More Meanings In The Flow Of Life: Sustainability Metaphors
Date
2020-10-21
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Abstract
To face the need for improved communication towards sustaining life on planet Earth, a search to identify Andean sustainability metaphors was designed. A constructionist epistemological inquiry including interpretivism, Andean worldview, and phenomenology was proposed. It allowed methodologies and methods of ethnographic, phenomenological and cognitive fields, to effectively interact. Purposes included identifying sustainability expressions in representative utterances and textile images, their underlying sustainability-related metaphors and metonymies, and their image-schemata. Eventually, based on the above and on the collaborating community’s physical, social and cultural context, the research yielded the identification of sustainability metaphors. Ten months of experiential learning through interaction were supported by a traditional Andean community at 4000 m of altitude in Peru. Participant observation, interaction in Chanka Qichwa and Spanish, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), face-to-face interviews, community-based collaboration, and metaphor analysis allowed identification of nine sustainability metaphors from the Andes. Meaning, interpretation, applicability, influence, and source domain features of the identified metaphors were determined. Outcomes of the study include: an interdisciplinary method to identify sustainability-related metaphors underlying their instances in oral and visual expressions, “sustainability of life” conceptual metaphors applicable to any context, application of IPA to the ethnographic field, validation of image-schemata as indicators of the nature and the effects of sustainability metaphors, and the realization that traditional agricultural communities are interested in sharing empirical knowledge to sustain life on Earth, and that, for them, sustainability involves sustaining or nurturing life. Future research on sustainability metaphors should include grassroots representatives, academic and other kinds of knowledge.
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Keywords
Sustainability of Life; Phenomenology; Conceptual metaphors; Andean worldview, Andean metaphors of sustainability; oral metaphors; visual metaphors.
Citation
Brownlee, E. C. (2020). More Meanings In The Flow Of Life: Sustainability Metaphors (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.