Abstract This article develops a cognitive-ecological approach to ecolinguistics by analysing how languaging extends perception and coordinates action in Arctic Greenland. Drawing on radical embodied cognitive science and cognitive ecology, we argue that ecolinguistics should view language as an ecological phenomenon embedded in the dynamic interplay of perception, action, and social coordination. Methodologically, we adopt cognitive ethnography to study languaging as it unfolds in situ, shifting the analytical focus from discourses about the environment to languaging as a constitutive component of cognitive ecologies. Focusing on languaging as a cognitive device that extends perception across temporal and spatial scales, we show that embodied knowledge of ice thickness is reformatted through languaging in ethnographic encounters; that climate-induced instability undermines intergenerational perceptual attunements and prompts a shift toward situated collective calibration; that social warnings function as mediated perception; that deictic structures grammatically enact the constitutive role of sea ice in sustaining kinship relations across the fjord; and that the ice affords a mode of unburdened dwelling beyond market relations. The article concludes that ecolinguistics, grounded in cognitive ethnography, offers a theoretically coherent framework for studying how languaging participates in the ecological organisation of human-environment relations under conditions of rapid environmental change.
Abstract This article examines the uneven relationship between ecolinguistics and environmental communication through a qualitative thematic analysis of 31 articles published in the journal Environmental Communication between 2016 and 2025. Revisiting earlier concerns about ecolinguistics’ limited interdisciplinary uptake, the article asks whether and how ecolinguistics has entered into sustained dialogue with a neighbouring field likewise concerned with discourse, mediation, power, and environmental crisis. The findings show that the journal has developed a substantial discourse-oriented tradition, with 26 articles using critical discourse analysis or related approaches to examine climate communication, extractivism, environmental justice, species representation, pedagogy, and place. Yet explicit engagement with ecolinguistics remains limited: among five articles mentioning the term, only two treat it as a central framework. I argue that this pattern is best understood as a missed conversation shaped by different disciplinary genealogies and scalar approaches to discourse. Environmental communication has tended to analyze discourse as mediated, institutional, rhetorical, and political communication, while ecolinguistics has offered more linguistically granular tools and more explicit frameworks for ecological evaluation. The article concludes by proposing selective convergence between the two fields, particularly through closer articulation between macro-level analyses of mediation and publics and micro-level analyses of linguistic patterning, ecosophy, pedagogy, identity, and care.
Abstract This article introduces ecosystemic linguistics (EL) as a distinct, non-metaphorical framework within ecolinguistics, with a focus on its emergence and development in Brazil and broader Latin America. Drawing from principles of biological ecology, EL conceptualizes language as an interconnected system involving population, territory, and communicative practices. The article also addresses the expansion, impact, and challenges of EL, including its integration into academic curricula, research groups, and journals in Brazil, as well as its growing international recognition. After that, the study explores EL’s primary concepts, such as the ecology of communicative interaction and ecosystemic discourse analysis. While acknowledging EL’s adaptability and potential for advancing ecolinguistics globally, the article notes the need for greater theoretical clarity and methodological rigor. Finally, EL is presented as a promising Global South contribution to ecolinguistics, offering new perspectives on the dynamic relationships between language, society, and the environment.
This paper presents a meta-analysis of apology realisation in Chinese. Drawing on the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Patterns (CCSARP) framework, we synthesise 38 quantitative studies published between 1990 and 2024 to examine how social distance, power relations, and offence severity influence apology strategy choice. We also assess the effects of study characteristics, such as participants’ age and gender and data collection methods, on apology performance. The findings reveal that the effects of these factors are complex and nuanced, highlighting how face work in Chinese is negotiated across different social contexts. The results further suggest that research design features may affect reported outcomes and thus underscores the need for more transparent and replicable reporting practices in empirical pragmatics. Moreover, this study further identified the limits of current apology frameworks and calls for a more integrated model capable of capturing the complexity of apologies in social interaction and enabling robust contrastive analyses across linguacultures. Grounded in pragmatics, this meta-analysis establishes an empirical baseline for apology realisation in Chinese and demonstrates its relevance for broader communication research as apology studies increasingly extend into the public sphere.
Abstract This article proposes a new theoretical framework for narrative ecology , drawing from ecolinguistics, econarrative, and previous uses of the term in the literature. Unlike some formulations which treat ecology metaphorically, the framework treats narratives as a literal part of information flows that are intrinsic to ecosystems. If the howls of monkeys communicating information about predators are ecologically significant in the information flows of ecosystems, then so too are narratives that influence how humans conceptualise the world and treat it. The article attempts a consilience between narrative theory and ecological science, resulting in a transdisciplinary approach to the ecosystems that life depends on. The aim is not only to study these ecosystems, but also to intervene in the narrative ecology in order to protect them and help them regenerate. The theoretical framework has implications for how area and place are conceptualised. While area is usually considered to be a space defined by a boundary, place is an area that is experienced by humans and given meaning. Within the narrative ecology proposed in this article, a place can be seen as the material area plus the local and global flows of narratives which give it meaning. The conclusion describes a hypothetical ecologist who discovers that the ecosystem of a river has been disturbed by eutrophication. The ecologist traces back the cause firstly to a sewage treatment works and then to the metanarratives of privatisation that led to vast numbers of sewage spills in the United Kingdom. Finally, the hypothetical ecologist looks for inspirational narratives that can represent rivers in ways that promote their legal protection.
