VYTAUTO DIDŽIOJO UNIVERSITETAS

HUMANITARINIŲ MOKSLŲ FAKULTETAS

UŽSIENIO KALBŲ, LITERATŪROS IR VERTIMO STUDIJŲ KATEDRA

Lakshya Dave

KLIMATO KAITĄ NEIGIANČIO VIEŠOJO DISKURSO RETORIKOS

YPATUMAI

Bakalauro baigiamasis darbas

Anglų filologijos studijų programa, valstybinis kodas 612Q30004

Anglų filologijos studijų kryptis

Vadovė prof. dr. Jūratė Ruzaitė _________ ___________

(parašas) (data)

Apginta doc. dr. Rūta Eidukevičienė __________ ___________

(parašas) (data)

Kaunas, 2020

THE RHETORIC OF CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL IN PUBLIC

DISCOURSE

By Lakshya Dave

Department of Foreign Language, Literary and Translation Studies

Vytautas Magnus University

Bachelor of Arts Thesis

Supervisor: Prof. dr. Jūratė Ruzaitė

3 June 2020

SUMMARY

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the use of language in the articles of September 2019 of Climate

Depot using the methodology of critical discourse analysis. The analysis is based on Normal

Fairlough’s three-dimensional framework (1989, 2003, 2010) and Josh Greenburg and Graham

Knight’s concept of adversarial framing (2011). The main concern of this thesis is to find

ideological and agenda loaded language trends in the rhetoric of Climate Depot and the movement

of climate change denial in general. To achieve that, analysis is done through the three stages of

Fairclough’s framework.

This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter state the introduction, aim

and the methodology of the thesis. The second chapter contains a review of previous research done

in the area of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and linguistic research on climate change

discourse. The third chapter presents the theoretical overview of CDA, language and ideology and

climate change discourse. The fourth chapter state the analysis of the Climate Depot posts. Finally,

the last chapter discusses the conclusions drawn from the previous stages of textual, processing, and

social analysis done in the analytical part. One of results derived from the data was an explicit

presence of derogatory and attacking language in the data. Moreover, the attacks were directed at

the participants of the pro-climate change movement. In addition, the results also suggest that these

attacks targeted the morality and credibility of the victim.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SUMMARY

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

1 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………...1

2 A LITERATURE REVIEW OF CLIMATE CHANGE

DISCOURSE ……………………………………………………………………..........................4

3 AN OVERVIEW OF CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS……………………………….7

3.1 A brief overview of CDA and the relationship between

discourse and ideology……………………………………………………........7

3.2 Major trends in CDA……………………………………………………….......10

3.3 CDA methodology: Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework………………11

3.4 Representation of climate change discourse in legacy media and social media..13

4 TEXTUAL, PROCESSING, SOCIAL AND IDEAOLOGICAL PATTERNS FOUND IN

THE POSTS OF CLIMATE DEPOT…………………………………………………………….16

4.1 Textual analysis: A focus on collocations and ad-hominem attacks……………...16

4.1.1 Collocational analysis…………………………………………………..16

4.1.2 Ad-hominem attacks………………………………………...................18

4.2 Processing analysis of Climate Depot’s posts…………………………………….20

4.2.1 An analysis of intertextuality………………………………………….20

4.2.2 An analysis of reporting modes……………………………………….21

4.3 Social analysis of Climate Depot’s posts…...…………………………………….23

5 CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………………………26

LIST OF REFERENCES

APPENDIX

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 Collocates of climate chosen for the analysis…………………………...16

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis

CCD: Climate Change Discourse

CFCs: Chlorofluorocarbons

MDA: Multimodal Discourse Analysis

IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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1. INTRODUCTION

Language plays an important role in shaping and influencing the world around; whether it is written

or oral, the influence of a powerful discourse in language can be felt across continents through

different media such as newspapers, tv and internet. These powerful discourses can chiefly be found

in relation to topics or movements that are controversial and have many supporters. An example of

such topic and issue is climate change: climate change has been a controversial issue since the

advent of the industrial revolution in the late 18th century, and it continues to be one in the

contemporary world as well. Causes and topics of discussion about the phenomena of the climate

change have evolved over time: before it was the harmful effects of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)

and potential ice age, and now it is harmful effects of automobile and meat industry. However, the

element that made this scientific topic controversial was the debate of anthropogenicness of climate

change meaning whether the effects are caused by human activity or not. This controversial debate

gave birth to two spheres of people debating about the issue: one is pro-climate change supporters

also known as environmentalists, and the other is anti-climate change supporters. These subgroups

do not necessarily debate whether the phenomena of climate change is happening or not but rather if

it is caused by human activity or not. Over time these groups solidified into large movements with

their own sponsors, own media outlets and own political backing.

This paper uses the methodology of CDA and Normal Fairclough’s three-dimensional

framework to support the analysis. Critical discourse analysis is a linguistic field that combines

linguistic analysis with social explanation. According to Ruth Wodak (1989 ), CDA works as an

inter-disciplinary field with analysts combining theories from various other fields such as sociology

and critical linguistics. However, the chief focus of the discipline lies in the analysis of texts that

can have hidden power relations and hidden ideologies; the analysts try to expose these ideologies

to common people. Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework (1989, 2003, 2010) looks

for these ideological trends in texts that are produced by people or organizations with agenda. Both

qualitative and quantitative research methods are used on different stages of framework to analyze

the texts published by Climate Depot and main objective of this thesis is to find the ideological and

textual trends present in the data.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the use of language in the articles of Climate Depot and

explain the relationship between the trends found to the ideology of the climate change denial.

Climate Depot has been chosen for the analysis because it has been a strong advocate of climate

change denial and is supported by many right-wing politicians in the U.S.A. The scope of the

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present analysis is limited to the articles of the first two weeks of September 2019, as the month

experienced the topic of climate change center staging in the world news and media due to the start

of the movement called “Friday for future” led by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. During this

period, Climate Depot published various articles/posts, which were chosen for the analysis, which

will be analyzed using the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis and Fairclough’s three-

dimensional framework. The thesis aims to answer these three research questions:

1) What kind of textual patterns are present in the publications?

2) Is there a presence of intertextuality, and if yes, what kind of texts are chosen? What can

it say about the larger discourse of climate change deniers/realists?

3) What kind of ideologies are present in the texts that can be proven by the textual and

processing analysis?

The analysis is conducted to answer these questions one by one corresponding to the stages in the

framework, the questions are answered through the usage of textual or processing or the social

analysis methods.

The data for the research consists of 50 texts of 500-700 words each, collected from the

website’s archive of September 2019, making the total word count of approximately 35 000 tokens.

Each article was put into a separate text file and given a separate code, starting from D 1 to D 50;

the codes were assigned in a chronological order with respect to the date of publishing, with D1

being the earliest article posted in September 2019 and D 50 being the article with the latest date of

publishing among the articles collected for the analysis.

This thesis consists of five chapters, the first chapter presents the introduction, the second

chapter gives a summary of the previous research done in the area. The third chapter is the

theoretical part which contains four subsections. Section 3.1 provides a brief overview of critical

discourse analysis (CDA, list of abbreviations) and explains the relationship between discourse and

ideology. Section 3.2 offers a brief discussion on major trends in CDA. Section 3.3 gives an in-

depth explanation of the stages of Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework. Section 3.4 of the

theoretical part also discusses the representation of climate change discourse in the legacy media.

Chapter four starts with the analytical part of the thesis, it consists of three sections. Section 4.1

analyses the data textually, it consists of two sub sections, the first sub section provides a

collocational analysis of the data, second sub section presents the usage of ad-hominem attacks in

the publications of Climate Depot. Section 4.2 presents the processing analysis of the Climate

Depot’s posts, it also consists of two sub-sections, the first focuses on choices of intertextuality and

second on different reporting modes in the texts. The third section of the theoretical part presents

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the explanation, or the social analyses of the trends found in the previous two stages in the form of

organization and societal context. The last chapter considers the results found in the analysis and

states the possibilities of further research and the limitations of the thesis.

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2. A LITERATURE REVIEW OF CLIMATE CHANGE

DISCOURSE

Climate change has been a topic of various discussions and debates in the current social

engagement. As a result, various scientific studies have been published debating this matter;

however, there is a lack of linguistic mediation and research in the analysis of the rhetoric of CCD

participants.

The first subgroup of the studies that were found in the research focused on the analysis of

CCD. Grammatical analysis of the CCD is very important as it helps to identify certain trends and

tactics used by the discourse makers. Flottum (2014) in her study titled “Linguistic mediation of

Climate change discourse” analyzes various reports by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change), the results of which points to high incidence of adverbs (e.g. likely), negations

and epistemic modifiers in the reports by IPCC, which breeds a doubt towards the scientific

consensus in CCD. Unnecessary, Flottum concludes that the discussions about climate change are

uttered and formed narratively, involving various actors with their agendas and believes. These

narratives show a lack of singular voice or discourse in CCD but a presence of multiple ones. Other

than the studies done by Flottum, no other work was found that analyzes CCD lexically and

semantically.

