“Words about…” #2 – Words about Climate Change
Lexis – Journal in English Lexicology – will publish its 2nd special issue of the “Words about…” series in 2026. It will be co-edited by Camille Biros (Université Grenoble Alpes, France – ILCEA4), Denis Jamet-Coupé (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France – CEL and University of Arizona, USA) and Adeline Terry (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France – CEL) and will deal with the topic “Words about Climate Change”.
Words about Climate Change
The 2nd issue of the “Words about...” series hosted by Lexis – Journal in English Lexicology focuses on “Words about Climate Change”.
Climate change has become a major concern and a central, topical issue in our modern world and is not restricted to environmental studies such as biology, earth system science, air quality, solar physics, glaciology, land use, ecosystem, water, to name but a few. Linguistics also has its say, as clearly demonstrated by the emergence of ecolinguistics (Lechevrel [2008; 2012]; Stibbs [2021]). Considering climate change through its lexis and terminology should provide insights into how knowledge is established, communicated and distorted in this highly mediatized scientific field. Because of its interdisciplinary nature and the fact that international institutions had a central role in establishing it as a separate field of scientific inquiry, climate change can be seen as a non-prototypical specialized domain (neither disciplinary nor professional). This interdisciplinarity nature and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s pivotal role in establishing widely accepted results in the field and the ways of speaking about them has exerted a profound influence not only on the terminology employed but also on the broader depiction of the problem across diverse contexts (Bureau [2023]). The naming of the scientific domain itself has been a topic of debate. For some, in particular those that question the results of the IPCC, climate change refers to any climatic variation, whether it is caused by human activity or not. Other terms like “global warming” or “greenhouse effect” could be used to highlight the essential role of emissions produced by extractivist technologies in triggering the phenomenon. For others, “climate change” is a term that fails to highlight the devastating consequences and terms such as “climate crisis” or “climate disruption” should rather be favored.
An inquiry into the most appropriate words to name the phenomena can be extrapolated to all disciplines, thereby prompting a reevaluation of the limitations of language in its current form to represent how deeply it is likely to affect human social, political, economic and cultural organizations. It is reflected through a high degree of terminological and lexical innovation to consider new relationships between humans and their environment (the debated term of “anthropocene” is an example) or new emotions (ecoanxiety, solastalgia). In this context it is not surprising to find that metaphors are highly used, both to try and explain the phenomenon, its consequences and potential solutions (tipping point, carbon sink, adaptation pathway) and to defend ideas through their argumentative potential in a debated field (Augé [2023]). Euphemisms or hyperbolic expressions can also be considered for their argumentative or persuasive potential (climate variability or climate crisis instead of climate change).
If terminological and lexical variability can be observed in a monolingual context through diatopic, diachronic, diaphasic and/or diastratic differences (Coseriu [1974]), a layer of complexity is added in a multilingual context. As it is the language most used in international scientific publications, English is the preferred language when it comes to creating scientific terminology; therefore most scientific climate change terms are created in English first. Because of phenomena like borrowing and lack of equivalence the circulation of these terms and the knowledge they carry into other languages may be challenging and lead to delayed access to climate change science for a wider audience of non-English speakers. Specific cultural understandings of climate phenomena also influence what the most appropriate ways of naming and proposing solutions in different parts of the world are (Brüggemann & Rödder [2020]).
Both diachronic and synchronic analyses are welcome. All methodological approaches will be considered as long as they deal with the lexicological dimension of words, terms, multi-word units and expressions about climate change. The present issue welcomes all articles on the following topics:
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Terminology
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Determinologization and terminological diffusion: how do words about climate change go from (highly) specialized to standard / general languages? How do they propagate in standard English?
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Levels of specialization and interdisciplinarity: are there predominant links between conceptual domains to coin words about climate change?
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What is the role of metaphorical language in the creation of words about climate change? Is it purely terminological? Didactic? Persuasive?, etc.
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Can metaphors be an impediment to the perception and comprehension of climate change?
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Neology
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What type of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, phrases, etc.) are predominantly utilized in the lexicon of climate change-related terminology?
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Do certain word formation processes exhibit a higher degree of prevalence in the lexicon of climate change compared to others?
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Are words about climate change predominantly generated through lexical or semantic neology?
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What are the main neological functions of words related to climate change?
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Are certain word formation processes more productive in the coinage of climate change-related vocabulary than others, both in terms of time and space? Do certain word formation processes demonstrate a higher degree of creativity?
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Does hypostatization (Schmid [1998; 2008]) – i.e. “the combination of conceptual partitioning and ascription of entityhood effected by words” (Schmid [1998]) play a role in the creation of climate change-related words?
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Which source domains are the most prolific in terms of lexical creation with regard to metaphorical climate change-related words?
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Which types of words are subject to extinction due to climate change? Does climate change have an impact on the disappearance of existing lexis?
