Ecolinguistics and Erasure : Restoring the Natural World to Consciousness (original) (raw)
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Biosemiotics and ecolinguistics: two tales of scientific objectification
rivista italiana di filosofia del linguaggio, 2021
Science builds on what people say and, thus, the use of signs. In pursuing this important observation, I contrast two views of knowing that look "beyond" sense impressions. I begin with John Deely's (2015) theory that self-referring symbols allow critical control of objectification. In showing the limits of science, he targets what he calls "solipsism". In all animals, Deely thinks, knowing draws on sign relations. However, humans, and only humans, grasp that these relations are pure. Our selfreferential "symbols" disclose ens reale, or that which is «independent of finite awareness» (2015: 175). Given this epigenic break (Deely 1966), humans alone «know that there are signs» (Maritain 1970). Ex hypothesi, we can all embrace a/the non-finite knowing: on his post-modern view, moreover, scientific objectifications pick out a small part of what awareness can reveal (ens rationis). Wary of ontological proliferation, human powers can be traced to evolutionary history. On an ecolinguistic view, semogenesis (Halliday 2003) informs vocalizing and, in many societies, writing too. Practices, social activity and knowing thus co-evolve. As infants learn under verbal constraints, they concert socially to become persons who make use of material engagement. As contingencies arise, they set off prompts or languagings (Sellars 1960) that afford rich semiotic description and coordinate social experience. Languaging, or language activity, informs practices as people learn from what happens. Perduring verbal and other patterns bind action, talk, ritual, objects and objectifications or, I suggest, "seeing through the eyes of others". In many practices, texts, images, data sets and institutions, together with careful control of methods, stabilize observations and models. These are what groups treat as collective knowledge. Even without a semiotic ontology, what people do, say and observe places narrow limits on the scope of science. Knowledge is grounded in belief in signs.
Reassessing the Project of Linguistics
J. Zlatev, M. Andrén, M. J. Falck, and C. Lundmark (eds.), Studies in Language and Cognition, 2009
It is argued that the foundational assumptions of orthodox linguistics may not be accepted as tenable since they are rooted in Cartesian dualism, which precludes a holistic understanding of cognition as a biological phenomenon. As a result, much of what orthodox linguistic thought holds as truths about language (and cognition) is nothing but myths that have never been (and may not be) empirically validated. A general ideological shift in contemporary cognitive science is identified, which consists in taking a holistic (bio-socio-cultural) stance toward language and cognition. The epistemological basis for this shift is provided by autopoiesis as the theory of the living, which opens new perspectives in the study of human cognitive powers.
NEW PARADIGM, NEW HORIZONS: FROM SOCIOLINGUISTICS TO ECOLINGUISTICS
NEW PARADIGMS IN ENGLISH STUDIES: LANGUAGE, LINGUISTICS, LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN HIGHER EDUCATION, 2017
Ecolinguistics, as well as sociolinguistics, is primarily engaged with the macrostructures of language. Compared to traditional linguistics and dialectology, sociolinguistics gives a broader view of the function of language in human society and provides answers to many questions that were only hinted at in the earlier linguistic disciplines. The new paradigm of ecolinguistics is associated with the emergence of new social practices and a new study of linguistic behaviour in its ideological, social and biological terms.The complexity of the study of the human environment is connected with the study of living organisms, as their natural surroundings, including animate and inanimate matter; this represents a localised geographic ecosystem.
Making the Implicit Explicit: Language as Nature, Culture, and Structure
Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 2021
The modern field of linguistics is ripe with polarising theoretical debates, and perhaps even more so than other disciplines because of its inherent interdisciplinarity. Nevertheless, once all debated topics are stripped away, there seems to be a residual consensus concerning the core nature of human language. This general agreement arises, it seems, not because one hegemonic theory managed to impose its views, but rather because it concerns a set of basic facts about human language that are true in an absolute and objective sense. Thus, I believe that most (if not all) linguists today would uncontroversially agree with the three statements in (1) below. (1) a. Human language is a biologically-determined physico-cognitive human ability. b. Human language is a form of social behaviour constrained by cultural norms. c. Human language is a structured formal system composed of regular patterns. By accepting these facts, linguists implicitly subscribe to the same view of language as an inherently tripartite entity, constituted of a natural aspect, a cultural aspect, and a structural aspect. It is this implicit view that this squib attempts to make explicit. My hope is that fully spelling out what is (to my mind) such a crucial trichotomy might help gain a clearer picture of linguistic theory and, most importantly, of the nature of human language itself. These three aspects of language are visible in the works of Edward Sapir (1884-1939), one of the founders of modern linguistics and anthropology. Consider the quote below in (2). (2) It is precisely because language is as strictly socialized a type of human behavior as anything else in culture and yet betrays in its outlines and tendencies such regularities as only the natural scientist is in the habit of formulating, that linguistics is of strategic importance for the methodology of social science. (Sapir 1929: 213) The message here is clear. For Sapir, language is simultaneously a type of sociocultural behaviour, and a highly regular product of the human mind. Crucially, ©2021 Renard This is an open-access article distributed by Section of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge under the terms of a Creative Commons Non-Commercial License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0).
