Speaker
Description
The world is threatened, among others, by a severe energy crisis that might lead to the collapse of modern banking, transportation, and medical services in tandem with a paralysis of industrial production. Although energy crisis is a constant preoccupation of world governments, the major blackout in the summer of 2025 in Spain, Portugal, and partially in France has proved that what had seemed a far-off threat turned into reality. Against this background, the presentation analyzes the discursive articulation of the energy crisis in the context of this major event, examining the discursive patterns in which the crisis is addressed. The analysis has been carried out on newspaper articles published by some of the most important newspapers in Spain (El Pais), in Portugal (Correio da Manhã), and other articles published in significant newspapers or in world-famous news agencies (Associated Press, Aljazeera, and Euronews). For a more comprehensive analysis of how a crisis is expressed in language, the official report issued by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) in October 2025 has been examined. The twofold perspective is intended to sustain the idea of a social construction of crisis, where authorities, through the media, outline the size of the problem, its implications, and a framework of interpretation. The findings suggest that the crisis is linguistically reflected in intricate technical explanations of a technology that is largely unknown today. Tentativeness is a constant feature of crisis discourse, as at the time of the statement, no final conclusion had been reached. An interesting finding is the generalized confusion surrounding the incident’s cause, which neither experts nor institutions are willing to identify. In the scientific report, confusion is replaced by a straightforward admission of ignorance regarding what might have caused the incident.
| Keywords | energy, crisis, language, crisis construction, metaphor |
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| cristina.valcea@unitbv.ro |