Climate communication: people’s attitudes, motivation for action and language preferences

Kjersti Fløttum, professor emerita, Department of foreign languages, University of Bergen.

Climate change affects both our personal everyday lifestyle choices and how we perceive of the future of humanity. There is increasing interest in who should act as well as in what should be done to mitigate the most serious consequences. In addition, the climate and nature crises are interconnected and need to be tackled together.

What are the steps to take in order to advance towards a sustainable society? Clearly, international and national agents are needed to develop policies and implement necessary changes, but we – as individuals – are also expected to contribute, especially through lifestyle change. 

While there is broad agreement on the urgent need for action, people must also go on living their daily lives, attending to the needs and interests of themselves, their families and their community. In this talk, evidence of how people relate the existential challenges of climate change to their normal, day-to-day life choices will be discussed.

After a short introduction of the cross-disciplinary LINGCLIM group, constituting the research environment for the present talk, a presentation of two studies will follow. Both studies are based on national representative surveys undertaken within the Norwegian Citizen Panel/DIGSSCORE at the University of Bergen.

The first study focuses on how people express their motivation for changing or not changing their lifestyle to limit harmful climate change. The second study concerns what arguments and words citizens themselves think could provide hope and inspire their fellows to change their lifestyle.

Kjersti Fløttum is professor of French linguistics, Department of foreign languages, University of Bergen. She was vice-rector for international relations 2005-2009 and member of the university board 2013-17 and 2017-21. Fløttum was chair of the Board of the Holberg Prize 2020-2023. She has had numerous local, national and international commissions of trust.

Her research interests cover text- and genre theory, narrative structures, semantics, pragmatics, linguistic polyphony, and discourse analysis. The major part of her empirical research is oriented towards enunciation, polyphonic (multivoiced), lexico-semantic and narrative analysis of academic, political and climate change discourse.

She has led several large projects (KIAP, EURLING, LINGCLIM) and has often collaborated in international and cross-disciplinary contexts. She is since 2012 head of the cross-disciplinary LINGCLIM research group and head of the CLIMLIFE project 2020-2023, focusing on lifestyle issues in a climate perspective, funded by the Research Council of Norway.