The second subgroup focused on the conflicting narratives and attitudes towards climate

change. Flotumn and Gjerstad(2017) expands on the subject of conflicting narratives in CCD in

their article titled “narratives in climate change discourse”. It illustrates how analysis of different

voices/ narratives in CCD can help to uncover the effects of conflicting voices on the public

opinion. They concluded that “when exposed to conflicting ‘stories,’ people get a diverse picture of

climate change, a diversity which may, however, also lead to confusion about how to react”

(2017:1). Molek(2018) exemplifies the distrust and deficit of credibility present in CCD, He states

that CCD encompasses wide range of participants with many different political views and agendas,

this created a two sorts of discourse of CCD, popular and scientific, popular one being subjected to

many different agendas of many different parties. Eubanks(2015) suggested that debates in CCD are

considered to be debates about science itself, the participants seek to protect their own intuitions

rather than trusting the true scientific discourse, he also concludes that if divided into not accurate

bi partisan sides of pro and anti-climate change, each side thinks to trade insults. This shows that

the discourse here changed into a battleground between the ideologies and believes.

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The third type of studies discusses the ideologies and its relationship with discourse in CCD.

Narratives present in CCD may also contain separate agendas and incentives of the actors involved

in the discourse. These agendas often compliments the larger ideology of the publication’s author or

the organization of the publication. Wodak(2015) states the relationship between the ideologies and

discourse and how it is uncovered by the discipline of CDA. The publication also states the main

research agendas and challenges encountered by the CDA researchers. Fairclough(1989) in his book

“Language and power” connects ideologies to power, how language play a part in it through

constant struggle in text and author’s ideologies, which is studied by the socio-linguists.

Another significant research area found was the studies discussing framing of attacks in

CCD. Pro-climate change and anti-climate are the two spheres attacking each other in CCD, they do

this through their blogs, articles, visual media, and websites. Their discourse often uses some

hidden strategies to sway public opinion. Dahl(2015) found that the articles and publications by the

journalists on climate change go through intentional framing process which shows that decisions

about place, argument and inclusion of texts are of conscious choice which might be influenced by

ideologies. Greenburg and Knight(2011) in their study titled “Talk of the Enemy: Adversarial

Framing and Climate Change Discourse” analyzes the structure of adversarial framing by two

organizations challenging each other on the anthropogenic global warming (AGW). They found out

that both organizations discredit their adversaries by critically framing them and “their claims-

making along five main dimensions—claims-making practices, moral character, qualifications and

competence, social associations, and motivations”(2011). This study uncovers a larger trend found

in the pro-anti climate change debates. Linguistic analysis of CCD is necessary as it helps learn

more about the strategies used by various actors in the climate change debate. However, further

research is required in this area to reach a better understanding about the hidden embedded

ideologies in the climate change discourse.

Studies concerning the climate change denial and conservative movement were also found

in the research. The movement of climate change denial often is backed by other conservative

movements. Ross Gelbspan’s Boiling point (2008) state that the participants of the movement of

climate change denial are chiefly conservatives, royalties and oil industry backed politicians.

Boiling point(2008) addresses issues such as climate skepticism over the centuries and various

ploys implemented by the skeptics. Collomb(2014) in his paper “The ideology of Climate Change

Denial in the United States” proposed that the conservative backing of the movement comes from

their commitment towards small government and free enterprises. He further concludes that the

scientific explanation of the climate change goes against the ideological, pro-market position of the

American conservative movement (2014). Luo et.all (2020) in their study of liberal and

conservative’s attention towards rising temperature graphs found that conservatives are more likely

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to direct their attention towards the part of the graph which is flat, representing no rise in the

temperature. From their findings Luo et.all(2020) concluded that people seek the information that

agrees with their political ideology and because of that conservatives seek the evidence that

challenges the scientific explanation of climate change as directed by the political leader they trust.

The chapter stated previous research and study done in the linguistic analysis of CCD.

Flotumn(2014, 2017) in her study finds a presence of narratives in the scientific CCD. Molek(2018)

agrees with the studies and states that climate change discourse contains many participants with

their own agenda and presupposed unscientific believes. Wodak(2015) and Fariclough(1989)

researched about the relationship between discourse and ideology and in their separate studies

conclude that discourses made by people in position of power are often ideological. Dahl (2015)

and Greenburg and Knight(2011) in their analysis’ presents the framing of unargumentative attacks

undertaken by the various participants involved in CCD. Gelbspan(2008), Collomb(2014), Luo

et.all(2020) in their researches studies the ideology of climate change denial movement and the

influence of the conservative movement.

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3. AN OVERVIEW OF CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

CDA is an interdisciplinary field that involves the study of written and oral discourse from a broad

social perspective. According to van Dijk (1995:17), CDA is a problem-oriented discipline, which

addresses such social problems as sexism, racism, colonialism. and pays attention to all features of

discourse, for example, style, rhetoric, schematic and others. The underlying aim of the discipline is

to uncover the hidden agendas and different social dynamics involved in discourse, usually

employed by a dominant group. In the theoretical part, section 1.1 will introduce a brief overview of

CDA and relationship between discourse and ideology, section 1.2 will list major research trends in

CDA, section 1.3 will state the methodology of Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, and

section 1.4 will present a short discussion on the representation of CCD(Climate Change Discourse)

in the legacy media and social media.

3.1 A brief overview of CDA and the relationship between discourse and

ideology

The history of CDA starts with a symposium in Amsterdam in early 1992, which was attended by

Teun van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Gunther Kress, and other linguists; various theories and

methods of DA were discussed, "They saw a role critical discourse analysis of language use in

institutional and interpersonal settings to study the interrelation between discourse and society and

to create social awareness and empowerment." ("Press Release: CDA20+”). This symposium was a

result of curiosity towards the hidden mechanism involved in power relations. Van Dijk’s journal

Discourse and Society (1990) marked as a first major publication in this newly realized discipline.

The journal focused on “ explicit theory formation and analysis of the relationships between the

structures of text, talk, language use, verbal interaction or communication, on the one hand, and

societal, political or cultural micro- and macrostructures and cognitive social representations, on the

other hand”(1990). It was a critical journal that paid emphasis on detailed analysis of social and

“political relations of power, dominance and inequality” (1990).

Critical Language Study is a related discipline pioneered by Norman Fairclough. In his

published book, Language and Power, Fairclough states some key concepts about CDA, for

example, power, ideology, social practice, common sense, and others. Liu and Gao(2016:1078)

review Fairclough’s (1989) three-dimensional approach of CDA, “In the initial Three-Dimensional

Approach, Fairclough suggests that there are three dimensions of discourse, which are text,

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interaction, and context respectively", Fairclough puts text as the core of discourse and context or

socio-cultural practice it's outermost part, an interaction which is the text production and

consumption is called to be subject of processing analysis in CDA, while the text itself can be

subjected to text analysis and context to social analysis. This framework is still used among

linguists, scholars and students alike to analyze instances of discourses utterances by people in

power. By the late 1980s, CDA evolved into a well-defined methodology with clear aims and

objectives, due to the work of Dijk and Fairclough.

Ruth Wodak(1989) is an another pioneer in the discipline of CDA, she developed various

approaches in historical discourse analysis of CDA; she wrote about the relationship between

pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis in her work Language, Power, Identity(1989). She

contributed heavily towards the multimodal analysis of historical and political discourses. Since

then, CDA started to get more and more attention from linguists and scholars alike, giving birth to

many other new disciplines, for example, Critical Sociolinguistics, Critical Language Awareness,

Cognitive Linguistic Approach, etc. Liu and Guo(2016:1082) discuss the presence of Multimodal

Discourse Analysis(MDA) together with CDA “both MDA and CDA view discourse as social and

is interactive with certain social context. In this sense, there is a new trend which can be termed

Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis or Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis (termed

according to different concerns) emerged as a combination of MDA and CDA.”. These

interdisciplinary conjunctions reflect the plurality and diversity required in the Critical Discourse

Analysis; however, the essence of these subjects lies in the study of the relationship between

discourse and power.

Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA) works in a symbiotic relationship with the power and

ideology that lies in a discourse, CDA researchers than with their methods uncover these hidden

power relations in a text. Muller(1972) explains the characteristics of an ideology:

1. Power is more important than cognition.

2. They are capable of guiding individuals’ evaluations.

3. They provide guidance through action.

4. They must be logically coherent. (qt in Wodak, 2009)

Ideologies that meet these standards are often the main interest of CDA researchers. Dijk(2015)

explains that their attention does not direct towards the dominant ideologies itself for example text

explaining totalitarianism or democracy but rather to hidden every day believes that are disguised as

"conceptual metaphors and analogies"(2015). He elaborates "dominant ideologies appear as 'neutral',

holding on to the assumption that stays largely unchallenged"(2015). These neutral holdings are

adhered to by the common people which often unconsciously reflect these ideologies through

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conceptual metaphors and analogies, largely appearing on the blogs and social media. Dijk(2015)

comments that the organizations that strive for dominance and power try to influence the minds of a

society to make it closer to their ideology.

According to Ruth Wodak (2009) Power is another central concept for CDA, as the subject

for analysis is often the discourse generated by those in power. She explains how a text interacts with

power relations:

An important perspective in CDA related to the notion of 'power' is that it is very rare that a

text is the work of only one person. In texts, discursive differences are negotiated; they are

governed by differences in power that are in part encoded in and determined by discourse and

by genre. Therefore, texts are often sites of struggle in that they show traces of different

discourses and ideologies contending and struggling for dominance. (Wodak, 2009:10)

For example: In published comments on blogs and social media, people write their comments which

are influenced by the ideologies which they were subjected to through mass media or from a friend

or a family member, these ideologies clash with each other in these comments sections. CDA analysts

aim at discovering inconsistencies, contradictions, paradoxes in the discourse’s internal structure, to

understand the contextual meaning they draw on social theories and models (Reisigl &Wodak, 2009).

CDA researchers see power as an integral part of language and it(language) is produced to reduce

and gain power in an "asymmetric relationship". According to Ruth(2015:4) “Power relations are

legitimized or delegitimized in discourses. Texts are often sites of social struggle in that they manifest

traces of differing ideological fights for dominance and hegemony." Texts in CDA studies are often

also subdivided into "genres" based on their dominant ideology and context, for example, pro and

against climate change discourses in an United Nations conference. Although, the presence of

multiple ideologies is also taken into consideration; a text often reflects thinking of more than one

ideology, for example, an anti-climate change text may have a presence of xenophobia as well.

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3.2 Major trends in CDA

Current trends in CDA are very much interdisciplinary, ranging from studies emerged with the

collaboration with critical theory to the analysis of strategy texts such as speeches, political articles,

etc.

Vaara(2015) explains “formal strategy texts” as texts that often legitimize or delegitimize

specific actions, CDA analysts later analyze the discursive and ideological features of these texts,

“we argue that these discursive features are not trivial characteristics; they have important

implications for the textual agency of strategic plans, their performative effects, impact on power

relations, and ideological implications”(Vaara, 2015:4). These features are not only limited to texts

but can be found in strategic meetings and talks. Analysis of organizational power and relationship

has also been a subject of various studies including the works of Samra- Fredericks, according to

Vaara(2015), Samra “In her analysis focused specifically on rhetorical skills that strategists use to

persuade and convince others – and to construct a subjectivity”.

Discourse has been a subject of analysis in various other disciplines including philosophy,

sociology, and psychology, thus CDA turns to be a very interdisciplinary field. According to

Rojo(2001), discourse in CDA is seen as a social practice, thus an analysis of it and implementation

of certain discourse practices and its consequences were deemed necessary. Thus one of the major

trends that can be seen in the field is the analysis of speeches, for example, Martin Rojo's (2000)

analysis of political speeches in Spain about immigrants, results of this study were read by the

participants and significant changes were seen in their discourse. Speech analysis's subjects are not

only limited to political speeches but very much concentrated towards that, analysis of speeches of

various political leaders including Barack Obama, MLK, Donald Trump can also be found. The major

reason behind such a trend is that these analyses can help to form conclusions on the orator’s agenda

and the political motivation, moreover, it can provide them a self-analysis tool to monitor their

discourse and make it better.

Another major new trend in DA is of Interactional Sociolinguistics and Sociolinguistics

Ethnography. Both disciplines’ procedure requires an analysis of speech of live participants.

Ethnographical research is an observation of the participant's way of living, culture, and the region.

However, these disciplines look for linguistic patterns in the participant's speeches. According to

Rampton(2017) analysis moves from phonetic to the organizational level. Here, Interactional

Sociolinguistics(IS) divert from ethnography as it “demonstrates the connection between “small-scale

interactions” and “large-scale sociological effects” (Jacquement 2011:475), providing a "dynamic

view of social environments where history, economic forces, and interactive processes... combine to

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create or to eliminate social distinctions' (Gumperz 1982:29).”(qtd in Rampton, 2017: 2). IS shares a

lot of its theories and methodology with both ethnography and CDA.

Liu and Guo(2016) have pointed many other new trends emerging in the field of CDA, most

of them of being inter-disciplinary including Critical sociology, Critical Language Awareness,

Critical sociolinguistics, etc. one of the major new trends is the one of Critical linguistics which was

pioneered by M.K. Halliday and it focuses on ideological patterns or discursive structures in language.

Another discipline that grew out of the 1970s was of Cognitive linguistics, this line of research

examined the relationship between cognitive sciences and language, more specifically cognitive

principles and mechanisms not specific to language, including principles of human categorization,

for example, pragmatic and functional principles such as iconicity and economy. The most influential

linguists were working along these lines and focusing centrally on cognitive principles and

organization. (“About cognitive linguistics”). Critical language Awareness(CLA) on the other hand

base focus on language awareness in language teaching and learning. It helps the students of the

English language to be aware of their tone, neutrality, and usage of the language, in a pedological

context. Students are made to learn strategies in CDA and language's role in influencing an ideology

and world view along with power relations. Moreover, CLA allows the students to understand how

language is socially constructed and how conscious and unconscious choices made by the discourse

makers in language.

The main trends in CDA go with analysis of strategy texts such as speeches of politicians and

the head of companies as the discourse makers are themselves are interested in the results of these

studies to help them improve their way of speaking. Moreover, other trends are very much

interdisciplinary such as Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS), Cognitive Linguistics(CL), Critical

Language Awareness(CLS). These fields see language as an integral part of the society that needs to

be studied and researched upon.

3.3 CDA methodology: Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework

CDA researchers see discourse as a communication device in a complex world with different social

structures. Section 2.2 briefly addressed the Fairclough(1989) three dimensions of analysis: 1) text

analysis, 2)processing analysis and 3) social analysis, this section will explain the framework in

detail.

Text Analysis: The first stage of the analysis, goes beyond the literal meaning of the text in

the subject. Janks(2006:3) discusses the methods used by him in this stage “what I am ultimately

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looking for are patterns that I can use to establish hypotheses about discourses at work in society. I

then try to confirm or disconfirm these hypotheses by looking for other related texts." These patterns

vary a lot depending on the text, sometimes it may be a word and it's connotations, for example,

"mother" repeating several times in an article in a newspaper, this pattern may provide a basis to form

a conclusion about author's attitude and point of view. Sometimes these patterns may not yield as sole

evidence required to form conclusions about a text but they may act as a heuristic device that may

help in other stages of analysis (Janks, 2006:4).

The textual analysis does not limit itself to mere written text but expands to the visual text as

well, often in advertisements; place, size, font, color, composition is among various parameters that

are taken into consideration. Fairclough (1989) lists several terms a researcher must examine in a

textual analysis, including 1) lexicalization, 2) patterns of transitivity, 3) active and passive voice, 4)

cohesion devices, 5) use of nominalization, 6) choices of mood, modality or polarity, 7) thematic

structure and 8) information focus. However, these basics are not the only parameters one must look

for, an institution often acts as starting point various analysis.

Processing analysis: Fairclough at this stage advises analysis be based on three concepts:

intertextuality(the relationship between different texts), interdiscursivity(the combination of genres

in a text) and hegemony(dominance of political, ideological and cultural domains of

society)(Fairclough, 1995). At this stage, texts are interpreted with their intertextual and background

knowledge, As Janks(2006) has shown in his analysis of bank advertisements, a CDA analyst must

ask questions about the attitude and content of text after gathering background knowledge about the

facts, historical data, and events that surround the text itself. Janks (2006:11) also discusses the

concept of hybridity, it is choice or "privileging" of the discourses that producer or advertiser make

to present to public; these choices align themselves to goals and agendas of the author, for example:

In a text pro-capitalism text, it is expected of the author to refer or incorporate text that supports

his/her stance, Janks calls this phenomenon as "Textual hybridity".

Social analysis: also called “explanation” as it can be inferred from the name, uncovers the

hidden ideologies in the text as an explanation for the patterns gathered from the textual analysis and

background knowledge complementing it in the interpretational analysis. Janks(2006:12)

marvelously explains the relationship between discourse and ideology that can be uncovered by social

analysis: “Ideology is at its most powerful when it is invisible when discourses have been naturalized

and become part of our everyday common sense. This is what results in writers using a discourse of

paternalism, unconsciously, because it is available”.

