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Defining “Ecolinguistics?”: Challenging Emic Issues in an Evolving Environmental Discipline

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Defining “Ecolinguistics?”: Challenging emic issues in an evolving environmental discipline Todd LeVasseur Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences ISSN 2190-6483 Volume 5 Number 1 J Environ Stud Sci (2015) 5:21-28 DOI 10.1007/s13412-014-0198-4 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by AESS. This e- offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy J Environ Stud Sci (2015) 5:21–28 DOI 10.1007/s13412-014-0198-4 Defining “Ecolinguistics?”: Challenging emic issues in an evolving environmental discipline Todd LeVasseur Published online: 31 October 2014 # AESS 2014 Abstract Ecolinguistics is an emerging field of study within Introduction the social sciences, with implications for all domains of knowledge production. From its initial emergence within the Situating the language and ecology forum survey field of linguistics in the early 1990s, it has meant different things to different scholars, so to date lacks a coherent self This research note serves as a vehicle to first situate, and definition. Some scholars interpret ecolinguistics to mean the then share, the findings of the Ecolinguistics Survey sent to iterative interaction between human discourses and the natural the members of the Language and Ecology Research Fo- world; others view it as the study of the ecology of language; rum from December 2012 to January 2013. It is the hope of while others suggest it deals with declining linguistic diversi- the author and of the Forum board that this note will help to ty, broadly. Dr. Arran Stibbe, the convener of the Language provoke further reflection upon the current state of and Ecology Forum, generated an informal, 10-year retrospec- ecolinguistics; provide occasion to revisit and analyze tive survey in December 2012 and January 2013, with the goal some of its continued and developing “fault lines;” and of the survey to help generate emic conceptions of what especially offer possible areas of future research that re- ecolinguistics means to various scholars engaged in main promising in the ability to help the field continue to ecolinguistics. This article summarizes the findings of this grow and produce sophisticated, robust research. Lastly, survey, while also giving a brief overview of the history of and perhaps most importantly, it is hoped that our col- ecolinguistics. It is argued by the author that ecolinguistics leagues and peers working at the interface of the environ- represents an emergent, leading edge of the “Ecological Turn” mental studies, sciences, and humanities will all benefit for the past 40 years in academia, and that the insights and from incorporating insights, both theoretical and method- methods of ecolinguistics are an underappreciated and ological, from ecolinguistics into their own respective underutilized approach to studying human-nature interactions. work. It is also argued that it would be helpful to both non-specialists Why is now a good time to help further delineate the and ecolinguists, if in the coming years the field converges past, present, and future of ecolinguistics? Why the need around a consensus of ideas that help to provide it with to labor to generate a consensus working definition of the theoretical stability and methodological clarity so term itself? It has been 10 years since Arran Stibbe began ecolinguistics can be better utilized by those working in the The Language and Ecology Research Forum, so this paper AESS. serves as an occasion to measure the growth of the field in that time.1 Given the survey results shared below, it also problematizes the characterization of ecolinguistics being Keywords Ecolinguistics . Language and ecology forum . a “field,” with a unified methodology and approach to Linguistics . Ecology . Language . Interdisciplinarity . analyzing language and environment interactions. Some Critical discourse analysis T. LeVasseur (*) Religious Studies Department/Environmental Studies Program, 1 The author expresses his sincere thanks to Arran Stibbe for Stibbe’s College of Charleston, 4 Glebe St, Charleston, SC 29424, USA insights and overall help with this article and to critical comments from e-mail: [email protected] peer reviewers and editorial support from Tony Rosenbaum. Author's personal copy 22 J Environ Stud Sci (2015) 5:21–28 scholars in the forum are critical of such synergies, goals are “to create an awareness of linguistic anthropo- while a majority are comfortable with them. Regardless, centrism” (ibid: 4).3 if ecolinguistics is to develop in its robustness, and be The third strain of ecolinguistics is built upon Nettle and shaped in certain trajectories, included hoped for (by Romaine’s pioneering work into the extinction of languages some, but not all, ecolinguistics—see below) dialogue (Nettle and Romaine 2002), although this strain is not as with other fields about human-nature interactions, then it vulnerable to self-reflective criticism and manifests less ten- is helpful to have a clearer idea of what exactly sion as compared to the above two strains of ecolinguistics ecolinguistics might be, and how it fits into academia (see analysis of the first survey question below). In their book, and various research regimes since the Ecological Turn they highlight the correlation between language loss and the of the last few decades.2 loss of biodiversity. Such correlation led Nettle and Romaine to coin the term “biolinguistic diversity” (ibid: 13), which is meant to capture the interaction of humans and their cultures, A brief history/summary of ecolinguistics including especially their languages, discourses, and coded conceptions of the more-than-human world, and how these As other ecolinguists provide cogent summaries of the both shape and are shaped by the more-than-human world. development of the field, this section will only provide a Significantly, they share how the rise of the agricultural rev- quick recap of their work, highlighting key insights and olution, then the revolution in industrial technologies, and points that provide a working “snapshot” of the history of finally the globalization of market forces and capital, as well ecolinguistics. Alwin Fill shares that Edward Sapir and as of hegemonic languages and fashions, have helped generate Wilhelm von Humboldt were early progenitors of the extinction of both language/cultural diversity, but also, ecolinguistics, while the field proper begins with a 1970 significantly, biological diversity. These insights are mirrored talk by Eniar Haugen (1972), an American linguist, on in the work of David Abram (1996) and suggest that as far as “The Ecology of Language,” opening the door to ecolinguistics hopes to offer any sort of corrective to human questioning the interactions between any language and its abuses of the natural world and to abuses committed against environment (and which subsequently became the title of minority and indigenous cultures and their languages, then his classic 1972 book). This talk begins the “Haugenian such work faces many obstacles.4 tradition” of ecolinguistics, where it is recognized that The above three strains of ecolinguistics present the key language is part of a larger environment. This environment tributaries of the field as currently imagined (Anderson includes ecological systems, but also other languages spo- 1991).5 Meanwhile, other key events in the formation of ken in a society, as well as languages interacting within the ecolinguistics include the French linguist Claude Hagège mind of the speaker, such that language is part of a larger coining the term “ecolinguistique” in 1985, while the term’s ecology of individual-society-social forces-natural envi- meaning that is most associated with the work of many Forum ronment, all of which mutually interact with and shape members (and that presages by a span of months the one another at multiple scales. Hallidayan tradition) was used for the first time with a group The second major strain of ecolinguistics is built upon led by Frans Verhagen at the 1990 International Association of the work of Michael Halliday, who first linked biological Applied Linguistics (AILA) conference. ecology, ecological, and environmental problems, and lan- guage in a paper he read at the World Conference of 3 Despite the promise of ecolinguistics, at minimum as a required element Applied Linguistics held at Thessaloniki in 1990. Accord- of any inter- and transdisciplinary research regime or academic depart- “ ment, it is important to recognize that the following insight from Peter ingtoAlwinFill, Halliday thus pioneered the study of the Mühlhäusler still holds: “The environmental ideology existing in most connexion [sic] between language and environmental Western societies is that it is responsible individual choices that will save problems, and, going beyond this, between language, con- the Earth. While local improvements can indeed result from individual flict and peace” (ibid:
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