Tensions in talking about disasters: Habitual versus climate-informed – The case of bushfire vocabulary in Australia

ABSTRACT

Disasters occasion ways of speaking and writing in the societies in which they take place. Now, due to climate change, events such as wildfires, floods and heatwaves are becoming more severe and more frequent. Therefore, the climate crisis poses a challenge, not only materially, but discursively. Habitual vocabulary may no longer be appropriate, and there is a pull between these turns of phrase and newer ones informed by climate change. The article takes the case of Australia whose public discourse in English about ‘bushfires’ has been characterized by traditional vocabulary, focused on battling the elements. Through three examples, the study treats tensions between the habitual and the climate-informed in event names (e.g. Black Summer), a social category (volunteer firefighters) and a construction of political critique (I don’t hold a hose). The frame taken is semantically-enhanced discourse studies, inspired by natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) and other cultural takes. A transtextual approach is used, along with research from humanities and social science. The study finds that through the interplay between habitual and climate-informed vocabulary about ‘bushfires’, one can view conceptions of events, cultures, social relations, identities and relationships to places in Australia. Extreme weather formations and climate change formations cannot be easily separated.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• semantically-enhanced discourse studies
• natural semantic metalanguage (NSM)
• Australian English
• extreme weather discourse

1. Introduction

Climate change has come more and more into public awareness and debate. Over the years, people have found ways of talking and writing about it in order to describe, explain, persuade, obfuscate and motivate, among others. In many languages, new words, expressions and discourses have emerged, which have been the subject of linguistic inquiry (e.g. Fløttum, 2017; Penz, 2018). At the same time, the unfolding crisis puts pressure on older understandings of climate, and their expressions through language. Among these conceptions and locutions are those relating to extreme weather and disasters, such as the wildfires, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves, that are being exacerbated. One country’s discourse that provides an apt case to look at these tensions is Australia’s.

The Australian context of extreme weather discourse is notable in several ways. One way, naturally, is that the Australian landscape and environment are different from other places, but there are also historical and cultural factors in play. For example, there are longstanding Australian narratives about the ‘harsh’ and ‘unforgiving’ weather and climate, in which, the colonizers’ original country, England, is used as a yardstick (Arthur, 2003). A famous and cliched poem reads “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains” (MacKellar, 1908). There is a discourse of the practice of local people banding together in times of disaster (Fisher, 2011; Hansen & Griffiths, 2012).¹ Further, there is the presence of First Nations practices of stewardship of the land, which is increasingly feeding into wider public understanding of the country’s environment (Pascoe, 2014; Steffensen, 2020). There are also the economic and political factors of the country’s reliance on mineral extraction, which has led to governments disfavouring climate mitigation measures and seeking to diminish the role of climate change in recent extreme weather (Crowley, 2021). Further, polarization still exists in the community as to the existence of, and appropriate response to, climate change (Lucas, 2018).

This study takes vocabulary surrounding bushfire, an Australian English word denoting a wildfire in vegetation known as bush, to reveal and explore interplays between habitual and climate-informed language, culture and discourse. ‘Bushfires’ came to global attention in 2019–2020 when severe fires burned over 17 million hectares of the Australian continent, events considered a harbinger of the new climate changed-induced age of fire, the Pyrocene (Pyne, 2020; Richards et al., 2020). At the level of the Australian nation state, they took place under the centre right government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison (2018–2022) whose lack of climate action was justified by the position that its price was too high for the country.

Using semantically-enhanced discourse studies inaugurated in Bromhead (2021), and further developed herein (see §2), the current article unpacks three examples of ‘bushfire’ vocabulary, holistically defined. As such, in addition to shedding light on the climate–extreme weather discourse interface and its attendant challenges, the article contributes to the study of semantics and development of English in Australia, and the relationship between language, culture and environment. In addition, in a broad sense, the present study is addressing concerns of continuity and change using the example of public discourse from one country. This study could also serve as a point of departure for cross-linguistic studies in which Australian bushfire discourse is compared and contrasted with disaster discourse in different varieties of English and, also, languages other than English.

The article proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents methodological frames, and gives the background to bushfire and its lexical elaboration. Sections 3–5 offer case studies of three selected ‘bushfire’ vocabulary items: event names of bushfires, such as Black Summer (§3), words for a social category, volunteer firefighters and firies, an alternate form of firefighters (§4), and a construction of political critique in I don’t hold a hose springing from the 2019–2020 bushfires, the context of which will be explained (§5). Section 6 provides some concluding remarks.

