Ecolinguistics Language And The Environment

The world we live in seems to be all about progress, growth, enhancement, expansion, competition, and consumerism. But what are the ecological costs of progress and technological advancement? How big can something grow? Are there limits to growth? If something is expanding, what is it expanding into? What is happening to the individuals, groups or entire nations that are left behind in competitive races? How do we justify that? And more importantly, why do we justify it? How has homo consumericus become the ideal model of contemporary human existence? Do we really need everything we buy? Why is it that our identity practices have become so strongly intertwined with our consumption patterns? What are the environmental consequences of our eating habits and how are those habits constructed in the first place? How do we think and talk about animals and `natural resources?? Is the Earth still our `Mother?, or have we reframed it conceptually into something else? These are some of the important, ethically and socio-culturally relevant questions that have come to prominence as we are becoming increasingly aware of the growing threats to the environment and eco-systems. These questions have been addressed from different social scientific standpoints. In this course, we will take a linguistic perspective. We will look at language and how it is used in the construction of taken-for-granted stories, metaphors and ideologies that explain, justify and perpetuate environmentally harmful modes of human existence. By taking an eco-critical perspective, we will develop an analytical toolkit which we?ll apply to various discourses, including those referred to as `environmentalist?. In order to provide a representative sample, we will look at texts from a variety of sources (pieces of journalistic, academic and policy writing, excerpts from textbooks, advertisements, mission statements and `about us? sections of various companies and corporations, examples of `green initiatives? and environmentalist campaigning, blogs, literary narratives and poetry). By analyzing language-in-use in these texts, we will identify and unpack the main tropes, frames and discourse strategies through which environmentally-blind, insensitive or even hazardous discourses get normalized and disseminated until they become hegemonic, self-evident truisms that are rarely questioned. Our comprehensive critique will not stop at analyzing and criticizing anthropocentric discourses that, according to our ecosophy which we?ll have formulated by the end of our second week, can be identified as negative and detrimental to the environment. We will also look for the alternatives. We will highlight the principles and strategies of (often marginalized) non dominant discourses that promote ecological harmony. And we?ll do that across genres and cultures. Our approach, while primarily discourse analytic in its outlook, will strive to be interdisciplinary as well. When necessary, we will conduct multimodal analysis, paying attention to the semiotic significance of different modes of representation and resources used in the articulation of different discourses. Toward the end of the course, we will move from the `language-of-ecology? approach which `examines the influence of language on the life-sustaining relationships of humans with each other, with other organisms and with the natural environment,? and we will devote some time to a discussion of the `ecology-of-language? agenda, another approach associated with the term `ecolinguistics.? Here, we will examine the ways in which the metaphor of an ecosystem has been used by some scholars to describe the relationships among different languages and their speakers around the world. Deeply rooted in the writings of linguists working on endangered languages, this agenda, which can be both ecolinguistic and sociolinguistic, presents us with yet another challenging question: What are the similarities between what is happening to biodiversity nowadays and what is happening to a myriad of worldviews, including eco worldviews, that are encoded in different languages around the world, many of which are facing extinction? We will review the main arguments of some proponents of this approach and address some of the criticism that has been directed at it recently. Major topics that we will address from an ecolinguistic perspective throughout this course include but are not limited to: development, growth, progress, climate change, animal rights, nature-as-resource, individualism, consumerism, culturally constructed images of the ideal body and food consumption. The course will provide a stimulating environment for students to enhance their critical thinking skills and acquire concepts that will serve them well in their future careers. It is expected that the course will raise students? awareness of the crucial and multifaceted, yet often neglected role that language plays in environmental issues.