In an era of accelerating globalization and frequent cross-cultural contact, willingness to communicate (WTC) in a second language is widely recognized as a critical predictor of successful language acquisition. To deepen the understanding of cultural influences on the formation of language-related behaviors, this study examines how Chinese learners of Korean as a Foreign Language (KFL) perceive the coolness of Korean popular music (K-POP) culture and how such perceptions influence their WTC in Korean. Grounded in Perceived Coolness Theory and Attachment Theory, the study proposes a structural model incorporating four dimensions—Perceived Subculture, Perceived Attractiveness, Perceived Utility, and Perceived Originality—and introduces emotional attachment as a mediating variable to uncover the psychological mechanisms linking cultural perception to communicative behavior. Structural equation modeling using partial least squares (PLS-SEM) was conducted on survey data from 360 Chinese KFL learners recruited online via Wenjuanxing. The analysis employed 5000 bootstrap samples to test the measurement and structural models, including bias-corrected confidence intervals for mediation effects. All four dimensions of perceived K-POP coolness significantly predicted emotional attachment, which in turn strongly enhanced willingness to communicate (WTC) in Korean. Emotional attachment mediated the relationships between perceived coolness and WTC. These findings offer concrete guidance for KFL instructors and curriculum designers: selecting K-POP materials high in attractiveness, subcultural appeal, and language-learning utility, and explicitly linking them to noticing activities can strengthen learners’ emotional investment and oral participation.
The aim of this study is to determine the frequency of environment-related words such as forests, trees, soil and seafood in Turkish government programs issued from 1923 to 2016. Utilizing the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, the study focuses on the transitivity system, examining the types of processes, participant roles and circumstantial depictions of these words to understand how these are represented in these texts. The corpus analysis produced 193 environment-related statements, 97 keywords and 3480 environment-related words. The findings illustrate that the inclusion of environment-related topics becomes systematic in government programs from the 1960s. Environment-related statements are mostly expressed in material processes, but relational and mental processes are also used to communicate them, albeit less commonly. The most frequent participant role of these elements is found to be that of Goal while Purpose is their most frequent circumstantial expression. Diachronic analysis demonstrates that the processes, participant roles and circumstantial representations of environment-related terms exhibit a variation across six periods covered in the corpus. In this regard, the period between 1923 and 1950 considerably differs from the other periods in terms of the distribution of components of the transitivity system. The study illustrates that changes in frequencies reflect differences in the representation and conceptualization of environment-related terms in official discourse.
There is a dearth of research on how people experience non-clinical involuntary auditory imagery containing speech, i.e. episodes of hearing words or phrases in one’s head spontaneously, commonly coined as ‘verbal earworms’. Although song lyrics seem to be a contributing factor to the experience of musical earworms, only two studies have looked at verbal earworms specifically, and in both cases, have relegated them to a secondary concern. The present work is thus grounded in the premise that verbal earworms have not been adequately characterised in the literature. To gain a deeper understanding of the characteristics and sources of verbal earworms, we adopted a correlational design analysing primarily novel self-reported measures. More specifically, we correlated the frequency of verbal earworms with a set of other variables, namely the frequency of musical earworms, a tendency to watch clips repetitively, verbal imitation of the sources of verbal earworms, time spent on social media, source memory for verbal earworms (having recollection of relevant contextual information), and vividness and mental control of voluntary auditory imagery. Spearman’s rank correlations revealed several significant relationships, some of which showed moderate to strong links between variables. The frequency of verbal earworms correlated significantly with all variables except mental control of voluntary auditory imagery. We discuss our findings against the backdrop of interdisciplinary research on verbatim repetition, mental imagery, and music cognition.