2. Methodological frames and background to the ‘bushfire’ concept

The frame taken, semantically-enhanced discourse studies (Bromhead, 2021), has been developed to add to the diversity of discourse studies (van Dijk, 2001) through focussing on shared themes, topics and keywords in a linguistic practice inspired by natural semantic metalanguage (NSM). It is also influenced by Cultural Discourse Analysis’ emphasis on deep cultural meanings (Carbaugh & Berry, 2017; Carbaugh & Cerulli, 2013). Other linguistic tactics to extreme weather and climate have been taken through approaches that fall under the moniker of ecolinguistics (e.g. Fill & Penz, 2018; Stibbe, 2015), Critical Discourse Analysis (Bromfield et al., 2021) and corpus-based discourse analysis (Baker, 2006; Bednarek et al., 2022; Partington et al., 2013), which have valuable contributions.

The present frame is distinct. In the first place, it draws on the NSM approach, which uses a mini-language of simple words whose meanings cannot be reduced, viz. semantic primes, (e.g. ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘people’, ‘know’, ‘feel’, ‘good’, ‘bad’, etc.) and an accompanying simple syntax. It has been developed drawing from intersections between languages. Another important concept of the approach is that of semantic molecules, more complex meanings that are part of intermediate semantic structure, e.g. ‘fire’, ‘burn’, ‘wood’ and ‘smoke’ in the case of bushfire, so that the explanatory language consists of several hundred words. The mini-language is used to state: (i) meanings of words and constructions via reductive paraphrase (semantic explications); and (ii) values and speech practices (ethnopragmatic scripts). The approach has been described in detail in numerous publications, which contain specific studies of vocabulary, beliefs and routines (see, e.g. Wierzbicka, 1996, 2003 [1991]; in the last ten years, e.g. Bromhead & Ye, 2020; Farese, 2022; Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2014; Levisen & Waters, 2017a; Wong, 2014; Ye, 2017, Part I). Here, I further advance the semantically-enhanced discourse studies lens used in this current study.

Semantically-enhanced discourse studies:

(a)	sees individual words as intricate worlds of meaning (after Wierzbicka, 1996); Therefore, the amassing of very small details about vocabulary – here, names, social category words, and constructions – in thick description, is of importance.
(b)	is curious about meaning in favour of critical; Understanding emic meanings takes precedence over questions of power. In a sense, the present study is addressing concerns of continuity and change.
(c)	emphasizes denaturalization as a technique; In the present study, the analyst is seeking to shed light on local meanings in the public discourse of their home country (Australia) through making what is familiar there strange. This practice may reveal different things to people au fait with this discourse (public discourse insiders), and those not (public discourse outsiders), although these audiences are naturally heterogeneous.2
(d)	is transtextual; The study exemplifies its points through heterogeneous voices from a broad range of sources – from attestations, corpora, radio, television, newspapers to visual practices – to build up an overall picture.
(e)	is a humanistic approach; Language, in this case, of extreme weather and climate, is put in cultural context by drawing on humanities, social science and media. It is linguistics as a scholarly activity.
(f)	is pragmatic and innovative in terms of compositions formulated in NSM. The kinds of simply-phrased compositions used are appropriate to each case study. In §3, the study innovates and proposes what I am calling message models for the two different ‘bushfire’ event names. They render, minimally, what one could take from the names’ coinages, and the patterns these names draw on. They are messages emerging from the discourse moment in which they appeared. In §4, the social category of volunteer firefighters attracts an ethnopragmatic script to capture people’s attitudes towards this kind of people. Ethnopragmatic scripts distil widespread practices and norms in linguacultures, often those of speech, through statements phrased in the NSM language of explanation (Goddard, 2006). A semantic explication is proposed to account for the extra meaning content brought in the alternate form firies. In §5, the multi-word construction, I don’t hold a hose, attracts analysis through phrases framed in the mini-language. In addition, a discourse model of the I don’t hold a hose construction from December 2019 to May 2022 is provided. A discourse model differs from an NSM semantic explication or an ethnopragmatic script.3 It portrays a specific discourse formation that is brought about and established within a broader cultural context.4 However, as explained elsewhere, I see the NSM approach always to have consisted of both compositions written in the metalanguage and the surrounding material (Bromhead, 2021).

The frame has been formulated with the object of study, extreme weather discourse, in mind. It also flows from the NSM approach work on environmental words and meanings (Goddard, 2010; Levisen & Aragón, 2017) and landscape semantics (Bromhead, 2018; Rao, forthcoming).

