AbstractSince the concept of ecology was first applied to language over 50 years ago, the field of ecolinguistics has developed into a thriving branch of linguistics that is more than ever closer to the pressing issues of our time. This article aims to trace the historical development of ecolinguistics, discusses the main trends in current research, and provides a brief projection of potential future developments. The first part includes an overview of research connected to Einar Haugen’s article “Ecology of Language”, published in 1972, which focuses on the interaction between languages in multilingual contexts. A large part of the article is then devoted to the role of language in dealing with environmental problems (e.g. aggravating or solving them), which is the biological understanding of ecology in the study of language inspired by Halliday’s 1990 talk “New Ways of Meaning: The Challenge to Applied Linguistics”. Ecolinguistics will certainly have an interesting future. It will take up topics such as climate change, which surprisingly has largely been excluded from ecolinguistic research until recently. Other topics that need to be dealt with are the negative effects of tourism, the migration of human, plant, and animal populations. Ecolinguists, in the future, will also expand their methodology towards multimodal research and study how non-European languages present the ‘environment’, or rather ‘con-vironment’.

A virus called Corona, in 2020, created a situation which had not existed since the 2nd World War. Everybody was in danger (this time of being infected), and people had to stay at home to avoid being ‘bombed’ (this time by a virus). This situation brought about the creation of several new words and the use of phrases which described the danger and the measures taken against it in a clear, but some of them also in a metaphorical way. News papers used the situation by making fun of the language used, but also by describing the linguistic phenomena which the situation originated. In one Austrian newspaper, a journalist (George Renne in the Kleine Zeitung) called the language used by the government “Newspeak” ”“ echoing George Orwell’s novel 1984. In this article, the most interesting word-creations will be discussed, as well as the various ways in which an unexpected situation (in the whole world) has an effect on the use of language.

Michael A.K. Halliday became famous for creating Systemic-Functional Linguistics. For the author of this paper, however, Halliday is particularly important for addressing the role of language for the relation between humans and the so-called environment. For Halliday, language creates discontinuity between humans and the rest of creation, because many words (e.g. think and act) are reserved for humans, which makes us perceive Nature not as an active, but as a passive entity. Halliday's critique induced the present author to create the word "con-vironment" to stress the togetherness of humans and Nature.Halliday was particularly critical of 'growthism' and pointed out that it is language which makes us think that growing, being large, fast etc. are better than staying the same, being small and slow. Thus, he was one of the first 'peace linguists', criticizing a thinking which leads to wanting to be larger than one's neighbor, and thus to conflict and, as concerns nations, to war. Especially with his 1990 talk, he demonstrated that problems of our time such as classism and destruction of species are also topics for linguistics.

Alwin Fill Franz Karl Stanzel, Die Typischen Erzahlsituationen 1955-2015. Erfolgsgeschichte einer Triade . Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2015

Preview this article: Wolfram Bublitz and Neal R. Norrick (eds.), Foundations of Pragmatics. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter, 2011, 710 pp. (ISBN 978-3-11-021426-3), Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ps.5.2.07fil-1.gif

In this article we do two things: in the first half, we trace the emergence and development of ecological linguistics, or ecolinguistics, from the early 1970s. Having contrasted the ecological endeavour with the form-based traditions of 20th century linguistics, we discern four particular ways in which the ecology of language has been conceptualised: as a symbolic ecology (Section 2), a natural ecology (Section 3), a sociocultural ecology (Section 4), and a cognitive ecology (Section 5). These four approaches are described and discussed in detail. In the second half of the state of the art, we outline future horizons for the discipline. The foundation for this outline is our plea for a unified ecological language science (Section 6). This unified program pursues a naturalised agenda in the language sciences by exploring the ecological embeddedness of language and linguistic interaction (Section 7). In particular, this section presents the extended ecology hypothesis as one possible way of understanding ecolinguistics as a naturalised science of language. Having presented this view, we argue that it can place the four different traditions mentioned within a unified ecolinguistic framework (Section 8). This framework includes a naturalised foundation for those concerns that characterise the ecolinguistic enterprise, e.g. the exploitation of natural resources, empowerment of marginalized social groups, and the peaceful coexistence of languages and cultures in multicultural communities. In the conclusion (Section 9), we call for further interaction between ecological schools and traditions.

Can language diversity be sustained on this earth? Can the resource language be used in a sustainable way? The essays in this volume address language loss in the age of globalization and discuss how language construes our view of Nature and Environment. The volume is also a plea for using an ecolinguistic perspective in school teaching Alwin Fill is professor of English Linguistics at the University of Graz (Austria). Hermine Penz is assistant Professor of English Studies at the University of Graz.

In this article, three ways of writing about nature are distinguished: anthropocentric, anthropomorphic and physiocentric styles. While anthropocentric language names natural phenomena according to their use for humans, anthropomorphic and physiocentric styles are indicative of different degrees of ecological awareness. This threefold distinction is applied to the analysis of a number of English nature poems with a focus on D. H. Lawrence. The analysis shows that it is a simplification to see Lawrence only as a poet who celebrates the divine "Otherness" of Nature. Rather, Lawrence's writing on Nature underwent a development from chiefly human-centred attitudes to an awareness of environmental problems in the modern sense with, in his last poems, extreme criticism of modern competitive society and its exclusive reliance on economic growth. The article also investigates the language of the American conservationist writer Aldo Leopold and, finally, makes an attempt to use the above-mentioned distinction of styles for an analysis of native American poetry.

Preview this article: Review of “The ecology of language evolution”, by Salikoko S. Mufwene, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/jpcl.19.1.14fil-1.gif