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Evaluation and axiology
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Are words about climate change, purportedly motivated by terminological imperatives, inherently neutral, objective terms, or are they subject to evaluative and axiological influences?
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Do words about climate change demonstrate particular semantic prosodies, that is, discernible evaluative polarities?
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Do euphemisms play a role in the creation and/or evolution of climate change-related words according to different temporal, geographic, speaker, stylistic, and register characteristics? Does taboo play a role in the creation of climate-change related words?
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Multilingual approaches
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In the context of borrowing, are there some languages that are more frequently utilized than others for the purpose of coining words about climate change?
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Might cultural particularities and/or a paucity of semantically equivalent words impede the process of borrowing and utilizing such terms?
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In what ways do institutional settings and communicative objectives influence translation practices regarding climate words?
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Discursive approaches
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Are there certain discursive forms that are predominantly associated with discourses on climate change?
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If such a phenomenon exists, what are the characteristics of these discourses, and what are the underlying reasons for their prevalence?
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Given that climate change is a shared global cause, terminology should transcend regional differences, but is this really the case? Are there cases of diatopic variation?
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The list above consists of only a few suggestions and is by no means exhaustive. In this issue, we welcome all contributions that deal with the words about climate change, their creation, evolution and propagation.
Selected references
Aguiar, R., A. Carrington & H. Wang. 2018. ReAcclimate: The new climate change lexicon. cs229.stanford.edu.
Augé, Anaïs. 2023. Metaphor and argumentation in climate change discourse. New York: Routledge.
Brüggemann, M. & S. Rödder (eds.). 2020. Global warming in local discourses: How communities around the world make sense of climate change. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.
Bureau, Pauline. 2023. Variation terminologique et néologie dans le domaine du changement climatique. Thèse de doctorat, Université Grenoble Alpes, soutenue le 29 novembre 2023.
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1974 [1958]. Synchronie, Diachronie und Geschichte: das Problem des Sprachwandels. München: Finks.
Domingues, J. M. 2023. Climate change and its lexicon: An analytical and critical view. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 36(2). 163–178.
Fagbola, T. M., A. Abayomi, M. B. Mutanga & V. Jugoo. 2021. Lexicon-based sentiment analysis and emotion classification of climate change related tweets. In International Conference on Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition, 637–646. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Fisichelli, N. A., G. W. Schuurman & C. H. Hoffman. 2016. Is ‘resilience’ maladaptive? Towards an accurate lexicon for climate change adaptation. Environmental Management 57(4). 753–758.
Francœur, Aline. 2022. Entre climato-alarmistes et climato-dénégateurs : Une saga néologique de notre temps. Néologica 16. Néologie et Environnement.
Fusco, E. J., B. G. Falk, P. J. Heimowitz, D. Lieurance, E. W. Parsons, C. M. Rottler et al. 2024. The emerging invasive species and climate-change lexicon. Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
Lechevrel, Nadège. 2008. L’approche écologique en linguistique : le cas de l’écolinguistique.
Lechevrel, Nadège. 2012. Les approches écologiques en linguistique : Enquête critique. Coll. “Sciences du langage Carrefour et Points de vue’. Academia Bruylant.
Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 1998. Constant and ephemeral hypostatization: thing, problem and other “shell nouns”. In Bernard Caron (ed.). Proceedings of the 16th international congress of linguists. (Paris, July 22-25 1997, CD-ROM: Elsevier).
Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2008. New Words in the Mind: Concept-formation and Entrenchment of Neologisms. Anglia. Journal of English Philology 126(1). 1-36. https://doi.org/10.1515/angl.2008.002
Sham, N. M. & A. Mohamed. 2022. Climate change sentiment analysis using lexicon, machine learning and hybrid approaches. Sustainability 14(8). 4723.
Stibbe, Arran. 2021. Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by. New York: Routledge.
How to submit
Please clearly indicate the title of the paper and include an abstract between 3,000 and 6,000 characters (including spaces) as well as a list of relevant keywords and references. All abstract and paper submissions will be anonymously peer-reviewed (double-blind peer reviewing) by an international scientific committee composed of specialists in their fields. Papers will be written preferably in English or occasionally in French.
Manuscripts may be rejected, accepted subject to revision, or accepted as such. The contributions will not exceed 55,000 signs.
Submissions (abstracts and articles) will be uploaded onto the journal’s submission platform. If you encounter any problem, please send a message to Lexis.
Deadlines
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May 2025: Call for papers
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August 31, 2025: Deadline for submitting abstracts to Lexis via the journal’s submission platform
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September 2025: Evaluation Committee’s decisions notified to authors
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February 1, 2026: Deadline for submitting papers via the journal’s submission platform (Guidelines for submitting articles: https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/1000)
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March and April 2026: Proofreading of papers by the Evaluation committee
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June and July 2026: Authors’ corrections
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September 1, 2026: Deadline for sending in final versions of papers