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Climate-change Discourse:

Language in media representations, public debates,

science and science communication

Conference dates

25-28 August, 2025

Conference venue

Butenschoen-Haus (Luitpoldstraße 8, 76829 Landau/Pfalz, Germany)

Landau is a small city surrounded by the Southern Wine Route district of the Southern Rhineland-Palatinate and close to the Black Forest (1 hour from Frankfurt airport)

Conference fees

regular fee: 160 EUR / reduced fee (students, PhD students): 90 EUR

Accommodation at the Butenschoen-Haus

ca. 82.00 EUR per night (breakfast included)

(A booking platform will be available in spring 2025)

Conference organisers

Prof. Dr. Frank Polzenhagen

Dr. Monika Reif

Dr. Neele Mundt

contact: laud2025(at)rptu.de

Confirmed plenary speakers

Jonathan Charteris-Black | University of Bristol, UK

Kjersti Fløttum | University of Bergen, Norway

Martin Reisigl | University of Vienna, Austria

Arran Stibbe (online plenary) | University of Gloucestershire, UK

Abstract submission

Please submit your abstract as a pdf-file (max. 300 words, excluding references) by 30 November, 2024 to:
laud2025(at)rptu.de
Please indicate your affiliation above the abstract

Acceptance will be communicated by 15 December, 2024

Conference format

Parallel sessions
Presentation time: 25 minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion

Synopsis

Coping with the consequences of human-induced climate change and preserving the basis of existence on our planet are urgent, if not the most urgent, challenges of our time. In recent years, they have become a central topic of discourse in the media and society, driven in particular by mass movements such as Fridays for Future and campaigns by climate activist groups with high public impact. Since the topic reached the discursive agenda on a larger scale three decades ago, environmental awareness and knowledge of climate change processes have undoubtedly increased considerably among broad sections of the population, albeit to different extents in various regions of the world. On the other hand, in many countries we are currently witnessing a decline in both political effort and support from broad sections of the population for measures in this regard. In view of numerous other crises, the problem of climate change has lost much of its urgency for many. The form and speed of the necessary transformations are being met with widespread anxieties. At the same time, we witness an increasing discursive presence of climate change sceptics and climate change deniers, with representatives in extremely prominent and powerful positions.

One of the most fundamental problems, however, is the drastic global disparity with respect to both the responsibility for the present condition and the availability of resources required for environmentally friendly transformations. The so-called “global North” has brought about the current collapse through its inconsiderate exploitation of nature since the industrial revolution. The so-called “global South”, whose share of the historical responsibility for the present condition is infinitely smaller, is the region most affected by climate change. At the same time, it is the region that is now expected to refrain from and not to repeat the practices of exploitation that made the global North economically prosperous and dominant, being, however, compared to the global North, the region seriously disadvantages in terms of financial resources to do so. It is a truism that the challenges of climate change can only be met in a joint global effort; however, such fundamental inequalities seriously undermine this endeavour.

These conditions and developments call for continuous reconsiderations of efforts, in particular context-sensitive measures, promoting environmentally friendly policies and lifestyles.

The topic became the subject of linguistic research on a broader scale through the so-called ecolinguistics of the 1990s (e.g. Fill & Mühlhäusler 2001; Stibbe 2021). From the outset, several strands were opened up in this research field, which have been pursued ever since; e.g.:

• How is ecological knowledge inscribed in languages (e.g. Maffi 2001)?
• How are non-ecological positions and ideologies (e.g. so-called speciesism) inscribed in language (e.g. Stibbe 2012)?
• Critical analysis of political and media discourses on ecological issues (e.g. Fløttum 2017; Reisigl 2020)
• Analysis of the language of climate science and climate-science communication (e.g. Nerlich, Koteyko & Brown 2010; Janich 2022)

In this field, cognitive-linguistic approaches play a central role, in particular recourse to conceptual-metaphor theory and the notion of framing (e.g. the work by Nerlich, Goatly, Semino, Deignan and Stibbe). These cognitive-linguistic concepts have also been applied in science-communication manuals (e.g. Corner, Shaw & Clarke 2018).

The 40th LAUD Symposium aims to address this topic from a linguistic perspective, especially in light of the declining public resonance of the climate change issue mentioned above. The wider context of the conference is critical (esp. cognitive) discourse analysis (e.g. Hart 2017, 2019; Charteris-Black 2018) and science communication. The aim is not just to take stock, but rather to explore possible approaches to counteract the widespread public fatigue, anxiety and scepticism surrounding this existential matter, and to encourage societies to rethink and change entrenched behavioural patterns. Taking up the strands of ecolinguistic research outlined above, the symposium will be organised into the following three theme sessions.