To shed light on the concept from which the three cases come, ‘bushfire’, a few words on its context are in order. The English word bushfire is particularly associated with Australia.⁵ Wildfire is used in United States and Canada, which experience similar fires. At first glance, bushfire and wildfire may look like synonyms. However, in fact, bushfire brings with it the Australian meaning of bush, which implies a mass of dry vegetation. The ‘dry’ aspect is a part of why Australians, though often traumatized by fires, accept and expect some vegetation to burn. Many Australian species of trees and shrubs need exposure to fire to reproduce, and many others are tolerant of fire. Moreover, First Peoples in Australia burn country for culturally  – and spiritually-embedded – management of land (Williamson, 2021). Yet, in recent years, because of the climate crisis, large fires have taken place in previously unburned rainforest in Australia and many other parts of the world. The carry-over of the sense of bush to the semantics of bushfire is one reason why many Australians may be disconcerted by fire burning in rainforest whose vegetation falls outside the prototype of the Australian bush (Bromhead, 2011, 2018, 2020).

Bushfire can be considered a cultural keyword as demonstrated by the number of words and expressions with which it is associated (Apresjan, 1992). It possesses a web of connected vocabulary, and new expressions are being coined as well (see also Arthur, 2003, pp. 147–150). The current study selects three. This selection is, I believe, of interest as it displays how values and views permeate through different features of bushfire vocabulary – event names, social categories and a construction that is part of political commentary.

3. Bushfire event names

This section sketches the tension between two names suggested for the Australian bushfires of 2019–2020, namely, the habitual ‘Black Summer’, and the climate-informed ‘the Forever Fires’. In order to unpack this tension, here, I elaborate on the conventional Australian naming patterns on which Black Summer is built.

Three significant naming patterns of bushfires identified appear in Table 1, which also sets out their semantic elements and some examples. Firstly, local names are given by relevant authorities from the specific locality where fires start. They tend to be used while the fire is burning,⁶ and in recent years, Australians have become familiar with the coloured triangular icons representing them on emergency apps as they cluster over maps of Australian states (McGrane et al., 2022).⁷ The second pattern is place-based event names, a place often encompassing a broader area than the localities, such as Canberra bushfires, events that occurred 2003 in the Australian capital. These names come to pass after an event. The third of the patterns, the one on which Black Summer is built, is memorialized time-based event names, such as Black Saturday (2009), which are also given afterwards. In these names, the word bushfires is not obligatory.

Table 1 Bushfire names

Pattern	Examples	Elements
Local names	Currawan Fire Harrietville Fire	place + fire
Place-based event names	(2003) Canberra bushfires (2020) K’gari (Fraser Island) bushfire	place + bushfire/s
Memorialized time-based event names	(2009) Black Saturday (bushfires) (2019–2020) Black Summer (bushfires)	black + time [day/season] + (bushfires)

Memorialized names for wildfires seem to be particular to Australia among majority English-speaking countries.⁸ Bushfires in Australia attract names when they affect the places where people live; some severe, ecologically destructive fires have not received names (Pyne in Chang, 2020; Pyne, 2020). A number of memorialized names appear as entries in the historical Australian National Dictionary (Moore et al., 2016), and the synchronic Macquarie Dictionary (Macquarie Dictionary Online, 2022), although they are not described there in detail. They come from an English language pattern of ‘black’ plus the name of a day to mark a disaster (OED online, 2022a, 2022b). However, unlike other so-called black days such as military defeats and stock market crashes, there is a literal and material connection to the colour black in the effects of fire. The pattern of ‘black’ + time was first used for Black Thursday bushfires of 1851.⁹ It has been used at least eight¹⁰ times across the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries and is still productive as demonstrated by the 2019–2020 Black Summer bushfires.¹¹

While the 2019–2020 Australian bushfires were still burning, the American fire historian Stephen Pyne suggested that these fires should be called “the Forever Fires” to mark their unprecedented and trend-setting nature, as well as their relationship with climate change (Marshall, 2020). Yet Australia fell back on an older pattern, and these fires became known as Black Summer. In one sense, the name could be seen as a departure in that it memorializes an entire season instead of a day in the case of the previous less long-lasting fires. Further, the fires could not attract a single place-based name so easily as they spanned the whole continent.

A newspaper feature of 25 January 2020 covering Pyne’s suggestion says the fires “have no name yet – no catchy Ash Wednesday or Black Saturday moniker” (Marshall, 2020). The first attested ‘black summer’ (in lower case) on the newspaper database Factiva is dated 14 January 2020 (see (1)):

(1)	Warning as black summer takes its toll on businesses. (Rollins & Burgess, 2020)

The next ones come from 5 February 2020 from reporting of the then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s calls for a national public inquiry into the bushfires (made in his condolence motion in federal parliament) (see (2)).¹²

(2)	“This is the black summer of 19/20,” he told Parliament during his condolence motion. (Gailberger & Gredley, 2020)

As identified by Bromfield et al. (2021), in this speech he used traditional ‘bush’ tropes based on a rural, colonial ideal and sought to play down climate change as a factor in the fires.¹³

The label is attributed to him in these articles, although obviously it had been circulating previously and fits the existing pattern. However, immediately afterwards, from climate-concerned people, there was some pushback to the name and its association with Morrison, for example as in (3).