In this paper I propose a new form of Chinese ecolinguistics termed ecolinguistics as harmony (EAH hereafter) that rests on a distinctive perspective, by drawing on Confucian-Daoist Constructive Realism (section 2). In transforming ecolinguistics as a unified ecological worldview, I argue this novel perspective can be significant in reconciling at least four explicit discrepancies between western ecolinguistics and its Chinese counterparts, and more importantly, contributing to three levels of harmony in the ecolinguistics domain by turning to three types of reality and a Confucian-Daoist approach to ecolinguistics (section 3). In doing so, three levels of distinction between diverse schools/sub-schools of ecolinguistics are conducted in conceptualizing three parts of EAH, namely EAH in context (section 4), EAH as theory (section 5), and EAH as method (section 6). The intercultural and intracultural divergences between western ecolinguistics and its Chinese counterparts in terms of their contextual, ideological, and ecosophical forms, far outweigh their convergences. Such co-existence of convergences and divergences can exemplify the Chinese epistemological thinking of “harmony with diversity” and “diversity in harmony” in depth (sections 4–6). This distinctive perspective can contribute to any disciplinary harmony that pays due attention to problem-identifying and problem-solving, any harmonious dialogue between diverse ecolinguistic schools, and further any harmonious turn that integrates reality, harmony, and ecolinguistics. Topics such as the deeper mechanisms of how EAH as theory can contribute to harmony between mind and action are worthy of further attention. In doing so, the harmonious analysis of discourse as a new alternative to EAH as method can shed light on linking critical ecolinguistics and Chinese ecolinguistics (section 7).
This article reconsiders the role of affectivity in defining normativity in a situated sense. Traditional approaches have often construed language solely as a rule-governed system and cognition as a disembodied, mechanistic process. By contrast, we advance a view of language as a contextual and dynamical activity and situate cognition within affective life. Central to this reframing is the notion of linguistic feeling, understood as the affective attunement through which speakers experience and navigate norms. Rather than conceiving norms as only pertaining to convention and public criteria, we defend their function as conditions for rational experience: norms become intelligible through felt sensibilities of rightness, appropriateness, and variation. This approach overcomes internalist accounts that isolate linguistic intuitions from social and embodied contexts, showing instead how linguistic feeling is an affective manifestation of the same conceptual capacities that render us responsive to reasons. By integrating the affective and linguistic sciences, the philosophy of the space of reasons, and post-cognitivism, the paper offers a reconceptualization of normativity as rooted in sensibility. The conclusion highlights implications for linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science, urging a shift from formalist and conventionalist models toward approaches that acknowledge the constitutive role of affect in language and rationality.
In an age marked by both modern development and ecological crisis, narratives from older indigenous civilizations can help reshape the stories by which humans live. Chi Zijian's bestselling Chinese eco-novel The Last Quarter of the Moon portrays an Evenki forest lifeworld and invites a reconsideration of human-nature relations, yet its ecological discourse mechanisms remain underexplored. This study combines Systemic Functional Linguistics with Harmonious Discourse Analysis, using transitivity as the main analytical framework and HDA as a value-explicit lens for ecological evaluation, to examine how the novel constructs the moral standing of nature through transitivity and lexicogrammatical choice. We developed an operational procedure for scene selection, annotation, and reliability checking, and supplemented qualitative interpretation with corpus-style distributions of participants, process types, circumstances, and key grammatical structures. The analysis shows that ecological meaning is built through rich transitivity patterning: material and relational processes form the main backbone, while mental, behavioural, and verbal processes provide crucial support; nature is frequently construed as an active participant; static processes are often shifted toward more agentive and consciousnessrelated meanings; and circumstances are heavily used to specify the place, direction, trajectory, and manner of more-than-human action and awareness. Ecologically loaded Chinese lexicogrammatical resources further intensify agency, affectedness, and ecological semantics. Together, these choices construct the moral standing of nature across five dimensions: vitality, consciousness, perceptivity, value, and anthropomorphic affinity, and show that transitivity is a core semiotic resource for ecological meaning-making, while HDA has broader cross-regional and cross-linguistic potential when contextually calibrated. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
