Abstract
Crises have been researched in disciplines such as organizational studies, public relations, mass media communication, and finance studies. However, there is a lack of linguistic investigation on how social agents experience and communicate crises through discursive, cognitive, and sociocultural means. The Language of Crisis aims to fill this gap by investigating conceptual metaphors and frames in the construction of crisis discourse. To advance the understanding of crisis discourses, this book identifies and evaluates patterns and functions of cognitive devices and discursive strategies in the conceptualization of crisis experiences.
The book consists of an introduction and 10 chapters. The introduction offers a brief literature review of crisis studies from a social constructionist perspective, showing that metaphors and frames are context-dependent and embodied in the specific environment of crisis. The discursive contexts in the book include those in journalistic reports, social media, internet forums, self-reflective writings, and psychotherapy consultations.
Chapters 13 examine language use in large-scale financial and organizational crisis. In Chapter 1, O’Mara-Shimek’s explores the socially responsible uses of metaphor in financial news media discourse during stock market crash. The analysis demonstrates that metaphors can influence the decision-making of consumers and investors, and pose serious challenges to professional ethics and practice in journalism organizations. In Chapter 2, Soares da Silva compares the role of metaphors in the ideological exploitation of global economic crisis and the subsequent austerity policies in the Portuguese press. The study provides empirical evidence that through metaphor the strongly mediatized political and economic debate about financial crisis and austerity policies becomes effectively persuasive and manipulative. In Chapter 3, Holmgreen conducts a case study on the framing power of metaphors in social media platforms relating to two Danish organizations that have attracted negative public responses. The analysis uncovers that the most salient frames are rooted in shared cultural and social beliefs that serve to unite stakeholders in common action against reprehensible organizational behaviors.
Chapters 4–6 examine public discourses in political conflicts. Chapter 4 by Rasulić shows how new metaphors and frames emerging from Serbian political discourse about territorial dispute crises with Kosovo contribute to the shaping and framing of a new geopolitical reality between the two countries. Metaphor and metonymy are used and abused to maintain inequality and promote the emergence of alternative frames. In Chapter 5, Ullmann studies the Arab Revolution in speeches delivered by UK and US politicians between 2011 and 2013. Even using the same mappings, political representatives of the US and the UK tend to focus on different entailments reflecting their different political backgrounds and attitudes. In Chapter 6, Kotzur addresses the emotional appeal and persuasive power of metaphors on demonstration posters against the railway project Stuttgart 21 in Germany. By analyzing the language use of less powerful social groups, the study shows that the protesters often draw on drastic conceptual mappings to aggravate existing tensions, demonize their enemies, and express strong negative emotions.
Chapters 7–10, finally, revolve around discourses of personal crisis when an individual’s health is under threat. In Chapter 7, Ferrari employs an innovative M psychometric testing model on the transformative power of metaphors used by counselors and clients in talking cure practices. The evidence shows that metaphors may help deal with resistant cases, foster personal development, and improve personal well-being. In Chapter 8, Tay analyses the relationships between speakers, functions, targets, and phase of occurrence of metaphor vehicle terms in psychotherapy talk. The results suggest that therapists and patients need time to settle into their institutionalized discursive roles even though the ideals of metaphor co-construction might be explicit from the start. In Chapter 9, Huang conducts a case study with an original narrative modulation to examine breast cancer survivors’ transitional experiences from health to survivorship through the participants’ self-reflective writing. The study finds that narrative modulators functioned as image schemas, metaphors and frames, as well as psychosocial coping and adjustment strategies that are instrumental in shaping and making sense of survivors’ transitional experiences under traumatic circumstances. In the final chapter, Knapton probes into the personal and psychological crises experienced by women with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) through semi-structured interviews. The findings show that the participants employ cognitive and discursive strategies in constructing their crises with highly personal frames, for example, frame OCD as an attempt to regain control over the changed body.
With a focus on conceptual metaphors and frames, The Language of Crisis shows that a discourse and cognitive-based approach can provide rich contributions to the investigation of crisis discourses. Both quantitative and qualitative are applied in these analyses. Examples of qualitative studies include case studies, psychometric testing, interviews, narrative studies, and social media entries. Examples of quantitative studies can be found in the use of linguistic corpora and mathematical methods. Despite this richness, the definition of crisis discourse is not entirely clear; for example, no explanation is offered of why organizational, political, and personal crises are selected as the three main types of crisis discourses. In particular, the health crises discussed throughout Chapters 7–10 seem only a specific case of the much broader concept of ‘personal crisis’. Nevertheless, the book offers thought-provoking findings on how metaphors and frames are utilized by social agents in constructing crisis processes in a range of complex sociocultural situations. It will serve as an important reference for readers interested in crisis management and communication, discourse analysis, and cognitive linguistics.