(3)	Our marketing PM is trying to brand the bushfires. The words ‘black summer’ will never pass my lips. (Flanagan, 2020)

Some commentary pointed out that the first of the fires had started in July 2019 in the Australian winter, so ‘black summer’ may obscure the magnitude of the events (e.g. Hannam, 2020). Any association with Scott Morrison quickly fell away, and the name became popular, even standard. For example, the climate-conscious Guardian Australia, a newspaper which has a style guide for the correct nomenclature to use about climate change, regularly uses the name in its reporting (2020–2022).

Some semantic content of the messages sent by Pyne’s label the Forever Fires versus using the ‘black’ plus time pattern can be unpacked. Two message models are sketched (with key differences between the two in italics):

[A]	‘the Forever Fires’ At one time, there were many big fires in many places on one continent, not because people wanted it. Forests were burning. Creatures died. People died. Very, very bad things happened in some places. People know: After this time, fires like this will happen more in many places because something very, very bad is happening to the earth (climate change).
[B]	‘Black Summer’ At one time (Summer), there were many big fires in many places in Australia, not because people wanted it. Bush was burning. People died. Very bad things happened to some places where people live. People know: Fires like this happen in this country. This has happened before.

Message model [A] is global in scope, situating the fires on one continent among many. The pan-English ‘forest’ is used, and the impact on creatures, people and places broadly is catalogued. The warning carried by the fires, and their cause as a catastrophe brought by climate change is given. The model presented for ‘Black Summer’ [B] builds on what has been established based on previous event names, Black Saturday, Ash Wednesday and so on. It depicts the fires as a national phenomenon of the Australian bush. The effect of the fires in given in terms of their impact on people and where they live. The fires are seen as natural and linking in with an existing tradition.

The pessimistic, global implications of the climate-informed the Forever Fires may have been too confronting to be adopted widely, and Black Summer represents a more reassuring habitual and parochial outlook.

4. Volunteer firefighters and firies – A local social category

In Australia, more so than other countries, people who fight bushfires are volunteers. The volunteer firefighter can be seen as a local Australian social category (see (4)). Volunteer firefighters, people who want to contribute to the community, belong to brigades connected to the districts where they live.

(4)	Volunteer firefighters play a very important role and are vital to the region [Innisfail district, Victoria, H.B.]. (Collins Wordbanks)

Like many words for occupations, the full firefighters has been changed via morphological processes to generate a less formal, alternate form, firies (or fireys). Such forms are often known as hypocoristics and encompass much more vocabulary than social categories, e.g. personal and place names, foodstuffs, and so on (see Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2008; Kidd et al., 2011; Manns, 2019; Simpson, 2004). Although they are also found in other varieties of English, hypocoristics are more numerous, and appear more frequently and in more contexts in Australia, than elsewhere. See (5) for a formal media outlet covering a serious topic:

(5)	With the bushfires unlikely to be doused for another 4–6 weeks concern is rising for the welfare of exhausted firies. (ABC Radio National news programme, 2019)

A collection of around 400 articles about ‘firefighters’ and ‘firies’ in the main Brisbane newspaper The Courier Mail from the 2019–2020 Australian bushfire season has been analyzed to adduce evidence of attitudes to this important category of people in Australian public discourse on bushfires. The word firefighter has statistically significant combinations with the possessive our, positive adjectives, such as brave and heroic; words indicating gratitude, such as thank and tribute, and words suggesting care like weary. These combinations show that there are shared components of affection, admiration, pride and regard, and a feeling that firefighters belong to the community, be it local, state or national.

These features are also reflected in a different media source, the ‘Firefighters’ episode of ABC television programme You Can’t Ask That, which aired in March 2020 in the bushfires’ wake (Docker, 2020). In a highly-edited mix of one-to-one and one-to-two interviewing, the episode cuts between nine firefighters reading and responding to a series of pre-sent questions from the public. Those who appear show some diversity: men, women, Indigenous, non-Indigenous, suburban and rural. Some topics, such as the contribution of climate change to bushfires, display disunity in views, both from the participants and the wider public. Yet the show culminates in the question “Are you a hero?”, with all the firefighters, modest and dutiful, testifying to the respect and appreciation they receive from the community.¹⁴

Elements indicated by the two sources contribute to an ethnopragmatic script as shown in [C].