This study examines how circumstances of place function as eco-semantic resources in Chi Zijian's The Last Quarter of the Moon. SFL-based ecolinguistic studies have largely focused on processes, participants, appraisal, and thematic organisation, while circumstances, especially those of place, have received less systematic attention. This article addresses this gap by analysing the full Chinese text of the novel through the SFL transitivity system, Chinese spatial grammar, and grammatical metaphor, with Harmonious Discourse Analysis providing an evaluative ecolinguistic perspective. Methodologically, the study combines quantitative annotation and tabulation with qualitative analysis of representative clauses and passages. The analysis focuses on the grammatical realisations, semantic categories, distributional tendencies, directional resources, internal nominal structures, and place-participant-process couplings of locative expressions functioning as circumstances of place. The findings show that circumstances of place are recurrent, structurally varied, and semantically patterned. Natural places form the most prominent category. Rivers and waters, trees and forests, mountains, snowfields, animal bodies, and human body-part places repeatedly shape the spatial texture of the narrative. Place is realised not only through frequent zai-led constructions, but also through directional prepositions, route expressions, directional verbs, and prepositionless locative phrases. Interpreted through grammatical metaphor, these patterns tend toward relatively more congruent construals of lived ecological space, making natural places visible, specific, and interactional rather than abstract background settings. The study argues that place is not marginal in ecological narration, but a central meaning-making resource through which human and more-than-human life is construed as embedded in shared environments. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
Tea, as a symbol steeped in rich culture and history, holds significant research value. This research comprehensively examines the metaphorical cognitive systems of the term cha in Chinese and tea in English within the framework of cognitive linguistics. The objective is to unveil the underlying cognitive structures of these two terms. Specifically, this research aims to address two key questions: (1) What are the conceptual metaphors underlying the terms cha in Chinese and tea in English? (2) What are the similarities and differences in the conceptual metaphors of the terms cha and tea? To this end, four extensive corpora, namely CCL, BCC, COCA, and BNC, were selected. CCL and BCC corpora were utilized to explore the cognitive system of the term cha in Chinese, while COCA and BNC were used to investigate the term tea in English. Theoretically, this paper is grounded in the cognitive linguistics framework, primarily relying on the conceptual metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson. The findings indicate that the semantic extension of the terms cha and tea exhibits more differences than similarities. In the Chinese language community, the semantic expansion of cha primarily revolves around the concepts of life and human relationship. This reflects how tea has been deeply internalized within Chinese culture, evoking profound cultural reflections on the philosophical implications of life and interpersonal relationships. In contrast, the semantic extension of tea in the English language community is largely oriented around socializing and objects. This suggests that, within this context, tea is often objectified, with perceptions of it predominantly shaped by its social functions, utilitarian value, and physical attributes. This study not only enhances a comprehensive and profound understanding of the concept of tea in Chinese and English but also contributes significantly to cultural dissemination, cultural exchange, and cultural integration. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
Inspired by working for life sustaining relations by linking the global and local, the paper focuses on a Kosovo initiative. There, influenced by ecolinguistics, a civic organization is working to improve the local river world. First, we sketch how the initiative began by making econarratives that were used to specify desiderata. Next, in counterpoint, we sketch the ontological focus of a large European project. Whereas local actors highlight what should be done, large-scale work opens up knowledge without asking how change can be achieved. Our claim is that, in making knowledge actionable we can bring scientific ontologies to econarrative-making. Civic organizing can link up practical expertise, econarratives and scientific ontologies. Locally grounded and globally organized ecolinguistics can thus channel the knowledge needed for action by using local languaging, places and organizations. In this sense, the field binds the "thin" knowing of academia to the inspiration of "thick" local econarratives. Within a frame of Organizational Cognition, "social organizing" comes to the fore in working to better specific place-worlds. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Simultaneous interpreting (SI) entails complex cognitive processes, requiring interpreters to simplify linguistic output to manage cognitive and temporal constraints during realtime, cross-lingual communication. However, the extent to which the typological characteristics of source languages shape linguistic simplification remains underexplored. This study aims to examine the simplification hypothesis by analyzing simultaneously interpreted English across multiple language pairs, comparing them with non-interpreted L1 English production, and investigating how different source languages modulate these patterns of linguistic simplification. Using a self-compiled corpus comprising English SI from Chinese, French, and Russian source speeches alongside comparable non-interpreted L1 English speeches at the United Nations