Love Nature-Hate Nature: An Ecolinguistic Analysis of Margret Atwood's MaddAddam

Anthropogenic climate change is a controversial issue which has received a considerable attention in the literature. The present study carries out an ecolinguistic analysis of one of the climate fiction novels (henceforth, cli-fi), which is MaddAddam by Margret Atwood (2013). The following research questions are addressed: (1) how does the language used by the characters in the selected novel reflect the ecological stories they live by? (2) what are the impacts of the ecosystem on such stories? (3) How are the social, economic and political realities of the society in the selected novel connected to the physical environment? and (4) in what way is the power inequality, in both the social and ecological contexts, enacted and resisted by the characters in the novel? This study is conducted within the framework of Stibbe (2014, 2015 and 2021) with insights from the cognitive metaphor framework (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 2010 and 2014). Data were composed of selected excerpts from Atwood's MaddAddam (2013) as (in)direct contact between the characters and the surrounding ecosystem were embodied. Due to space limitation, it is only Stibbe's theory of framing that was selected and adopted. This study suggests that the language of the characters is a replication of the different ecological stories which exist in their minds and affect the way they approach the ecosystem and resist the power inequality on the social and ecological contexts.