[C]

An ethnopragmatic script of attitude to volunteer firefighters in Australia (a) in Australia, there are people of one kind when a bushfire happens, these people do many things because they don’t want fire to be in this place they know that they can die when they do these things they don’t think about it like this: ‘I don’t want to do it because of this’ (b) these people do this because they want to do something good in the place where they live they do this because they want to do some good things for people in the place where they live they don’t do this because of anything else (c) many people in Australia think like this: ‘people of this kind do very good things for us people of this kind are very good people’

Section (a) sets up the fact of this category and its members’ willing sacrifice of their safety in firefighting. In section (b), the motivation of volunteer firefighters is portrayed as being to do something good for their region and its people, free from other concerns, which could include monetary compensation or government compulsion. Section (c) depicts the wide positive assessment of volunteer firefighters in Australia.

One testament of community sentiment expressed semiotically is the visual, written, ‘speech act’ practice, which formed part of the Australian linguistic landscape during and after the 2019–2020 bushfires. Signs that read ‘thank you, firies’ were erected, both officially by governments, community organizations and businesses on billboards, and also, unofficially, as handmade signs, some by children. Images of some of these more ad hoc signs were projected onto the iconic Sydney Opera House in tribute (Papenfuss, 2020). In (6), find an example from the ABC television show:

(6)	Yeah, so one of our family’s little kid has made a thank you firies and Booderee National Park sign. (Brown in Docker, 2020)

When firies is used in other varieties of English to report on Australian bushfires, it can appear in quotation marks with a gloss, indicating its cultural specificity. Hypocoristic forms, such as, sunnies from sunglasses and devo from devastated, have important social and interactional meanings in Australia. Such forms are distinct from diminutives, e.g. birdie for bird, which encode small size and an association with children. They can convey informality, easy familiarity, a rough warmth and an in-group identity. In [D], I propose components for the extra semantic content brought by firies as opposed to firefighters.¹⁵

[D]	firies (instead of firefighters) people of one kind when I say this about these people, I think like this: ‘I don’t want to say this with a big word people here can know people of this kind well’ when I think like this, I feel something

Explication [D] conveys a desire not to be formal or precious by using of a full form of the word, and a shared familiarity with the social category. The use of ‘people here’ gives an element flexibility, and so could encompass hypocoristic forms that are known to many Australians, or those known only to specific subgroups. In addition, in the final line, an emotive component is given. The valence of the feeling is not specified as firie can be used in many contexts as in (7):

(7)	Every time you hear about a death from a firie it guts ya. (Kampen in Docker, 2020)

Despite positive attitudes towards firefighters, the more severe bushfires now experienced in Australia pose a challenge for climate change adaptation. The concept of ‘volunteer firefighters’ is based on a local response from an earlier era of less serious, shorter bushfire seasons. Members of the social category of ‘volunteer firefighters’ are diminishing in numbers under pressures, such as, having to take more time off work, and, in some cases, buying their own equipment (e.g. O’Halloran & Davies, 2020). Australia faces a big issue: whether the country moves away from this much-loved concept towards an alternative, more professional bushfire-fighting response, the specifics of which are unclear.

The matter was debated during the 2019–2020 bushfires. Those opposed to changing the status quo, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison, invoked the, in the main, unpaid nature of the firefighting as a virtue (e.g. Davidson, 2019). It was argued that volunteerism, local connection and autonomy were values held by members of the social category themselves that would be ruptured by payment. Section (b) of the ethnopragmatic script of [C] distilled these features. According to reporting, while they did not dispute the values, volunteer firefighters were divided about reform, which also comes out in The Courier Mail corpus (e.g. Averill, 2019).

Understanding the discourse on firefighters and firies can help people make sense of what values Australia wants to maintain and those that may need revision.

5. I don’t hold a hose – A construction of political critique

Some background is needed on I don’t hold a hose. In December 2019, as bushfires grew more severe, the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, was taking a vacation with his family in Hawaii. He was criticized for his absence during the period. While still overseas, Morrison gave an interview in which he was asked to justify his holiday at this time. He defended himself, in part, by saying that he was not physically involved with firefighting. To quote:

But I know Australians understand this [his leave, H.B.] (…). They know that, you know, I don’t hold a hose, mate, and I don’t sit in a control room. That’s the brave people who do that are doing that job [firefighting, H.B.]. (Prime Minister of Australia, 2019)

The statement is sometimes rendered ‘I don’t hold the hose’. The definite article, the, could represent a conception of ‘hose’ as being framed as a unique item invested in the prime ministership (Radden & Dirven, 2007). The, much mocked, statement was taken up to continue to criticize Morrison’s conduct during the bushfires beyond December 2019, including his reluctance to acknowledge the contribution brought by climate change (see Bednarek et al., 2022 on a discourse of blame). The word combination expresses evasion when asked to take responsibility, identified as a feature of Morrison’s rhetorical style generally (Lukin, 2021; Moore, 2021).¹⁶ Morrison is known for his memorable yet banal turns of phrase, which are often attributed to his background in marketing (see also (3)). He was, notably, responsible for a campaign for Australian tourism that utilized the Australian English colloquial where the bloody hell are you? (e.g. Kelly, 2021).