Security Council, this study employed six entropy-based measures: unigram, bigram, and trigram entropy at both wordform and part-of-speech levels. Results reveal a consistent reduction in entropy values in interpreted English compared to non-interpreted L1 English, confirming linguistic simplification as a robust phenomenon in SI. Crucially, the degree of simplification varies by source languages: the Chinese-English interpreting variant exhibits the highest degree of simplification, with the Russian-English interpreting variant showing the least reduction in complexity. These findings demonstrate that patterns of simplification in SI are not uniform but are shaped by the interaction of interpreting directionality, typological distance, cognitive demands, and institutional constraints, indicating the role of multilingual dynamics in modulating interpreter output in cross-linguistic, cross-cultural communicative settings. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
The impact of modeling natural language through large language models (LLMs) is often misunderstood, as existing analyses frequently isolate these models from the properties of their users and their environments. By adopting a bio-ecological perspective on language and cognition, we emphasize the primary role of the observer in interactions with LLMs. This perspective reveals that while LLMs are enabled by user experiences, their use imposes specific constraints on users. Our analysis demonstrates that we tend to confuse (i) the level of LLM use and the level of LLM architecture; (ii) the constitution of a biological system with the architecture of LLMs by attributing relations and qualities that arise organismically to quantities generated technologically. While humans behave orientationally and consequentially, LLMs are ahistorical, atemporal machines; (iii) the domain of answer with the domain of question in the task-based use of LLMs. The text generated by LLMs does not directly answer but stochastically rearranges user questions, allowing for the enmeshment of description, deduction and explanation in the course of the user's reasoning. Thus, in a cognitive sense, LLMs do not generate language & horbar;they produce sequences of data that constrain how users generate language. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
This paper proposes affective framing as a constitutive aspect of social cognition as an answer to the tension within enactivism concerning how to understand the relation between coupling and interactivity in social cognition. Within enactivist accounts of social interaction, Participatory Sense-Making (PSP) emphasizes the co-regulatory dynamics through which coupling between agents acquires their own autonomy, the Distributed Language Perspective (DLP) shows how interactivity unfolds across multiscalar, sense saturated dynamics that incorporate non-local cultural, normative and material resources. Both perspectives are indispensable, yet the deeper question of how coupling becomes interactivity, how moment-to-moment co-regulation links up with the long arcs of history, language and culture that saturate human coordination in the wild experience, calls for a constitutive layer across these scales. This paper argues that affective framing, understood as the pre-reflective bodily orientation on which self-organizing coordination depends, determines which affordances solicit engagement, which non-local resources become salient, and how coordination sustains its coherence across heterogeneous timescales. It is argued that affective framing, through which agents are selectively primed toward certain affordances, concerns, and relational trajectories, is not a supplementary layer but the binding force that links PSP's account of co-regulation in relational autonomy with DLP's account of sense-saturated interactivity, giving coordination its direction, salience, and capacity for problem-solving. By foregrounding affective framing, the paper shows how coupled agents cross the threshold into self-organization and how distributed interactions form meaningful patterns of coordination without collapsing into computational functionalism. The argument is developed through Cognitive Event Analysis & horbar;a methodology designed within DLP precisely to trace the multiscalar, self-organizing dynamics of real interactional episodes, and therefore the natural analytical lens through which affective framing's constitutive role can be demonstrated empirically. I first revisit Steffensen's (2013) Invoice Case to show how affective framing structures the dynamics of solution-probing. I then present cognitive event analysis of the Finding Zoe episode, an emergency-driven instance of distributed co-agency based on autoethnographic data. Across both cases, affective framing emerges not as a byproduct but as a constitutive mechanism: it organizes co-regulation, integrates non-local resources, and enables the emergence of self-organizing, sense-saturated coordination. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
