentative discourse requires combining knowledge of metaphor theory and argumentation theory. The present research adopts a cognitive approach and proposes a qualitative and quantitative analysis of potentially deliberate metaphors used in political discourses, during the COP21, in 2015, in Paris. The aim is to understand how these political leaders used metaphors in order to convince their audience about their commitment concerning the fight against climate change. Three research questions are addressed. The first concerns the identification of deliberate metaphors in the corpus. The second tries to determine the frequency of these metaphors in each speech. The last seeks to determine whether certain countries used certain deliberate metaphors as a function of their economic status. The corpus is made up of 20 speeches totalising 15214 words. Two methods of analysis, DMIP and MIPVU, were employed. The results revealed that war metaphors were frequently used, particularly by developed countries to express their commitment, challenges and objectives in the fight against climate change. However, the relative frequency of deliberate metaphors in a speech does not depend on the status of the country that delivered it.