A multi-word construction, which has some flexibility in the words used, emerged with reference to Scott Morrison. The slot initially taken by the word hose can be variable depending on the context of the political criticism, typically an artefact used involved in the matter materially rather than governmentally, e.g. I don’t hold a needle for COVID vaccine distribution. Either the definite or the indefinite article can be used, in some cases restricted by the semantics of the noun involved.

The construction does not have to take the first person singular subject I. It can appear in the third person, with he, Scott and Scott Morrison as attested subjects. Mate may or may not be included. It can be accompanied by I don’t hold a hose, which makes the membership clear, but not necessarily. The concept has also spawned visual memes and cartoons. In this way, the word combination moved from the political context of the response to bushfires to be used in other areas of government activity. Broadly speaking, the bushfire context provides a prototype for subsequent issues in public discourse (see also Bednarek et al., 2022). There is much to say about this construction;¹⁷ however, I will restrict my comments to its emergence in discourse moments related to matters of extreme weather and climate.

Subsequent to the bushfires, in 2021 and 2022, Australia experienced floods, which have been suggested to be more extreme than previous ones due to climate change. Morrison’s response to, and a lack of federal preparation for, these floods has been subject to criticism, as well as his downplaying of climate change (e.g. Lewis, 2022). Floods have generated examples such as I don’t hold a bucket and he doesn’t hold a mop (e.g. Schultz, 2022).

The pattern is broader than with one variable slot, I don’t hold Noun Phrase. Notably, the original quotation included ‘I don’t sit in the control room’ with reference to emergency services. Combinations without the word hold, pivoting on don’t or doesn’t, can be recognized as being of the same pattern. In one interpretation, the original statement could convey something like a state, roughly ‘I don’t have something like a firefighter has something’. This reading lends itself to the insertion of a verb with a stative aspect. One attestation uses the mental verb believe, as in I don’t believe in climate change. Another interpretation of the original “I don’t hold a hose” could be as something like an activity, roughly ‘I don’t do things like firefighters do things’. This interpretation can lead to the insertion of a predicate based on an activity carried out by other specialists. In relation to flood response, he doesn’t pack a sandbag and he doesn’t man a pump are attestations.

The pattern is also found in instances when the object is not material, like a hose, and, unlike firefighting, the activity falls within the prime ministerial remit (using the interpretation ‘I don’t do things like prime ministers do things’). In (8), Morrison is taken to task over delays in setting greenhouse gas emissions targets:

(8)	He doesn’t hold a hose, he doesn’t hold a needle, he doesn’t make the plans and he doesn’t set the targets. (Denniss, 2021)

Politicians from the party opposing Scott Morrison’s, the Australian Labor Party, even used phrases following this template in parliament. However, the template may not necessarily be known outside a group Simons (2022) calls “the hyperengaged” who closely follow and discuss political minutiae (Author’s experience; Pueblos, 2022).

The analysis proposed here is not one of specifically Morrison’s language, but its imitation from December 2019 to May 2022.¹⁸ These imitations may be making their way into dictionaries of Australian English (e.g. Laugesen in Power, 2021). In the discourse model presented in [E], I sketch the construction with the original bushfires instance as a prototype.

[E]

I don’t hold the hose, mate/he doesn’t set the targets/he doesn’t pack a sandbag (a) I’m saying something like Scott Morrison says when I say it, I’m saying something bad about him I’m saying this because I want people here to feel something good when they hear this like people often feel when they want to laugh (b) people know: when bad things are happening in Australia, the prime minister has to do something like prime ministers often do things Scott Morrison is the prime minister (c) when bushfires were happening in Australia, many people wanted Scott Morrison to do something like prime ministers often do things he said something like this to people in Australia: ‘I don’t have to do anything firefighters do this they have to do it’ many people thought: ‘it was bad when he said this’ (d) I think like this: ‘something bad like bushfires is happening in Australia now people want him to do something he’s saying something like this again’

Section (a) provides the illocutionary force of construction (drawing on the NSM approach to humour, e.g. Arab, 2020; Goddard, 2018; Goddard & Mullan, 2020). Section (b) contains the societal knowledge on which the disparagement, and impact of the initial statement, lies. In (c), the original utterance is portrayed by contrasting the expectations of prime ministerial behaviour with the implication of his words. It also provides the negative reaction of people to his original utterance. Section (d) depicts the occasion of the reuse, and perhaps innovation, in the construction to draw attention to another issue.

