Metaphorische Konzeptualisierungen des Jahrhunderthochwassers in Süddeutschland im Spätfrühling 2024. Eine kognitiv-linguistische Analyse der überregionalen, online-journalistischen Berichterstattung

Due to their devastating consequences, so-called century floods attract significant public attention and are therefore covered in nationwide media. In journalistic reporting, numerous conceptual metaphors are used to conceptualise such extreme weather events. This linguistic study investigates how the century flood that occurred in southern Germany in late May and early June 2024 was metaphorically conceptualised in nationwide online journalism by identifying patterns of metaphorical conceptualisation. The analysis draws on the foundations of Conceptual Metaphor Theory as proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), refined through the graded distinction of schematicity levels in conceptual structure proposed in Kövecses (2017, 2020, 2022) Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Accordingly, metaphors are understood as schematically distinguishable mappings of conceptual aspects from source to target areas, through which particular actions are constituted. Adopting a mixed-methods approach that integrates manual with (semi-)automatic analytical procedures, the study reveals that the century flood is predominantly conceptualised through the highly schematic metaphor ZEIT IST SUBSTANZ (›time is substance‹), the less schematic metaphor NATURKATASTROPHEN SIND PERSONEN (›natural disasters are persons‹), and a set of least schematic, elaborating metaphors, namely HOCHWASSER IST GEGNER (›flood is an opponent‹), HOCHWASSER IST ZERSTÖRER (›flood is a destroyer‹) and HOCHWASSER IST MÖRDER (›flood is a murderer‹). From an ecolinguistic perspective, the study critically reflects on how these metaphorical conceptualisations obscure human co-responsibility for the intensity of extreme flood events.