Environmental issues in the Victorian era: an ecostylistic examination of metaphor and framing in Ruskin’s The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Abstract This article presents an ecostylistic analysis of the use of metaphor and framing in The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, two lectures by the Victorian polymath John Ruskin. The metaphors and frames identified and examined here are those triggered by the two title words ‘storm’ and ‘cloud’. The overall purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the ‘storm-and-cloud’ metaphors and frames are beneficial discursive strategies urging us humans to preserve the ecological structures all living beings rely on. Since they are key practices in the text, the entire discourse conveyed by the lectures can also be defined as beneficial. Furthermore, a comparison of the metaphors and frames catalogued in the three databases, Master Metaphor List, Metalude and MetaNet Metaphor Wiki, reveals that these are deployed in an innovative and distinctive way in the lectures. Finally, while ecolinguistic metaphor and framing investigation mostly discusses destructive and ambivalent metaphors and frames about nature, this article, which instead considers beneficial discursive strategies, strives to make an analytical contribution to an undeveloped ecolinguistic and ecostylistic research area.