The original occurred with the address term mate, strongly associated with Australian English and an Australian identity, which can be used in disagreement (Alimoradian, 2014; Rendle-Short, 2010; Wierzbicka, 1997). The nature of Morrison’s invocation of Anglo-Celtic Australian male folk types has been discussed (e.g. Gauja et al., 2020).¹⁹ Notably, Blaine (2021) suggests that, in Morrison’s case, this image, one which has been cultivated by politicians from the Liberal Party since the 1990s, is highly confected. Yet, as suggested in §4, volunteer firefighting could be said to spring from aspects of this ethos. The social category is respected by sources from different political and cultural orientations, both, in Blaine’s phrasing, cosmopolitans and parochials. One of the many reasons why I don’t hold a hose, mate became a successful construction of political critique is that the interpretation of ‘I am not someone like a firefighter’ hints at the confection and, also, suggests ‘I am not someone good’.

6. Concluding remarks

The study has explored interplays between the habitual and the climate-informed in Australian bushfire discourse. The ‘bushfire’ vocabulary that people in Australia use draws on collective remembrances and particular instantiations of climate change, particularly seen through the disaster of the 2019–2020 bushfires.

Three case studies have been presented using different kinds of vocabulary. Section 3 traced bushfire naming patterns in English through the nation state of Australia’s history. The competing messages of the habitual ‘Black Summer’, and the novel suggestion of ‘the Forever Fires’ that points to climate crisis, were modelled minimally. Section 4 shone a spotlight on the social category of volunteer firefighters, and attitudes towards them were unpacked in an ethnopragmatic script. In addition, the section considered the alternate form, firies, and a semantic explication was proposed for extra meaning content brought by the hypocoristic. Stresses that are being placed on the admired social category from the more severe fires brought by climate change were also brought out, with reference to the analysis in the ethnopragmatic script. Section 5 considered the construction of political critique I don’t hold a hose, which was borne out of the 2019–2020 bushfires and employed subsequently to decry the Australian prime minister on issues, including disasters and climate change. One of the construction’s many properties is that it unflatteringly contrasts an absent prime minister, reluctant to acknowledge impacts of climate change, with the heroism of firefighters. Semantic considerations of the construction’s bounds were presented, and a particular discourse was modelled.

Moreover, in this study, I furthered an approach to studying discourse, semantically-enhanced discourse studies, which is a culturally-informed scholarly perspective, drawing on natural semantic metalanguage methods. The approach to name coinages in message models is an innovation in this article. In vocabulary, one finds emotions, actions, histories, relationships to places, relationships between people, and relationships to institutions, all of which are evident in the cases taken. Illustrative discussion of vocabulary, and distilling its aspects, allow one to look at the interrelationships through the items in detail, along with broader themes, constituting a contribution to the study of Australian public discourse, Australian English, and continuity and change in disaster and climate themes.

People experience disasters, most acutely, in the places where they live. Climate change is global, and there are a lot of locutions that span varieties for English. Australia is one scene among many. Much of public discourse centres on significant happenings within the country, particular actors and habitual modes. These modes, like those found elsewhere, can meet tension with considerations of climate change. Yet communities across the world already hold a great amount of knowledge about, and experience with, environment, both materially and socially (Foxwell-Norton, 2017; Zaman, 2021). The balancing of, and intermingling of, the habitual and the climate-informed, in vocabulary and elsewhere, will continue as the climate crisis unfolds. It is hoped that the study could be used as one reference point in wider cross-linguistic and cross-cultural studies of disaster and climate discourse.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the following people for helpful comments and/or discussion during the development of this study (in order of appearance): Carsten Levisen, Cliff Goddard, Anna Wierzbicka, Gerry Docherty, Sheridan McDougall, and Kerrie Foxwell-Norton and the students of her Environmental and Climate Change Communication course at Griffith University. In addition, the article has benefitted from the comments of two anonymous reviewers. Naturally, I am responsible for any shortcomings of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study were derived from the referenced resources available in the public domain.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by a Griffith University Postdoctoral Fellowship (52586-PCI2550-BROMH) and a Griffith University Climate Action Beacon funding grant for the project ‘Words and meanings in everyday Australian discourse about climate change and climate action’.

Notes on contributors

Helen Bromhead

Helen Bromhead studies in environmental discourse, semantics and pragmatics. In addition, she researches how to make messaging about disasters more effective for all: clear, accessible, and easier to interpret and translate. She is a Research Fellow in the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University.