Review of Hasan, R. & Jonathan J. Webster (2005)Language, society and consciousness
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 2007
In this book, the editor Jonathan J. Webster presents the first of seven volumes of The Collected Works of Ruqaiya Hasan. In this first collection of papers the focus is on understanding the links between Language, Society and Human consciousness. The book is divided into three sections, each introduced by the editor. What transpires across the three sections is Hasan's making of a transdisciplinary theory, driven by her search of points of contact as well as discrepancies between the works of Bernstein on semiotic sociology, of Vygostky on sociogenetic psychology, and of Halliday on sociological linguistics. The result is an accomplished tour de force which provides an introduction as well as a profound insight/critical analysis of the works of these three scholars, enriching for both the novice researcher as well as the erudite on the topics covered. Section one of the book, introduced by the editor as The Sociosemiotic Mediation of Mind, is a series of chapters in which Hasan explores first Bernstein's early preoccupations with codes and consciousness, and later the sociology of pedagogy and the forming of consciousness as a concept. Within her discussion of Bernstein's work, Hasan proposes two ways of understanding theory-making: from an endotropic stance and an exotropic stance. Endotropic theories are centred on themselves and isolate their object of study, whereas exotropic theories are 'cosmoramic' in that they are in dialogic relationships with other theories, hence creating open-systems of enquiry as opposed to closed systems. The author elaborates on the need for an exotropic theory to have its core internal logic well-established before it can be shared without losing essence. She then moves on to a discussion of Vygostky's approach to the development of human mental functioning and language development which integrates both the natural and the social whilst giving a central role to semiotic mediation. She examines the shortcomings of this approach. Throughout the papers of section 1, Hasan skilfully argues that no theory on its own can grasp the complex and multilayered links between language, society and consciousness. In the last paper of this section she brings together the contribution of Bernstein, Vygostky and Halliday-all representative, in her view, of exotropic theory, hence all calling for completion which can be met through theoretical dialogism. BOOK REVIEWS 24.1
Massip-Bonet, A., & A. Bastardas-Boada (eds.), Complexity perspectives on language, communication and society,. (Cosmocaixa video in catalan: https://vimeo.com/4882319). , 2013
"As the sociologist Norbert Elias pointed out, there is a need of new procedural models to get to grasp the complex functioning of human-beings-in-society. An ecological complexity approach could be useful to advance our knowledge. How can we think of a sociolinguistic “ecosystem”? What elements do we need to put in such an ecosystem and what analogies could be applied? The (bio)ecological inspiration is a metaphorical exercise to proceed toward a more holistic approach in dynamic sociolinguistics. However, a language is not a species and, therefore, we need to make our complex ecology socio-cognitive and multidimensional. We need to create theories and represent to ourselves how language behaviour is woven together with its contexts in order to maintain language diversity and, at the same time, foster general human intercommunication on a planetary scale."
Relational Eco linguistics and Speculative Fabulations
Research Journal of English, 2022
With rising portmanteaux such as Ecosophy and ecolinguistics, a significant trend that aims to blend ecology with multiple disciplines continues to be on the ascent since the last century. The recent challenge to the anthropocentric worldview is a crucial motivation for such blends. With the upheaval of "genetic information," the information system that formerly bolstered and maintained anthropocentrism is now challenging its tenets. The term eco refers to the critical relationships between humans and nonhumans, between microscopic and macroscopic worlds. Ecolinguistics studies the relation between eco and how we communicate about ecological entities and processes. Many studies have revealed how language and communication influence the environment and its nonhuman inhabitants.