Idle, stricken, or retired: challenges in understanding media discourse on nuclear power

Abstract

Being politically, economically, environmentally, and socially significant, the topic of nuclear power enjoys high interest in the media with its complex character. On the one hand, there is nuclear power used for civil purposes which is viewed as one of the most cost-efficient power generation ways, while on the other, there is nuclear power used for military purposes as a weapon of mass destruction. The focus of the paper is on the metaphors used in the presentation of issues associated with nuclear power. The main method of analysis is CDA and the corpus analysed is comprised of articles published in the American The New York Times, the British The Independent and the Bulgarian newspaper Dnevnik over the period of a month, i.e. March 2013. This study adds to current research on metaphors as it compares and contrasts the thinking patterns exhibited by three different cultures through their media discourse.

Keywords

• media discourse
• npp
• metaphors
• cda