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Fairclough's framework provides a powerful tool that is useful not only in CDA but also in

sociological studies that aim to explain the methods used by people in power to influence and spread

their ideologies to masses.

3.4 Representation of climate change discourse in legacy media and social media

Reporting of climate change discourse (CCD) is often subjected to manipulation depending on the

agendas of the source parties, therefore CDA analysis of these connections are often fruitful. This

section will state some of the reporting patterns that can be found in climate change discourse and

how the two sides of pro and anti-climate change frame their attacks.

Molek-Kozakowska(2018:74) states that climate change reporting often viewed as advocacy

and it lacks credibility "because it foregrounds 'connotations of catastrophe danger and

uncontrollability' that breed cynicism and fatalism", moreover, "climate change" as a term

encompasses a very large number of phenomena and changes that are happening in the environment.

Another pattern in the climate change discourse is the presence of many studies advocating

and contesting climate change. Revkin(qtd in Molak 2018) reasons it to be from the pressure to obtain

balanced coverage of climate change that has produced a disproportionate number of sources

contesting it. These different sources also made this issue which was previously scientific, highly

politicized, starting a vicious cycle of doubt, uncertainness, and distrust towards the truly scientific

discourse and mass media which propagates these studies are crowned as the authority in the

CCD(climate change discourse).

Eubanks (2015: 5) states that arguments in CCD are also subjected to various types of human

flaws and agendas of different sectors of economy and government, some of them are:

1) The arguments in CCD are reduced to people trying to protect their intuitions and believes,

leading to confirmation bias and motivated reasoning to hinder our rational judgments.

2) Divide between political and economic interests created ideological camps, each spreading

their stance on the issue. (Eubanks 2015)

3) Communication changes in the mass media made “attention” or views as a higher commodity

then the truth and facts itself (Eubanks 2015).

Social media also acts as a very influential mediator between any climate change-related

events and the people. Roxburgh et al. (2019) analyzed the relationship between extreme weather-

related events in the U.S.A and social media, more specifically Twitter. Results from the studies

14

depicted a large uptick in climate change-related discourse during hurricanes and other extreme

weather-related events, most of the response was proportional to the devastation caused by these

hurricanes, in other words, more the destruction caused by the hurricanes, more response was

recorded on twitter. However, one of the anomalies that was recorded was the "greater presence of

contested science (CS) frame during the snowstorm Jonas" (Roxburg et al, 2019:9). Contested science

is the science reporting in media on the contested issues (Dahl, 2015). Roxburgh(2019) in his study

attributed it to the seeming contradiction between the idea of climate change and cold weather. This

contradiction and divide are often taken advantage of by many news outlets and world leaders, for

example, U.S president tweets on CC ( Meyer, 2019).

Adversarial framing is one of the major strategies used by climate change reporters in their

attacks. Framing means setting an agenda and an ideological discourse for your organization. It also

means setting a plan of action for your organization that considers the main goal/agenda and

challenges that they set to achieve; therefore, framing is ever-changing, dynamic. Adversarial framing

puts the framing of the organization is a war mode. The framing is divided into three parts, first being

the protagonist which is the organization itself, the audience being third party observers, the general

public and antagonists are the social or counter movement working against your agenda(Knight and

Greenburg, 2011). Thus, after this identification, all the actions of the social movement take these

three aspects into consideration, making the actions of the countermovement a problem to be dealt

with.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues currently, gave birth two movements of pro

and anti-climate change/climate skeptics. Pro climate movement is the one that religiously believes

the scientific evidence and is largely comprised of liberals and centrists, they consider climate change

as one of the most pressing concerns the current world is facing. Anti-climate change movement or

the movement of climate skeptics considers anthropogenic climate change as false meaning they

believe that climate change is not a direct consequence of human activity, climate-changing is natural

and has been a continuous process since the formation of the earth. This countermovement largely

comprised of conservatives, rich company heads, many of whom backed and supported by the big oil

(Gelbspan 2008:8). According to Greenburg and Knight(2011), climate skeptics’ attacks on the pro-

climate change activists turned more into ad hominem, meaning attacks containing “finger-pointing,

name-calling, character assassination, and personal disparagement, become normal weapons of

struggle", In other words, the discussions on climate change transformed into a battleground for

personal insults putting the much needed scientific discourse aside. In the analysis of Greenburg and

Knight(2011) of two Canadian companies attacking each other on the issue of climate change, they

found strict evidence of adversarial framing, there was a presence of regular attacks on opponent's

15

moral character, legitimateness of claim-making, competence, association, etc. These results mirror

that of Roxburg et.all(2019 ) mentioned above.

Linguistically, there have been several studies done in the analysis of Climate change

discourse: Flottum(2014) in her study on IPCC(Intergovernmental panel of climate change, list of

abbreviations ) report reveals several trends in the simplified language used by the IPCC committee

for the layman. This study will be briefly discussed in this section to further outline several trends in

climate change discourse. One of the major linguistic patterns that are found in these reports is the

usage of adverbs likely and high and low agreement sentences for example: “There is high agreement

and much evidence that all stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio

of technologies that are either currently available or expected to be commercialized in coming

decades"(qt in Flottum, 2014:10). Flottum (2014) provides an alternative view and may show that

there is a lack of consensus in the scientific community about the impact of climate change. In the

report of IPCC, Flottum(2014) also noticed that there was the usage of a large number of modals, for

example, may, could and would, which according to him may show some hesitation on the part of the

authors of the report, however, this is done by the notions and norms of the scientific discourse where

the lack of the total factual information is agreed upon.

This sectioned gave a background on the representation of climate change in media: having a

large presence of studies in contested science frame, furthermore, the framing of attacks in the climate

change discourse were also discussed, more specifically, the attacks that are Ad hominem which are

often seen in exchanges between pro-climate change and anti-climate movements. Several linguistic

studies that elaborated on the specific patterns that can be found in CCD were also mentioned to

expand our understanding of the previous research done in the discipline.

16

4. TEXTUAL, PROCESSING, SOCIAL AND IDEOLOGICAL

PATTERNS FOUND IN THE POSTS OF CLIMATE DEPOT

This chapter will present the analysis of the data collected; the methodology used for the analysis is

Fairclough's three-dimensional framework in CDA. Section 2.1 will present the textual analysis of

the collocates of the word "climate” and the Ad hominem attacks in the text. Section 2.2 presents the

processing analysis of the text which will expand on the choices of intertextuality and reporting modes

which consists of direct and indirect discourse analysis. Section 3.3 provides an explanation of the

patterns found in the previous two stages by doing a social analysis of the text.

4.1 Textual analysis: a focus on collocational and the usage of ad hominem attacks

This section aims to show the analysis of the textual patterns found in the Climate Depot publications.

Firstly, collocational analysis of the word "climate" is listed, specifically providing an analysis of the

most frequent negatively loaded collocates of the word “climate”, which will give us an understanding

of the most provocative terms used by the organization concerning the climate. Secondly, analysis of

the ad hominem attacks is provided, which is necessary as it provides us with a grasp of the usage of

these personal attacks and their intentions.

4.1.1 Collocational analysis: In the manual analysis, it was found that many of the derogatory and

attacking terms that were found in the articles were the collocates of the word “climate". This

subsection will present the analysis of the collocates found which were generated using the Software

Antconc(Anthony 2019). Table 4.1 presents the collocates that are chosen for the analysis and their

frequencies and the rank among the list of 30 most frequent collocates.

17

Table 4.1 collocates of climate chosen for the analysis.

One of the major trends that was found in the collocational analysis was the presence of terms

that meant different than their denotation in the articles analyzed, one such term is climate science,

as shown in table 3.1 this was the most frequent collocate of the word "climate", the denotation of the

word means science related to the climate change, however in the articles analyzed it was expressed

differently, for example: In D6, the author writes " climate science and its followers"(see appendix)

and D42’s “ Trump hardens its attacks on climate science"(see appendix), here climate science which

means actual science related to climate change is treated as an ideology having followers and practices.

Another term that was expressed differently is climate emergency, the term climate emergency is a

term often used by the pro-climate change activists which implies that climate change is an emergency

and should be treated as such. In D 45, the author writes "during the time of the alleged climate

emergency” (see appendix). Here, the term is referred to as the "alleged" topic which shows the author

does not agree on climate change being an emergency. These examples showed how different terms

are used by the authors to indicate and imply different meanings in subject to climate change.