This article proposes a rehumanized, learner-centered paradigm for ecolinguistics by reintegrating constructs that foreground the lived experiences, identities, and agentive practices of language learners. While recent ecolinguistic scholarship has increasingly emphasized system-level analyses of discourse, ideology, and human-environment relations, this focus has often marginalized the subjective, cognitive, and interactional dimensions of language use. Drawing on a structured narrative literature review, the article synthesizes foundational ecological perspectives on language learning with contemporary theories of agency, identity, symbolic capital, imagined communities, and languaging. It argues that learners are not peripheral recipients of ecological forces but central ecological actors who negotiate meanings, resist dominant discourses, and co-construct semiotic environments through linguistic action. A learner-centered ecolinguistic model is proposed, repositioning identity negotiation, emergent agency, and dynamic meaningmaking as core ecological processes. The article outlines theoretical, pedagogical, and policy implications, demonstrating how rehumanizing ecolinguistics strengthens its analytical, educational, and ethical relevance, while contributing to broader ecological discussions on sustainability, linguistic diversity, and the sociocultural shaping of environmental discourse. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin (hereafter: ICZ) is a new space for co-management, co-construction, and co-consultation between Guangdong province and Macao. It aims to promote the moderate and diversified development of Macao's economy. This study sought to depict the LL of the ICZ. It also explored the opportunities and challenges brought about by the spatial resemiotization process of semiotic heteroglossia. The researcher investigated six sites within the ICZ and photographed 661 images of the linguistic landscape. The analysis examined the LL, particularly in conjunction with the language policies of Macao and Hengqin. This was conducted within the historical, cultural, and social contexts of Macao and the ICZ, from the perspective of the connection between linguistic landscape and language policy. The findings demonstrate that 1) the coding preference of the ICZ's LLs validated the existence of Macao elements, comprising 14.959% of LLs across various genres; 2) the official LL incorporated Macao elements in compliance with the local language policy, thereby establishing a centripetal force that projected government intervention and expectations; 3) the unofficial LL, characterized by centrifugal forces, is reshaping the meaning-making processes of the ICZ. The resemiotization process observed provides an empirical foundation for context-sensitive, process-oriented LL planning in the ICZ, moving beyond top-down models. The study theorized the LL's utilization of other cultural elements as semiotic heteroglossia. It also contributes to the sociolinguistic conceptualization of border spaces as a distinct form of landscape. By tracing how centripetal and centrifugal forces play out across official and unofficial signage, the article advances our understanding of border spaces as dynamic semiotic constructions. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
The term "contemporary ecolinguistics" was coined in response to the recent significant shift in ecolinguistics theory, where "ecolinguistics" is no longer used as an umbrella term but rather refers to the study of how language influences interactions between humans, non-humans, and environment (Steffensen, 2024). Educational ecolinguistics is one of the eleven subfields that this new definition introduces (Steffensen, 2025). Here, we assert that teaching foreign language (FL) is significant to both educational ecolinguistics and our increasingly globalised society. Furthermore, we decided to use climate change as the subject of our teaching materials and case study in this research because of how serious and important it is (e.g., to deconstruct linguistic fa & ccedil;ades that minimise environmental harm and accountability; to cultivate ethical and ecological worldviews; to acknowledge long-term consequences and outcomes in communities, individuals, environment, interactions, and language). Therefore, the development of theoretical, methodological, and practical aspects of FL teaching within educational ecolinguistics is our aim in this work. As a result, we discuss the theoretical aspects of languaging, extended ecology, and cognitive ecolinguistics which provide the foundation of our proposal for an ecological grounded proposal for teaching FL. We refer to this proposal as "Foreign Languaging", or FL-ing (section 2). We employ a mixed methodology (quantitative, qualitative, and idiographic) to accomplish our goal, which includes classroom observations, questionnaires, innovative student assessment techniques, and interviews with learners from two distinct Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL) classes at two different Chinese universities (section 3). We provide the findings from each of the four methods used to gather our data separately (classroom observations, questionnaires, student assessments, and interviews) (section 4). After presenting the findings, we perform an analysis by outlining and discussing the various facets of FL-ing and applying them to the aforementioned PFL classes, particularly the FL facets of FL-ing teaching concepts, resources, tasks, projects, students' perspectives and opinions, and impact on the learners (section 5). Our major findings indicate that students believe the use of climate change teaching materials is beneficial. We also confirm that their language proficiency has improved and their linguistic anxiety has decreased for a variety of reasons, including the development of dynamic spaces for engagement and discussion about real-life subjects (e.g., students' everyday lives, the positive emotions that arise from increasing awareness, and attention to the environment). In addition, we highlight two issues in the data collected that need to be addressed in FL interactions inside classroom: FL-ing students exhibit negative behaviours or emotions, and they express worries about institutional demands that make learning through FL-ing not always feasible or beneficial for them when discussing particular topics, such as climate change. Finally, for the future growth of this subfield and ecolinguistics, more study is required to examine each important aspect of the research domain put forth here independently, including the examination of the interrelations among specific language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) and FL learning, the selection of diverse environmental issues (e.g. , biodiversity, pollution, food and water insecurity, waste management), the outcomes of alternative data collection methods (various FL learners and other language learners), and the advancement of additional data collection techniques, curriculum design, and student evaluations. