The semantics of ecological collapse

Abstract This paper explores various linguacultural responses to ecological collapse — in an era of global environmental upheaval and distress. With a focus on semantics, the key question of the paper revolves around how words and constructions are created and altered by speakers in order to account for what they experience, and how they collectively make sense of the collapse they see. The paper draws inspiration from research in the Blue Humanities ( Mentz 2024 ) and is anchored in the framework of environmental semantics ( Bromhead and Levisen 2022 ) and a paraphrase-based approach to linguacultural analysis ( Goddard 2018 ; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014 ; Goddard and Ye 2016 ). The paper’s primary case study examines the language and discourse surrounding the recent ecological collapse of Danish fjords. After decades of oxygen depletion caused by intensive farming and nitrogen emissions, nearly all Danish fjords are now endangered, with several officially declared ‘dead.’ A notable discursive event in this context was the widely publicized Funeral of Vejle Fjord, alongside the selection of fedtemøg , literally ‘fat-shit,’ as the 2024 Word of the Year, referring to the slimy, foul-smelling mass of rotting algae accumulating along the coasts. Analytically, the study focuses on (i) the semantics of emerging folk concepts, (ii) the semantics of new language rituals, and (iii) the semantics of discourse logics that have emerged in response to experiences of environmental degradation.