The articles of the Climate Depot also contain collocations of “climate” which

are ideologically loaded and derogatory. Terms like climate skeptic, climate extremists, climate

apocalypse, and climate hysterics appear in this manner. Climate Skeptic is a term used by anti-

climate change activists to refer themselves which portrays them as a skeptic of the whole climate

change issue. D 42(see appendix) where the author writes "being a climate skeptic is a challenging

thing", the term can be characterized as an ideologically loaded term because through this term the

author shows his/her support for the climate skeptic ideology. Another term that appears in the similar

category is climate apocalypse : D 34 which contains the mentions of the term, the author writes

"what if we stop pretending the climate apocalypse is coming", here the term is used to target the pro-

climate change supporters that believe that climate change is an apocalypse and should be treated as

such, however in the Climate Depot publications the collocate is used mockingly to ridicule the belief

of devastation caused by climate change. Collocates like climate extremists and climate hysterics

Rank Collocate Frequency

17 Science 11

18 Apocalypse 11

25 Extremists 8

28 Hysterics 6

29 Emergency 6

30 Skeptic 5

18

appear as a tool for mockery and are derogatory. climate hysterics is used to refer pro-climate change

activists and supporters, they are referred to as people reacting exaggeratingly towards climate change,

D 38 where it is written: "climate hysterics now push eating human flesh"(see appendix) which shows

how the terms are used to mock the pro-climate change supporters, however D44 (see appendix)

which includes several mentions of climate extremists shows that this collocate is used in an attacking

way, in one of the mentions, the author writes "In Finland, he disagrees with the doomsday climate

extremists", as it is shown the collocate is used in a very derogatory manner to refer to pro-climate

change supporters. These examples showed how various climate collocates are used by Climate

Depot in an ideological and derogatory manner, the following subsection will present various

strategies of attacks that can be found in the articles.

4.1.2 Usage of Ad hominem attacks:

As mentioned in section 2.4, the debate in the climate change discourse turned into a ground for

personal attacks which are called ad hominem, they involve finger-pointing, name-calling, attacking

the credibility of the other side. Instances of these attacks can be found in the publications of Climate

Depot as well.

From a broader perspective, these attacks can be classified into a few categories, which are an

attack on the moral character and personal insults, attack on the credibility, attack on the ability to

make sound claims. Examples of each are shown briefly:

Attack on moral character: One of the examples of such an attack can be seen in D 15(see

appendix) quote which states " Camerota may have delivered unintentional honesty”, the author here

states that the person mentioned is dishonest and may have spoken the truth unintentionally. The

author in D17 wrote that "Sanders got in touch with his inner communist", Here Senator Bernie

Sanders of U.S.A is called as "communist" which is viewed as a harsh insult in the USA, a country

which fought against the communist ideologies in the latter half of the 20th century, thereby calling

someone a communist is a very much an attack on the morality of a person. Other personal insults

and name-calling can be found as well, one such example is in D 23(see appendix), where the author

states "global warming people are crazy, this name-calling is self-explanatory where pro-climate

activists are being called crazy. Another example can be found in D 30, here the excerpt is taken from

the headline of the publication, it states " Warmists turn on fellow warmists", this can be taken as an

example of typical name-calling which involves using offensive labels while attacking an individual

or a group.

19

Attack on the credibility: Many attacks in the publications of Climate Depot consist of attack

on the credibility of the publishers which are publishing against the agenda of the Climate Depot. D

34 shows one such example, here the headline states "New Yorker Mag goes climate bonkers." here

the magazine reputation is attacked because they published an article that alarms people about climate

change. Another instance can be seen D 41 where the author writes "The reasoning behind the

outlandish conclusion reveals the atheistic premises of the authors" ( see appendix), here author

exhibits his/her distrust by stating the conclusion of the personal attack being "outlandish", this

specific attack can be characterized as a personal attack as well because it comments on the "atheistic

premises". D 48 demonstrates an attack on the credibility of the news reporting organization CNN,

here author states “CNN’S Climate Town Hall Was A Setup For Far-Left Activists To Push 2020

Candidates – ‘Radical climate activists masquerading as students and eco-friendly entrepreneurs’",

this attack was one of many attacks where the authors of the Climate Depot attack their opposition

by destroying their credibility and their trustworthiness. The trueness of these attacks many times

cannot be proven as this does not attack the argument itself but the organization or the discourse

maker.

Attack on the ability to make objective and truthful claims: This form of attack is similar

to the attack on the credibility as it breeds distrust in the discourse maker, however, these attacks are

a bit specific as they target objectiveness and journalistic impartiality of the organization making the

claims. D 42 reveals an example that shows this type of explicitly, the author writes "(person)that had

been producing scientifically unsound and wildly exaggerated reports on the impact of carbon dioxide

emissions on global temperature", the author here discredit the victim's whole range of reports by

categorizing them as "scientifically unsound" and "wildly exaggerated", the reason for these alleged

claims is also not given. A similar type of example can be found in the D 21 where the author attacks

the celebrities advocating a connection of causality between the Amazon fires in 2019 and climate

change, the statement goes “But their photos are fake, their claims hysterical and the fires mostly on

farmland. I discuss the latest warmist beat-up with Daisy Cousens." Here the author tries to question

the ability of celebrities and "warmists” to make sound and credible claims, also attempt to discredit

the whole group by few specific example or instances has been made by the author.

The textual analysis of the publication's specific undertook the process of collocational

analysis and analysis of the Ad hominem attacks. Collocational analysis of the 5 most frequent

negative collocations of the word "climate" demonstrated how Climate Depot usage of these unusual

terminologies and the implied meaning behind it, which may provide us a with a piece of the bigger

picture on the organization's agenda. Analysis of the Ad hominem attacks gave us a glimpse of the

adversarial framing of the organization, moreover, it uncovered the organization's frequent usage of

20

attacks with the character assignation, name-calling, finger-pointing, etc. The textual analysis was a

necessary first step which acted as a steppingstone for the later processing analysis.

4.2 Processing analysis of the Climate Depot’s posts

As mentioned in section 2.3, texts in Fairclough's framework act as a discursive and social practice.

Discourses are picked over one another, they are transformed by their actors and received by the

audience which in turn incorporates the original discourse in their speech. One important aspect of

the processing analysis is the choices and privileging of the discourses, when writing a certain article

or a blog, the reporter often ranks and chooses certain sources over another, this prioritizing is often

ideologically loaded. Largely, the chosen sources which appear in texts in the form of quotes reflect

the agenda and the ideology of the publication and the author. This section sets to elaborate on the

intertextuality choices and the reporting modes in the publication of the Climate Depot.

4.2.1 An analysis of intertextuality:

Intertextuality plays a crucial role in determining the agenda and ideology of the author,

Zhang(2013:49) points out "It is up to the reporter, and ultimately the newspaper he or she works

for, to decide whose voice is to be heard on what issue and such decisions are usually highly

significant", this not only applies to the news reports, choice of the sources is undertaken by the

most of the authors writing or reporting any publication. Climate Depot exhibits a similar kind of

behaviour, many posts contain quotes which can be considered partial.

Upon analysis, it is found that most of the quotes come from the sources that agree with the

author's agenda and voice a similar narrative. One such example can be seen in D 3 article which

headlines “Prince Harry launches eco-friendly travel scheme after private jet criticism", the article

contains only one comment other than the original news story, this comment comes from British

celebrity Elton John who is defending Prince Harry’s decision to have a private jet. This choice

does not come as a surprise, anti-climate change movement many times supports the royalty and the

rich (Gelbspan, 2008). Another example is D6. As shown in the table 3.2.2 (see appendix) D 6

contains 3 quotes, the article itself is titled very provocatively “POLITICO: Climate ‘Change

Could’ Be a Problem in 2020 — for Democrats! – Dems in Congress reject Green New Deal".

Authors of all the six quotes are not mentioned, however, all of them state Green deal (requires

tough measures against climate change) being a problem for the democrats and show them in a bad

light. A similar example can be seen in D 35(see appendix) where the author argues the

disadvantages of banning natural gas in liberal-leaning states, the quotes in the post voice the same

21

narrative which is pro-natural gas. D 44 which is titled “ WMO head back down – SHOCK: Head

of World Meteorological Organization slams climate doomsday claims: ‘It is not going to be the

end of the world’(see appendix). The article contains several quotes; however, they voice again a

similar narrative of anti-climate change attacks. Sources of these quotes are also authors of the

organizations that advocate climate change denial: these sources are Benny Peiser from the

organization Global warming policy foundation which is a London based group that aims to

challenge the policies against AGW global warming, other authors include Marc Morano(Head of

Climate Depot) and Dr. Patrick Moore who is a strong voice against the pro-climate change

movement. D 29 is another post that shows the similar pattern, the article which is titled “Climate

hysterics now push eating human flesh to cope with ‘climate change’” contains quotes that voice

single narrative as well, the only secondary source which is quoted is the Epoch Times which is a

Far-right, conservative favoured newspaper in the USA. This example is one of many of the

publications that consist of quotes from the activists that reflect the agenda/ideology of the

organization.