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
Episodic thought is well-established to be reduced in Alzheimer’s disease, whether past-directed (episodic memory) or future-directed (imagination). As language declines in Alzheimer’s disease as well, and episodic thought can be assessed verbally, the question arises of how episodic thought and language at a structural level relate. We addressed this question through an episodicity-labelled spontaneous speech corpus comprising data from picture descriptions of 198 subjects: 70 healthy older controls, 82 people with mild probable AD, and 46 with moderate probable Alzheimer’s disease. Utterances, if on-task, were annotated as either episodic (reflecting episodic thought) or non-episodic (reflecting non-episodic thought). Results showed that episodicity was related, across groups, to syntactic hierarchy, predicate structures, progressive aspect, third person pronouns, and definiteness in determiners, while non-episodicity related to argument structures, perfect aspects, indicative moods, modal verbs, indefiniteness in determiners, and stative verbs. To automatize evaluations of episodicity, we built support vector regressors to predict episodicity and non-episodicity ratios from linguistic variables, with root-mean-squared-errors (RMSE) of 0.146 and 0.156 respectively. Syntactic depth contributed the most to episodicity prediction while progressive aspects contributed the most to non-episodicity prediction. These findings demonstrate that well-established changes in episodic thought in Alzheimer’s disease are linked to changes in syntactic organization in language, where episodic content is encoded and conveyed, raising new questions about potential shared neural substrates between memory and language.
This study examines the terms naturgas ('natural gas') and fossilgas ('fossil gas') as indexical signs in Swedish media and political discourse. Drawing on diachronic data from newspaper and parliamentary databases, the study combines quantitative data with qualitative discourse analysis to examine how the terms have emerged, circulated, and acquired social meaning overtime. The findings show that naturgas, introduced in the late 19th century, emerged within a register of resource abundance and has remained the dominant and relatively unmarked term, accommodating both positive and neutral evaluations. In contrast, fossilgas, introduced in the late 20th century, functions as a marked alternative that indexes critical stances by foregrounding the fossil character of the resource and its ecological implications. By tracing the historical development and discursive use of these competing terms, the study demonstrates how lexical choices contribute to the framing of energy resources and to the construction of contrasting environmental meanings. It thereby highlights the role of language in shaping and negotiating human-environment relations in contexts of ecological and political transformation. (c) 2026 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Worldwide, many communities are concerned about environmental degradation, as well as the loss of cultural and linguistic heritage. Existing research addressing the links between linguistic diversity and biodiversity has suggested intriguing ways in which endangered languages communicate traditional and local ecological knowledge. Scholars have also noted that endangered languages are increasingly used in highly visible contexts like product marketing and tourism. In this study, we consider the intersection of these issues in two contemporary European contexts by conducting a comparative, corpus-based, multimodal discourse analysis of how the Irish (Gaeilge) and Occitan languages are used in the marketing of food and drink products in Ireland and France. Our purposebuilt corpus drew from 19 Irish-language named brands and six Occitan-language named brands. We investigated two main discursive strands: cultural heritage and environmental sustainability. We found that, while discourses on cultural heritage romanticise the past through references to traditional practices and community, sustainability discourses project a forward-looking ethical image grounded in environmental responsibility. Producers using endangered language brand names rely on emotive and inclusive language to create a sense of shared values with consumers. However, behind these narratives lies a strategic commodification: cultural heritage becomes a marketable form of authenticity, and environmental sustainability a tool of moral branding. The selective and surface-level use of Irish and Occitan, coupled with limited bilingual engagement, suggests that cultural memory and ecological ethics are reconstituted as compelling marketing ideologies. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
