Emotions and Arguments in Controversial Territorial Issues
Through three Canadian territorial cases, we explore which emotions are engaged in the public space and how they are inseparable from arguments invoked by actors in response to controversial decisions. The cases of the wastewater discharge into the St. Lawrence River (the “Flushgate”) in Montreal, Quebec, in 2015, the water bottling by the Nestlé plant in Ontario and the controversy surrounding the Jumbo ski resort in British Columbia provide good grounds for exploring the place and target of emotions in stakeholder arguments. A total of 310 newspaper articles from Canadian English and French daily newspapers published between 2004 and 2017 were studied using inductive thematic textual analysis. Four emotions emerged from the three cases: anger, joy, fear and sadness. The cross-sectional analysis shows that while these emotions are aroused in response to controversial decisions, it is through their targets and nuances that it is possible to better grasp the power of emotions in the public sphere. This allows us to draw several conclusions about the power of emotions in the stakeholders’ reasoning, the necessary consideration of emotional density, the importance of going beyond the rational function classically attached to the study of emotions as well as the relevance of media space as a source of data.