The generalized conclusion that can be derived from this is that Climate Depot contains

many articles with sources that advocate the same narrative, articles that do not aim to show that

pro-climate change movement is full of doubt and makes exaggerated claims.

4.2.2 An analysis of reporting modes:

Representation of the sources in the discourse can be done in two different ways, Fairclough

classify these ways as Direct discourse (DD) and Indirect Discourse(ID). Direct discourse is the one

which is reported in the quotation marks and are the actual words of the source and the indirect

discourse summarises what was said and done, with a change in the tense and deixis(Blackledge,

2005:72). Direct discourse tries to achieve journalistic objectivity by showing what was said,

indirect discourse, on the other hand, gives a chance to the author to manipulate the words and

include his/her review in it, therefore it can be filled with the writer's ideology. Table 3.2.2(In the

appendix) shows the instances of direct and indirect discourse in the publications. The results

exhibit that 39/47 articles contained more direct discourse in the text than the indirect one, 3 of the

articles were a transcript of the interviews thereby its sources were not classified, as the whole of

the text was in direct discourse. The overwhelming majority of the direct discourse showed that the

authors wanted to appear as authentic and legitimate as possible, as previously mentioned presence

of direct discourse shows objectivity and reduces the commitment of the reporter /writer towards

the text.

22

Another trend that was noticed in the analysis was that the texts which were written in an

adversarial style (attacking style), those texts contained more sources in indirect discourse as

compared with the direct discourse. It can be said that because indirect discourse allows inclusion of

ideological and emotionally loaded vocabulary, therefore it makes it much more suitable for writing

articles with ad hominem language. One such example can be found in article D 23 where it is

written “Söderlund refers to the taboos against it as “conservative.” Yep, he claims those who don’t

want to eat your dead relatives are old fogys who don’t want to save the planet."(see appendix).

Here the author using indirect discourse state the comments of the source: Soderlund, however,

made no such claims of eating dead relatives were made, Soderlund presented a warning that

we(humans) have to resort to cannibalism, we climate change remains unchecked(D 29). The

language was manipulated in D 23 using indirect discourse to include the author's agenda. Another

example that shows a similar trend is D 17 where the author writes:

Sanders got in touch with his inner communists and declared "the answer is yes." He went

on to decry the Mexico City agreement as "totally absurd" because it "denies American aid

to those organizations around the world that allow women to have abortions or even get

involved in birth control. (Table 3.2.2, see appendix)

This example contains a mixture of both direct and indirect quotes, however, the author

introduces the direct quote with the indirect discourse that is "Sanders got in touch with inner

communist and declared:". Here author includes his own views and comments in indirect quotes

and these comments are very emotionally loaded and ideological as it appears in the form of "inner

communist" and "decry the Mexico City agreement" comments. A quite similar example can be

seen in D 41 where the author writes in indirect discourse "Swedish behavioral scientist Magnus

Söderlund has suggested that eating people after they die could be a way of fighting climate change,

which they blame on the meat and farming industry”(D 41, appendix). These original comments of

the scientist Soderlund do not mention any blame on the meat industry, however here the author of

the article uses the indirect discourse to falsify the original comments and to include the impression

that the scientist’s speech was against the meat and farming industry which is favoured by the anti-

climate change industrialists and supporters.

The processing analysis or the stage of the interpretation showed how the choices of

intertextuality can help to determine the larger agenda of the author. Analysis of the reporting mode

helped to understand how language can be manipulated and the objectivity that is must in reporting

be eradicated by the usage of the indirect discourse.

23

4.3 Social analysis of Climate Depot’s posts:

Social analysis is the third and the last stage of the three-dimensional framework. According to

Fairclough (1989: 26) social analysis or the explanation stage is concerned with the relationship

between interaction and social context with the social determinants of the process of production and

interpretation, and their social effects. In other words, this stage tries to explain the reasoning and

the incentive behind the patterns and conclusions uncovered in the stages of textual and processing

analysis. As explained in section 2.1, power and ideology are an important part of the reporting

practice, these ideologies can be found in an implicit or explicit state in the discourse. The social

analysis explains the presence of ideologies in texts by considering the history, society, political and

geographical factors.

The publications of Climate Depot showed several trends that can be said to be

ideological impacted and loaded. Whether it was ad hominem attacks or the collocational patterns,

they contained agenda and were part of the larger ideology. Some of these agendas can be explained

by the context of the organization and the context of the social movement.

Results of collocational analysis and usage of Ad hominem attacks that was stated in the

first stage showed that in the publications of the Climate Depot, there was a presence of climate

collocations that aimed to defame or attack the pro-climate change supporters or politicians backing

the social movement and the examples showed that these collocates were used in an attacking

manner. The explanation of this attacking behavior can be found in the ideological stance of the

organization Climate Depot is a project run under the parent organization of CFACT, according to

their website, “Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) was founded to promote a

much-needed, positive alternative voice on issues of environment and development" ("About|

CFACT"). This alternative voice aligns itself to the movement of climate change denial and Climate

Depot is the website that spread their ideology and message through its articles and blogs. The

moral and ideological stance makes their agenda directly opposite to the one of the pro-climate

change supporters. The examples (D34, D42, 38, see appendix) of the collocates of climate that

were stated in section 3.1.1: climate hysterics, climate skeptics, climate apocalypse were either

supporting the organization’s agenda or opposing and attacking its rivals.

Moreover, as shown in the usage of ad-hominem attacks, the targets of these attacks

were the politicians such as Bernie Sanders in D 23(see appendix), publications and news media

such as New York magazine in D 34(see appendix) and D 48 (see appendix)and celebrities in D

21(see appendix) supporting AGW climate change understanding. The subjects of these attacks are

24

very characterized and precise, it is anyone that goes against the ideological stance of the

organization and the movement.

Apart from the organizational context, societal context also plays a major role in influencing

the texts and the articles. The processing analysis uncovered the partiality in the choices of sources

in the data. The sources that were found in the data such as Benny Periser, Mark Morano, Dr.

Patrick More, and The Epoch Times, they either actively are part of the anti-climate change

movement or voiced their support towards the movement and their agenda in past. However, the

movement does not only voice anti-climate change rhetoric, sometimes, it also overlaps with other

conservative and right-wing movements as well, the example of which can be found in D 3,

whereas previously stated in the processing analysis, musician Elton John comes forward in support

of Prince Harry’s decision to fly on a private jet, here the organization chooses to publish this news

which is not directly supporting or denying climate change, however, the news shows a famous and

rich musician supporting a royalty which is considered conservatives in the U.K. As explained by

Collomb(2014) “climate denial stems from the strong ideological commitment of small-government

conservatives and libertarians to laisser-faire and their strong opposition to the regulation”. The

anti-climate change movement is a conservative movement that sometimes does supports other

conservatives. Article D 19 (see appendix) which talks about Democratic presidential candidate

Pete Buttigieg’s decision to take private jet across the country to take part in his campaign, here

Climate Depot does not by any way supports the Buttigieg’s decision and the quotes and the

sources voice out narrative that questions the choice of Buttigieg with arguments such as the cost of

the travel and why a liberal and pro-climate change supporter is taking a private jet. The articles of

D 3 and D 19 shows that Climate Depot’s decision to support a conservative’s choices but not of

the member belonging to the opposite social movement.

The social analysis explains the conclusions derived from the textual and processing

analysis. It also helped to understand the larger ideology of the climate change denial that directed

the agenda of the organization. The organizational context was necessary to understand the mindset

of the leadership. The societal context provided an explanation in the form of behavior of the larger

conservative movement. To outline, social analysis acted as the last stage in Fairclough three-

dimensional framework which saw discourse as a dynamic, social practice.

Section 3.1 textual analysis showed usage of various negative collocations of "climate"

which in turn provided us with a list of the agenda loaded terms. Usage of Ad hominem attacks

demonstrated that the organization attack patterns which targets the credibility and morale of the

opponents. Section 3.2 discussed the choices of intertextuality in the posts and how it can be biased,

furthermore, representation of direct and indirect sources and its implication was discussed also.

25

Section 3.3 examined the explanations of the trend and patterns that were found in the previous two

stages. To finish, Fairclough's three-dimensional analysis helped the workings and ideologies

adhered to the Climate Depot better.

26

4. CONCLUSIONS

This chapter will recapitulate the results and generalize the ideas found in the previous chapters.

The aim of this thesis was to analyze the use of language in the articles of Climate Depot and

explain the relationship between the trends found to the ideology of the climate change denial.

The textual analysis focusing on the analysis of the collocates of climate and the ad

hominem attacks showed various derogatory labels and attacks that are used by Climate Depot.

