Constructing stability: IPPC's climate discourse and the challenge of fixity

Abstract

As climate science circulates across scientific, policy, and public domains, its terminology must strike a delicate balance: stable enough to retain authority, yet flexible enough to be understood and acted upon in diverse contexts. This thesis examines how that tension plays out in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)—a consensus document that synthesizes complex knowledge and makes it communicable across discourse spheres. Using Bruno Latour's concept of immutable mobiles, I analyze how the terms risk, vulnerability, and adaptation are circulated and framed across three AR6 enactments. Through qualitative coding and critical discourse analysis, I trace how these terms shift rhetorically across different sections and uses. The findings show that even when definitions are fixed institutionally, key terms shift in response to political and rhetorical demands. This study calls for a reconfiguration of the tools we use to stabilize knowledge: immutable mobiles should be more narrowly defined, and glossaries must evolve into dynamic, source-linked frameworks that account for context and audience. By identifying where stability fractures and proposing new models for definitional accountability, this research offers a revised understanding of how terminology operates in scientific consensus reports—moving beyond the illusion of immutability toward a more adaptive and transparent model of climate communication.