Role of Language in the Climate Change Debate

Kjersti Fløttum is professor of French linguistics at the Department of foreign languages, University of Bergen. Her research fields are text and genre theory and discourse analysis, with a special focus on linguistic polyphony in scientific, political and climate change discourse as well as on narrative structures in climate change discourse. Fløttum has headed several cross-disciplinary projects (KIAP, EURLING, LINGCLIM). She is co-author of the books ScaPoLine (2004) and Academic Voices (2006), and editor of Speaking to Europe (2013). She has published in international journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Language and Politics, Language & Communication, Text & Talk, Climatic Change, Global Environmental Change, Nature Climate Change, and in Oxford Research Encyclopedias.

• ForewordMike Hulme1 Language and climate changeKjersti Fløttum2 Verbal and visual framing activity in climate change discourse: a multimodal analysis of media representations of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report Trine Dahl3 Competing climate change narratives: an analysis of leader statements during COP21 in Paris Øyvind Gjerstad4 Stories about climate change: The influence of language on Norwegian public opinionMichael D. Jones, Kjersti Fløttum, and Øyvind Gjerstad5 Metaphors in online editorials and op-eds about climate change, 2006 - 2013: A study of Germany, the United Kingdom and the United StatesDimitrinka Atanasova and Nelya Koteyko6 Conceptual metaphors associated with climate change in corporate annualreports: two perspectives from the United States and AustraliaOleksandr Kapranov7 Willingness of actionKjersti Fløttum8 The Paris COP21 agreement – obligations for 195 countriesKjersti Fløttum and Helge Drange9 Data-driven approaches to climate change discourse, illustrated through case studies of blogs and international climate negotiations Andrew Salway