Collocational analysis of the climate uncovered various attacking labels used against the scientists

and supporters of the pro-climate change movement. In addition, the examples of collocates such as

climate apocalypse, climate emergency demonstrated that the attacks were not only focused to the

supporters of the movement but also the science and ideology behind it. The sub section on ad-

hominem attacks revealed the categorical instances of the attacking language used by Climate

Depot. The attacks targeted the victim’s moral character, credibility, and the ability to make truthful

claims rather than the argument proposed by the victims. These attacks under the classification

given by Greenburg and Knight (2011) can be considered as the part of attacking strategy called

adversarial framing. To summarize, textual analysis with these patterns answered the first research

question which aimed to find the patterns of lexicalization in the texts.

The processing analysis done in the section 4. 2 talked about the partiality in the choices of

quotes in the data and the usage of direct and indirect discourses in the articles. Moreover, it aimed

to answer the research question one and two which target the reporting modes and the presence of

intertextuality in the Climate Depot articles. The analysis on intertextuality indicated that many of

the articles of Climate Depot contains partiality of the quotes. This partiality occurred either on the

choices of the discourse makers or sources or the narrative voiced out of them. On various

instances, the sources belonged to one or other subgroup of climate skeptics and supporting

politicians or celebrities. On other instances, the sources voiced the narrative that aligned with the

agenda of the article. In the theory of textual hybridity put by Janks(2006), the texts of ideological

organizations such as that of Climate Depot contains one partial sources. Sub-section on reporting

modes uncovered the overwhelming presence of direct quotes in the articles which showed

organization’s desire to appear more authentic. However, close inspection of some articles showed

that the authors used indirect discourse to include their opinion in the text.

The social analysis provided a brief explanation and societal background to the patterns

found in the previous two stages. It was concluded that Climate Depot is an ideological organization

that supports the ideology of anti-climate change social movement and many of its attacks target the

27

members of the climate change social movement. In addition, it can be said that the organization

might indirectly support the conservative ideology and its members. To answer the third research

question, the ideology of climate change denial and conservative ideology were the ones

highlighted by the textual and the processing analysis.

To close, it must be admitted that this thesis had its limitation in the form of small scope and

data set limited to the month of September 2019. Although, the results uncovered some preliminary

trends, but further research should be done to test these trends on a larger data sets and on other

organizations advocating climate change.

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About Cognitive Linguistics - Cognitive Linguistics. https://www.cognitivelinguistics.org/en/about-

cognitive-linguistics. Accessed 23 Jan. 2020.

Blackledge, Adrian. 2005. Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World - Adrian Blackledge -

Google Books.

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APPENDIX

Table 3.2.2 Direct and Indirect discourse in the publications

Articl

e no

Tittle Direct

Discour

se

Indirect

Discour

se

Internet Link

D1 Time for a

carbon tax!?

Study predicts:

‘Climate change

could cause

significant

decline in

banana

production’

3 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/time-

for-a-carbon-tax-study-predicts-climate-change-

could-cause-significant-decline-in-banana-

production/

D2 Banned by Big

Oil — Climate

Skeptic Jo

Nova’s speech

for geologists

cancelled by Big

Oil

0 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/02/bann

ed-by-big-oil-climate-skeptic-jo-novas-speech-for-

geologists-cancelled-by-big-oil/

D3 DC Braces For

‘Mass Uprising

That Everyone

With Climate

Anxiety Has

Been Waiting

For’ D.C. This is

– ‘Massive

Disruption’

5 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/04/dc-

braces-for-mass-uprising-that-everyone-with-

climate-anxiety-has-been-waiting-for-d-c-this-is-

massive-disruption/

D4 Prince Harry

launches eco-

friendly travel

scheme after

private jet

criticism

0 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/princ

e-harry-launches-eco-friendly-travel-scheme-after-

private-jet-criticism/

D5 Global Electric

Car Sales Fall for

First Time After

China Cuts

Subsidy – Sales

drop

0 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/elect

ric-car-sales-fall-for-first-time-after-china-cuts-

subsidy-sales-drop-14-slowdown-highlights-effect-

of-government-subsidies/

14%…Slowdow

n highlights

effect of

government

subsidies

D6 POLITICO:

Climate ‘Change

Could’ Be a

Problem in 2020

— for

Democrats! –

Dems in

Congress reject

Green New Deal

– ‘Too radical,

too polarizing, a

gift to Prez.

Trump’ – ‘Doubt

a lefty wish list

disguised as an

emergency

response will

play well’

2 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/politi

co-climate-change-could-be-a-problem-in-2020-

for-democrats-dems-in-congress-reject-green-

new-deal-doubt-a-lefty-wish-list-disguised-as-an-

emergency-response-will-play-well/

D7 German

Ministers Who

Don’t Enforce

Green Policies

‘Could Face Jail’

6 2 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/germ

an-ministers-who-dont-enforce-green-policies-

could-face-jail/

D8 Tesla CEO Elon

Musk: ‘China Is

the Future’

2 2 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/tesla-

ceo-elon-musk-china-is-the-future/

D9 Extinction Riot

makes use of

DIESEL

generator at

climate change

rally -’Really

feel like

hypocrites’

10 2 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/extin

ction-riot-makes-use-of-diesel-generator-at-

climate-change-rally-really-feel-like-hypocrites/

D10 Shellenberger:

Forget The

Amazon Hype,

12 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/shell

enberger-forget-the-amazon-hype-fires-globally-

Fires Globally

Have Declined

25% Since 2003

Thanks To

Economic

Growth –

Burning ‘is

declining thanks

to development’

have-declined-25-since-2003-thanks-to-economic-

growth/

D11 Electric

airplanes coming

soon? Airline

teams with

Rolls-Royce to

research zero

emission flights

4 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/03/elect

ric-airplanes-coming-soon-airline-teams-with-rolls-

royce-to-research-zero-emission-flights/

D12 AEA’s Top 10

Questions That

Should (But

Won’t) Be

Asked at CNN’s

Climate Town

Hall Tonight –

Why did

Obamas recently

purchase a $15

million-dollar

beach house on

Martha’s

Vineyard? What

do they know

that we don’t?

2 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/04/aeas-

top-10-questions-that-should-but-wont-be-asked-

at-cnns-climate-town-hall-tonight-why-did-

obamas-recently-purchase-a-15-million-dollar-

beach-house-on-marthas-vine/

D13 2020

Democratic

Candidates Turn

Focus to Climate

Change At CNN

Forum

0 3 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/04/2020

-democratic-candidates-turn-focus-to-climate-

change-at-cnn-forum/

D14 Bernie Suggests

Funding

Abortions In

‘Poor Countries’

To Fight Climate

Change

4 2 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/berni

e-suggests-funding-abortions-in-poor-countries-to-

fight-climate-change/

D15 CNN Hypes,

Takes Credit for

‘Climate Crisis’

Town Hall

1 5 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/cnn-

hypes-takes-credit-for-climate-crisis-town-hall/

D16 Eye Roll: CNN’s

Blitzer Opens

Town Halls by

Blaming Climate

Change for

Hurricane

Dorian

3 3 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/eye-

roll-cnns-blitzer-opens-town-halls-by-blaming-

climate-change-for-hurricane-dorian/

D17 Climate Crazies:

CNN Pushes for

Global Eugenics,

Trillions in

Spending, No

Beef

1 5 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/clima

te-crazies-cnn-pushes-for-global-eugenics-trillions-

in-spending-no-beef/

D18 Climate crisis’

media coverage

raises alarm

about

journalistic

objectivity –

Morano: The

media will ‘keep

up more of the

same crappy

reporting’

9 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/clima

te-crisis-media-coverage-raises-alarm-about-

journalistic-objectivity-morano-the-media-will-

keep-up-more-of-the-same-crappy-reporting/

D19 Buttigieg

Explains Why

He Flies Private

Despite Climate

Action Message:

‘This is a Very

Big Country’

4 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/butti

gieg-explains-why-he-flies-private-despite-climate-

action-message-this-is-a-very-big-country/

D20 War on nature

must end,’ says

teen climate

activist Greta

Thunberg in

New York

2 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/war-

on-nature-must-end-says-teen-climate-activist-

greta-thunberg-in-new-york/

D21 AMAZON

FIRES IN

BRAZIL MORE

FAKE NEWS.

THANKS

MADONNA,

DICAPRIO

AND MACRON

0 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/amaz

on-fires-in-brazil-more-fake-news-thanks-

madonna-dicaprio-and-macron/

D22 Kamala Harris

laughs about

paper straws

quickly

collapsing, but

still wants to ban

plastic straws

0 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/kama

la-harris-laughs-about-paper-straws-quickly-

collapsing-but-still-wants-to-ban-plastic-straws/

D23 Cannibalism:

Professor Says

Eating Human

Flesh Will Save

Planet From

‘Climate

Change’

2 9 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/canni

balism-professor-says-eating-human-flesh-will-

save-planet-from-climate-change/

D24 Five CNN Hosts

Spend Six Hours

Blaming Climate

Change for

Hurricane

Dorian at Dem

Forum

Transcri

pt of an

intervie

w

Transcri

pt of an

intervie

w

https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/05/five-

cnn-hosts-spend-six-hours-blaming-climate-

change-for-hurricane-dorian-at-dem-forum/

D25 Climatologist

Dr. Patrick J.

