Ecolinguistics

Ecolinguistics is an expanding research field within the ecological and environmental humanities and social sciences. It belongs to the vast area of linguistics and applied linguistics, encompassing a variety of methodological approaches informed by unifying principles which view language use as constitutive, integral and intrinsic part of ecosystems. Our ‘languaging’, namely using language as embedded in ecological interaction, derives from and has an impact on bioecologies: humans act on ecosystems through language and communication. Ecolinguistics puts an ethical focus on investigating how humans construe and instantiate life-sustaining ecosystems in and through language; it critiques problematic usages that contribute to endangerment and offers perspectives in line with ecojustice. At the time of a human-inflicted devastating climate crisis, this discipline and its principles represent a fundamental area of theoretical and applied research both for academic communities and for society at large.