Neaves Tonya T, Wachhaus T Aaron, Royer Grace A
Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
College of Public and International Affairs, University of Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland.
J Emerg Manag. 2017 May/Jun;15(3):175-187. doi: 10.5055/jem.2017.0326.
Societal risks from hazards are continually increasing. Each year, disasters cause thousands of deaths and cost billions of dollars. In the first half of 2011, the United States endured countless disasters-winter snowstorms in the Midwest and Northeast; severe tornadic weather in the Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri; flash flooding in Nashville; flooding along the Mississippi River; an earthquake on the East Coast, wildfires in Texas, and Hurricane Irene. Fundamental disaster planning is regarded as an interdisciplinary approach to develop strategies and instituting policies concerned with phases of emergency management; as such, its needs are predicated on the identification of hazards and assessment of risks.
Even if the probability or intensity of risks to disasters remains fairly constant, population growth, alongside economic and infrastructural development, will unavoidably result in a concomitant increase of places prone to such events. One of the greatest barriers to emergency management efforts is the failure to fully grasp the socially and politically constructed meaning of disasters.
This article investigates the ways in which language has been used historically in the American lexicon to make sense of disasters in the United States in an effort to improve communal resiliency. Serving as both an idea and experience, the terminology used to convey our/the modern-day concept of disaster is a result of a cultural artifact, ie, a given time and specific place.
Tools such as Google Ngram Viewer and CASOS AutoMap are used to explore the penetration, duration, and change in disaster terminology among American English literature for more than 200 years, from 1800 to 2008, by quantifying written culture.
The language of disasters is an integral part of disaster response, as talking is the primary way that most people respond to and recover from disasters. The vast majority of people are not affected by any given disaster, and so it is through discussing a disaster that people make sense of it, respond, and react to it, and fit something that is overwhelming and beyond human control into the normal order of life.
灾害带来的社会风险在持续增加。每年，灾害都会导致数千人死亡，并造成数十亿美元的损失。2011年上半年，美国遭受了无数灾害——中西部和东北部的冬季暴风雪；密西西比州、阿拉巴马州和密苏里州的严重龙卷风天气；纳什维尔的山洪暴发；密西西比河沿岸的洪水；东海岸的地震、得克萨斯州的野火以及艾琳飓风。基础灾害规划被视为一种跨学科方法，用于制定与应急管理各阶段相关的战略和政策；因此，其需求基于对灾害的识别和风险评估。
即使灾害风险的概率或强度保持相当稳定，但随着人口增长以及经济和基础设施的发展，不可避免地会导致易发生此类事件的地点相应增加。应急管理工作最大的障碍之一是未能充分理解灾害在社会和政治层面所构建的意义。
本文研究了美国词汇中历史上用于理解美国灾害的语言方式，以努力提高社区的复原力。用于传达我们/现代灾害概念的术语既是一种观念，也是一种经验，它是一种文化产物，即特定的时间和地点的产物。
使用谷歌Ngram Viewer和CASOS AutoMap等工具，通过量化书面文化，探索1800年至2008年200多年来美国英语文学中灾害术语的渗透、持续时间和变化。
灾害语言是灾害应对的一个组成部分，因为交谈是大多数人应对灾害并从中恢复的主要方式。绝大多数人不会受到任何特定灾害的影响，因此人们通过讨论灾害来理解它、做出反应并对其做出回应，并将某种压倒性且超出人类控制的事情融入正常生活秩序。
