Battling the climate crisis: WAR and THREAT metaphors in Indonesian news media through a corpus-ecolinguistics lens

Abstract

As a global issue that requires direct mitigation action, climate change has been examined through a linguistic lens, including metaphors. This study aims to examine how WAR and THREAT metaphors are used in Indonesian news discourse on climate change (2013–2022) and to uncover the ecological ideologies they construct. From the 771,867 words collected, we focused on the metaphorical collocates of the word ‘climate’ and examined the social actors involved. This study applied a corpus-assisted ecolinguistics framework to examine the dataand employed the conceptual metaphor technique (CMT) to map the target-source domains of the metaphors. We also incorporated deep ecology philosophy to deepen the analysis. Our findings revealed that metaphors often promote a sense of urgency and global solidarity in addressing climate change, yet the discourse predominantly attributed agency to international organizations and global leaders, with minimal representation of public involvement. This study further disclosed that Indonesian media articulated an ambivalent ideology, constructed through the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ discourse by positioning climate change as an enemy that threatens ‘us’ or humans. Consequently, the public is portrayed as passive actors, while responsibility is shifted toward the global community.