Michaels joins

CEI

0 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/06/clima

tologist-dr-patrick-j-michaels-join-cei/

D26 Banning Plastic

Straws, Fossil

Fuels: Here Are

Seven Standout

Moments From

CNN’s Climate

Town Hall

0 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/06/bann

ing-plastic-straws-fossil-fuels-here-are-seven-

standout-moments-from-cnns-climate-town-hall/

D27 Western Hudson

Bay polar bears

in great shape

after five good

sea ice seasons

5 6 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/06/west

ern-hudson-bay-polar-bears-in-great-shape-after-

five-good-sea-ice-seasons/

D28 Breaking: James

Cook Uni

ordered to pay

$1.2m to climate

skeptical

scientist Peter

Ridd. –

University acted

as ‘science’

rulers, trying to

suppress

scientific views

they didn’t like

2 2 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/06/brea

king-james-cook-uni-ordered-to-pay-1-2m-to-

peter-ridd-university-acted-as-science-rulers-

trying-to-suppress-scientific-views-they-didnt-like/

D29 Climate

hysterics now

push eating

human flesh to

cope with

‘climate change’

0 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/06/clima

te-hysterics-now-push-eating-human-flesh-to-

cope-with-climate-change/

D30 Warmists turn on

fellow warmists:

WaPo: ‘Don’t

trust Dem

candidates who

ignore nuclear

power’ – ‘A

nuclear future

would

dramatically

reduce nearly

0 3 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/06/war

mists-turn-on-fellow-warmists-wapo-dont-trust-

dem-candidates-who-ignore-nuclear-power-a-

nuclear-future-would-dramatically-reduce-nearly-

70-of-existing-u-s-greenhouse-gas-emissio/

70% of existing

U.S. greenhouse

gas emissions’

D31 Pete Buttigieg: I

Don’t Think God

Will ‘Let Us Off

The Hook’ For

Climate Change

4 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/06/pete-

buttigieg-i-dont-think-god-will-let-us-off-the-hook-

for-climate-change/

D32 CNN’s 7-Hour

Climate Change

Town Hall

Ratings

Trounced by Fox

News, MSNBC

1 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/06/cnns-

7-hour-climate-change-town-hall-ratings-

trounced-by-fox-news-msnbc/

D33 Climate change

activists storm

red carpet at

Venice Film –

‘Demanding

action to fight

climate change

and a ban on

cruise ships’

3 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/07/clima

te-change-activists-storm-red-carpet-at-venice-

film-demanding-action-to-fight-climate-change-

and-a-ban-on-cruise-ships/

D34 No

need

for

Green

New

Deal or

UN

treaties!

We’re

all

doomed

! New

Yorker:

‘The

climate

apocaly

pse is

coming.

To

2 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/09/no-

need-for-green-new-deal-or-un-treaties-were-all-

doomed-new-yorker-the-climate-apocalypse-is-

coming-to-prepare-for-it-we-need-to-admit-that-

we-cant-prevent-it/

prepare

for it,

we

need to

admit

that we

can’t

prevent

it’

New Yorker

Mag. goes

climate bonkers:

"Every day,

instead of

thinking about

breakfast,

Americans have

to think about

death."

D35 The next target

in the ‘climate

change’ debate:

your gas stove –

‘Proposals to ban

or limit the use

of natural gas in

commercial and

residential

buildings’

2 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/09/the-

next-target-in-the-climate-change-debate-your-

gas-stove-proposals-to-ban-or-limit-the-use-of-

natural-gas-in-commercial-and-residential-

buildings/

D36 ‘Climate

Warriors’

filming

documentary

Stuck In Arctic

Ice – All 16

climate activists

evacuated from

ship by

helicopter

3 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/09/clima

te-warriors-filming-documentary-stuck-in-arctic-

ice-all-16-climate-activists-evacuated-from-ship-

by-helicopter/

D37 Cannibal for the

Planet: Save the

world, eat human

flesh?

0 3 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/09/canni

bal-for-the-planet-save-the-world-eat-human-

flesh/

D38 Warnings of

climate

cannibalism are

nothing new:

Ted Turner in

2008 warned that

AGW survivors

‘will be

cannibals’ &

Paul Ehrlich

warned in 2014

that ‘climate

change’ will

force humans to

‘eat bodies of

dead’

8 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/09/warn

ings-of-climate-cannibalism-are-nothing-new-

flashback-2008-ted-turner-warned-that-agw-

survivors-will-be-cannibals-paul-ehrlich-warned-in-

2014-that-climate-change-will-force-humans-to/

D39 Climate

Bankruptcy:

Time Is Running

Out For

European Car

Makers – ‘Face

billions in fines’

if the don’t meet

emission

regulations

3 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/10/clima

te-bankruptcy-time-is-running-out-for-european-

car-makers-face-billions-in-fines-if-the-dont-meet-

emission-regulations/

D40 Analysis:

‘Climate

Change’ Has

Been A Routine

Scare Tactic

Since The 1930s

1 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/10/analy

sis-climate-change-has-been-a-routine-scare-

tactic-since-the-1930s/

D41 UK Professors

Attempt to

Mainstream

Cannibalism as

Normal –

‘Cannibalism is

2 2 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/10/uk-

professors-attempt-to-mainstream-cannibalism-

as-normal-cannibalism-is-common-in-the-animal-

kingdom/

common in the

animal kingdom’

D42 Trump science

adviser Dr. Will

Happer

announces

departure from

administration –

Had pushed for a

climate

committee to

challenge UN

science claims

4 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/11/trum

p-science-adviser-dr-will-happer-announces-

departure-from-administration-had-pushed-for-a-

climate-committee-to-challenge-un-science-

claims/

D43 Update: WMO

Secretary-

General Now

(Forced to?)

Deny His

Skeptical

Climate Heresy

– ‘an

embarrassing

climb-down’

3 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/13/upda

te-wmo-secretary-general-now-forced-to-deny-

his-skeptical-climate-heresy-an-embarrassing-

climb-down/

D44 Update: WMO

head back down

– SHOCK: Head

of World

Meteorological

Organization

slams climate

doomsday

claims: ‘It is not

going to be the

end of the world’

12 4 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/11/shoc

k-head-of-world-meteorological-organization-

slams-climate-doomsday-claims-it-is-not-going-to-

be-the-end-of-the-world/

D45 Gore’s quest to

become a fake

meat billionaire

– Lobbies for

climate policies

that limit meat

while his firm

invests $200

Intervie

w

transcrip

t

Intervie

w

transcrip

t

https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/08/17/gores

-quest-to-become-a-fake-meat-billionaire-lobbies-

for-climate-policies-that-limit-meat-while-his-firm-

invests-200-million-in-meat-substitutes/

million in meat

substitutes

D46 James Cameron

On Climate

Change: ‘People

Need To Wake

The F*** Up’ &

stop eating meat

6 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/11/jame

s-cameron-on-climate-change-people-need-to-

wake-the-f-up-stop-eating-meat/

D47 Listen: Morano

debates climate

activist on Sean

Hannity’s

national radio

show – Warmist

seeks to ban

climate dissent

Intervie

w

excerpt

Intervie

w

excerpt

https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/11/listen

-morano-debates-climate-activist-on-sean-

hannitys-national-radio-show/

D48 REPORT:

CNN’S Climate

Town Hall Was

A Setup For Far-

Left Activists To

Push 2020

Candidates –

‘Radical climate

activists

masquerading as

students and eco-

friendly

entrepreneurs’

0 1 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/11/repor

t-cnns-climate-town-hall-was-a-setup-for-far-left-

activists-to-push-2020-candidates-radical-climate-

activists-masquerading-as-students-and-eco-

friendly-entrepreneurs/

D49 Climate change

is now a bedtime

story – ‘How

children’s

literature is

explaining

environmental

crisis to young

readers’

5 0 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/11/clima

te-change-is-now-a-bedtime-story-how-childrens-

literature-is-explaining-environmental-crisis-to-

young-readers/

D50 Democrats split

from Obama

playbook –

Instead opt for

4 3 https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/09/12/dem

ocrats-split-from-obama-playbook-instead-opt-for-

more-aggressive-climate-plans-activists-lament-

more aggressive

climate plans –

Activists lament:

‘Obama was

never the climate

champion we

needed’

obama-was-never-the-climate-champion-we-

needed/