Moral Frames and Ethics in Star Trek

a Cognitive-Discursive reading

Abstract

This paper investigates, under the theory of Moral Frames (Lakoff, 2004; 2008), the ethical-discursive foundations that structure the fictional universe of the Star Trek franchise. Understanding language as a cognitive-ideological system, the research adopts as its main reference the Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1976; 1982), especially regarding the notion that words and constructions mobilize networks of culturally situated knowledge. The objective is to describe and interpret how certain narrative situations reveal the activation of parental models, the Strict Father and the Nurturing Parent, which structure moral decisions within the Starfleet diegesis, revealing the presence of moral disputes that go beyond the limits of fictional discourse. The analytical corpus consists of three selected episodes of the series: one that exemplifies the nurturing father, one centered on the strict father, and another that stages a reframing process (Lakoff, 2004) between both models. The analysis is inserted in a qualitative paradigm of interpretative orientation (Silverman, 2000) and adopts the methodological procedure of the evidentiary paradigm (Ginzburg, 1989), searching for linguistic, narrative, and ideological traces that point to deep moral structures, operating at the level of embodied cognition (Barsalou, 2008). As an auxiliary tool, a summary table was created with the main ethical principles reiterated throughout the narrative of the Fleet, serving as a comparative guide in the case studies. The results suggest that moral frames, as structural interpretative schemas, function as keys to understanding the characters' choices, the discursive organization, and the staging of values in tension. The federative utopia of Star Trek, although anchored in Enlightenment values, presents discursive fissures where hierarchical pragmatism and empathetic idealism compete for space, revealing that morality in the diegetic universe is, above all, a linguistic, political and cultural construction. By demonstrating the productivity of the moral frames model for the analysis of fictional works, this study contributes with a theoretical-methodological instrument for the field of critical cognitive linguistics.