Linguistic representations of wild salmon health emerging from the Cohen Commission Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in British Columbia

• Main Author: Riedlinger, Michelle
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Canada; British Columbia; Sockeye; Fraser River; First Nations
• Online Access: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/202341/

This article examines the discourses associated with Sockeye salmon health in British Columbia, Canada. In 2009, the number of wild Sockeye salmon returning to the Fraser River declined to historic lows. The Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River (the Inquiry) was held from 2010 to 2011. This Inquiry gathered testimonies and documentation about the decline from researchers, natural resource managers, First Nations community members, and commercial and recreational fishing industry representatives. Using corpus-supported methods of pragmatic linguistic analysis and frame analysis, this study found that linguistic representations (noun phrases and metaphors) of salmon health in the Inquiry hearings and the final decision maker reports represented health as a complex set of environmental and political considerations. However, national newspaper reporting from 2011 to 2018 emphasised more traditional representations of salmon health as the absence of disease. It is clear that a wide range of stakeholders must support emerging linguistic representations of wildlife health in order for them to circulate in the public domain. By examining stakeholder needs and acceptance of status quo definitions of health as the absence of disease, we can better understand how to resist these definitions and account for a greater complexity of factors contributing to poor health, including loss of habitat and climate change.