Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) monitors public global health and tries to assist vulnerable populations in their pursue to achieve optimal health. WHO has always voiced concerns regarding health and environmental impacts of fossil fuel consumption. Reviewing WHO website shows various reports on fossil fuel impacts from multiple perspectives. The paper aims to examine the temporal construction of fossil fuel threat in WHO reports. Such construction aims to encourage people to take preventive measures within time span that precedes the impact of the threatening element. To accomplish this aim, the paper employs Cap’s (2013, p. 16) temporal proximization strategy as a component of the proximization theory of crisis and threat construction. The methodology is both qualitative and quantitative, using corpus linguistics. AntConc (2019) software is used to perform corpus procedures, such as word lists, file views, concordances, wildcards, and file views tools. The corpus consists of a set of WHO reports on fossil fuel adverse effect compiled by the researchers. The results show that WHO reports employ various linguistic choices to construe the temporal proximization of fossil fuel. These linguistic choices are used at different rates to achieve cognitive-pragmatic objectives.
Keywords
Cognitive pragmatics, Fossil fuel, Proximization theory, Temporal proximization, WHO reports
Recommended Citation
Abed, Nawal M. and Khalil, Huda H.
(2025)
"The Temporal Construction of Fossil Fuel Threat in WHO Reports: A Corpus-Based Cognitive Pragmatic Study,"
Uruk for Humanities: Vol. 18:
Iss.
1, Article 20.
Available at:
https://muthuruk.mu.edu.iq/journal/vol18/iss1/20