Notes

1 Regular disasters are one influence on varieties of social bonds and practices in the country, such as the Australian cultural keyword ‘mateship’ (Bromhead, 2020; Wierzbicka, 1997).

2 An anonymous reviewer comments that this process of denaturalization “contributes to the development of a sense of ‘estrangement’ in the native speaker”. They continue in saying: “By making an indigenous concept ‘extraneous’, this type of analytical approach helps native speakers reflect consciously on concepts which they might take for granted. They can observe an indigenous concept from the perspective of the external observer and become more conscious of its cultural salience”.

3 Bromhead (2021) proposed such compositions under the name ‘discourse script’; however, with the benefit of hindsight, ‘discourse model’ seems apposite both for the compositions that appeared in the work, and the one proposed here.

4 For other work using NSM to model discourse, see Forbes (2020) and Hein (2020).

5 The close relationship between bushfires and the country of Australia is reinforced by resources other than the transparent association with the vegetation type bush. An anonymous reviewer points to mentions of Australian local flora and fauna, as well as Australian geographic names of regions, in Australian journalistic discourse related to the 2019–2020 bushfire season.

6 <https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/fires-near-me>, accessed 12 July 2022.

7 The visuals of these emergency apps represent a more recent semiotic phenomenon indicating the keyword status of bushfire than the multicoloured fire danger rating road signs pointed to in Bromhead (2020). See Levisen and Waters (2017b) on keywords, and the material and visual.

8 The naming practices for bushfires differ from those of North American wildfires. Often American local fire names are retained as they spread, and Canadian names tend to be place based (KGW staff, 2021; List of wildfires – North America <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wildfires#North_America>, accessed 12 July 2022).

9 It is possible that the pattern has a Scottish influence. The first English language citation of ‘black’ + day used to denote a disaster is Black Saturday of 1547, a defeat of the Scottish army by the English, which is one of a number of important days from Scottish history using this model (OED, 2022a, 2022b). Black Thursday was centred on the state of Victoria in areas that were, in part, inhabited by many immigrants from the Scottish Highlands (Watson, 1984).

10 List of major bushfires in Australia, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_bushfires_in_Australia>, accessed 12 July 2022.

11 There are also the unique coinages of Red Tuesday (1898) and Ash Wednesday (1983), the latter of which occurred on the relevant day in the Christian calendar. They would also appear to be in the tradition of this pattern.

12 Public inquiries after bushfires and other extreme weather events are a regular occurrence and considered a distinctive element of Australia’s disaster scene. For a linguistic treatment see Bromhead and Goddard (forthcoming).

13 The word bush is polysemous.

14 See Sadow and Cox (forthcoming) on ‘hero’ discourse in English broadly.

15 The explication draws on previous semantic work dating back to Wierzbicka (1986). The last published semantic explication proposed for Australian English hypocoristics, specifically those using an -ie ending, was Goddard and Wierzbicka (2008). In 2020, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka shared with me some of their proposals for an updated explication of the -ie Australian English hypocoristic and raised the question of whether there should be a unitary explication for all -ie hypocoristics. The composition given here is of my own devising. I believe the phrasing is a good candidate for many occupational hypocoristics, e.g. subbies for subcontractors, as well as those not based on truncation of the formal occupational words, e.g. sparkies for electricians. It could also work for those ending in -o such as ambo for paramedic (from ambulance) and journo for journalist. All matters mentioned here warrant further investigation but are beyond the scope of the present article.

16 Other kinds of locutions have been associated with this rhetorical style, e.g. it’s not my job to … ; I’m not [a specialist occupation/specialist body] (e.g. ‘I’m not the police force’) (Tingle, 2021; von Cohen, 2021).

17 Works that have informed in thinking through the construction include Michaelis (2017), Pawley (2007), and Traugott and Trousdale (2013).

18 At the time of first submission (July 2022), the construction’s career does not appear to be over despite Morrison’s electoral defeat in May 2022. Since the election of Prime Minister Albanese from the opposing Labor Party, the construction has been used, during another disaster, floods, to contrast Albanese’s behaviour with that of his predecessor. It also has been used to talk about premiers of Australian states, as in a noun phrase I don’t hold a hose moment. It is as though Morrison’s departure has freed the construction, although he remains political touchstone. It is unclear to what extent it will develop, or even remain a part of Australian public discourse. Many of the components identified in this model could easily be adapted.

19 There would appear to be some kind of conceptual core of these male folk types (ockers, bushmen, larrikins, bogans, battlers, daggy suburban dads, top blokes), which would appear to extend beyond ethnicity. See, e.g. Manns et al. (2021); Penry Williams (2019, ch. 7); Rowan (2017); Willoughby et al. (2013).