„Sind so kleine Seelen…“

Metaphern in Kindergedichten anlässlich der Maul- und Klauenseuche in Großbritannien 2001

Abstract

The foot and mouth disease (FMD) epidemic in the United Kingdom in 2001 had devastating consequences: millions of animals were slaughtered and huge losses to the life stock and tourism industry left visible traces in the countryside and symbolic vestiges in people’s minds. Parts of the countryside were literally shut down and media images such as the pyres of burnt animal cadavers became a worldwide icon for the destructive effects of this animal plague and a questionable ‘culling policy’ favoured by government bodies. Since the outbreak, the majority of research has focused on investigating the historical, veterinarian, socioeconomic and political and ethical dimensions of the outbreak in order to derive lessons for more efficient risk management and better risk communication. Some research has also been done on how people on the ground coped with the epidemic in situ and in the aftermath and how public understanding of the epidemic was framed. This paper employs an applied ecolinguistic analysis of metaphor to examine children’s visions and images of the epidemic and derive from this analysis conclusion for a future bottom-up management of epidemics that rejects an a priori privileging of science over ‘lay’ knowledge. This will be done by analysing metaphorical mappings and networks in a representative corpus of FMD poems written by pupils from Settle Middle School in North Yorkshire during and after the outbreak. A second step consists in combining the findings with recent research in rural studies in order to explore how an applied eco-linguistic analysis can be used to challenge an undemocratic evidence- based policy of nature that has the tendency to ignore children’s realities in special and socio-cultural realities in general.