Metaphors’ power to save the earth

In a recently published academic paper that I cannot now find nor fully remember, the author focused on the metaphor change from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”. They asserted that that simple metaphor change was introduced initially as a compromise to “deniers”; that metaphor change, either intentionally or not, reduced angst, urgency and sadly, human accountability. Fossil fuel beneficiaries quickly took notice and added mega-corporate size marketing budgets to cement that metaphor change.

One absolute truth imho – if mega-corporate marketing departments are spending big bucks, they are highly incentivized to make it work. The specific metaphor around and behind preserving the earth’s environment is crucial – especially the one with the largest marketing budget.

What is a metaphor?

Wikipedia as the generic, objective source:

A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another.^[1] It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas.

The word metaphor itself is a metaphor, coming from a Greek term meaning “transference (of ownership)”. The user of a metaphor alters the reference of the word, “carrying” it from one semantic “realm” to another. The new meaning of the word might be derived from an analogy between the two semantic realms, but also from other reasons such as the distortion of the semantic realm – for example in sarcasm.

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor}

Metaphors: Power of Persuasion

I remembered Aristotle’s characterization of metaphor, and how his perspective forms the foundation of rhetoric, persuasion. From Harvard Business Review,

Aristotle believed that metaphor gives language its verbal beauty. “To be a master of metaphor is the greatest thing by far,” he wrote. When you use a metaphor or analogy to compare a new idea to something that is familiar to your audience, it clarifies your idea by turning the abstract into something concrete. … Those who master the metaphor have the ability to turn words into images that help others gain a clearer understanding of  their ideas — but more importantly, remember and share them. It is a powerful tool to have.

HBR – 2019, The Art of Persuasion Hasn’t Changed in 2000 Years

Metaphors help understanding and often bridge gaps to create either new understanding or a change of meaning. From an analysis of Plato’s work on metaphor,

When we resort to metaphor, a term that routinely stands for one thing or kind is made to stand for another, suitably related thing or kind instead, and this change in what the term stands for occurs on the fly, without warning and without special explanation. The effect is to transfer the term in question from its accustomed place in our verbal classificatory scheme to some other unaccustomed place for special temporary expressive purposes.

As modern poetics developed out of ancient rhetoric, metaphors came to be seen as meaning, communicating, or at least suggesting something inherently complex, open-ended, and resistant to compact literal statement. Instead, conceiving is a matter of manipulating unconscious mental imagery so as to let concretely pictured physical objects and situations stand in for the more abstract objects and situations we’re endeavoring to understand.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphor/

2000 years of persuasion, abstract to concrete, and better understanding – no wonder the metaphor used to describe the current environmental crisis was so important. Why mega-corporations were so willing to spend marketing budget on changing and promoting a new metaphor.

Framing metaphors matters

Metaphorical framing is a particular type of framing that attempts to influence decision-making by mapping characteristics of one concept in terms of another.

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphorical_framing}

Purposeful metaphor framing uses the power of the metaphor to drive emotional decision making – forming opinions and personal positions, like on our environment. They can also limit or constrain the dialogue with their power.

Frames can limit debate by setting the vocabulary and metaphors through which participants can comprehend and discuss an issue. They form a part not just of political discourse, but of cognition. In addition to generating new frames, politically oriented framing research aims to increase public awareness of the connection between framing and reasoning.

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)}

History of environment / human metaphor

For me, there’s no surprise that especially within western cultures, citizens have rejected most of the environment crisis and human activity’s role. The ‘nature’ metaphor is deep and old.

Linguists and historians have noted that an early stage of imperialism often creates an imagined new land as empty, or terra nullius (“virgin land”). Once “discovered” lands are given colonial names, this further creates an imagined geography.

Climate & Language: An Entangled Crisis | American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org)

The more imperialistic, conquering the metaphor around the earth and its environment the better for our historical metaphor and language. For the privileged, their language both persuades the rest of us of its ‘righteousness’ and limits the bounds of any dialogue.

The pitfalls of colonial language are evident, not only in how we conceptualize the environment in general, but also in how we talk about climate change. For instance, mass media portrays climate change as uncertain through epistemic markers even as the effects of the climate crisis become more and more apparent; this hedging undermines the clarity of the scientific consensus around the climate crisis.²¹ “Global warming” is inadequate to describe the complex repercussions of climate change, while “climate change” evokes no specific consequences whatsoever, and can even suggest that the climate is changing of its own accord.²² Terms like “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” yield a greater sense of immediacy and alarm, yet these terms, precisely because of their sense of immediacy, risk erasing the connections between the climate crisis and the crisis of colonial violence that Indigenous communities have endured for centuries.

Climate & Language: An Entangled Crisis | American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org)

One inference from this short thread on metaphor, climate and imperialism is the following from the same publication:

Moreover, climate change itself can be understood as both a result and accelerant of Indigenous environmental and linguistic dispossession: as colonizers have seized Indigenous land, they have displaced people with long-standing knowledge of how to live sustainably on that land, bringing with them a host of worldviews-the division of humans from nature, the myth of consequence-less eternal growth, the totalizing view of lands and peoples as resources to be extracted-that have driven the climate crisis.

What is a better metaphor?

A better metaphor for describing the environment crisis before us is a difficult undertaking. One way beyond my pay-grade. I have intentionally employed terms like “earth”, “environment” and “crisis”. My only line in the sand is that whatever metaphor surfaces newly – and is deeply needed – needs to come from an indigenous orientation and NOT from a corporate or political marketing campaign.

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