Language as Ecology
Linguistics & Language
Research exploring language diversity, language change, linguistic knowledge, language loss, revitalisation and the relationships between language and place.
Book · Ecolinguistics · Place
Ecolinguistics and Emplacement: Language, Languaging and Place
Cowley, S., Döring, M., & Steffensen, S. V. (Eds.). (2025).
Ecolinguistics and Emplacement: Language, Languaging and Place. Routledge.
1st edition · 222 pages · Routledge · 2025
Why it matters
This edited volume is particularly relevant to Language as Ecology because it approaches language not simply as something that describes the natural world, but as something fundamentally embedded within ecological relationships. Its focus on languaging, emplacement and place-worlds provides a strong conceptual bridge between linguistic and ecological approaches.
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This edited volume contributes to recent theoretical work in ecolinguistics that treats language as, not about nature, but of nature.
Through a dialogical interplay of theoretical and empirical work, the chapters apply ecological concepts of language, languaging, and emplacement to a multiplicity of issues, settings, and place-worlds. Empirically, the chapters meander through a universe of chimpanzees engaged in problem solving, children playing marbles, political constitutions, agricultural dictionaries, Sicilian nature reserves, children’s experiences of devastating outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, expressions of sorrow across closed borders, and the linguistic conquest of uninhabited islands.
By attending to locale, sense of place, and location across this diversity, the volume evokes new empirical, methodological, and practical horizons that allow ecolinguists to ask how people and their emplacement are affected by language and languaging, and how the effects of practices impact on, not just human lifeworlds, but also trillions of bioecologies.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in ecolinguistics, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, language contact, environmental humanities, and human and social geography.
Article · Narrative Ecology · Ecolinguistics · Place
Narrative ecology: A storied approach to area, place, and ecosystem
Why it matters
Stibbe develops the concept of narrative ecology as a literal ecological framework rather than simply a metaphor for the relationship between stories and the environment. Narratives are understood as part of the information flows through which ecosystems are shaped, connecting human meaning-making with ecological processes. Particularly relevant to Language as Ecology, the article offers a way of understanding place as material area plus the narratives that give it meaning, while also asking how changing those narratives might contribute to ecological protection and regeneration.
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This article proposes a new theoretical framework for narrative ecology, drawing from ecolinguistics, econarrative, and previous uses of the term in the literature. Unlike some formulations which treat ecology metaphorically, the framework treats narratives as a literal part of information flows that are intrinsic to ecosystems. If the howls of monkeys communicating information about predators are ecologically significant in the information flows of ecosystems, then so too are narratives that influence how humans conceptualise the world and treat it. The article attempts a consilience between narrative theory and ecological science, resulting in a transdisciplinary approach to the ecosystems that life depends on. The aim is not only to study these ecosystems, but also to intervene in the narrative ecology in order to protect them and help them regenerate.
The theoretical framework has implications for how area and place are conceptualised. While area is usually considered to be a space defined by a boundary, place is an area that is experienced by humans and given meaning. Within the narrative ecology proposed in this article, a place can be seen as the material area plus the local and global flows of narratives which give it meaning. The conclusion describes a hypothetical ecologist who discovers that the ecosystem of a river has been disturbed by eutrophication. The ecologist traces back the cause firstly to a sewage treatment works and then to the metanarratives of privatisation that led to vast numbers of sewage spills in the United Kingdom. Finally, the hypothetical ecologist looks for inspirational narratives that can represent rivers in ways that promote their legal protection.
Article · Ecolinguistics · Languaging · Rewilding
Ecolinguistics reunited: Rewilding the territory
Why it matters
Cowley offers a powerful reconceptualisation of ecolinguistics by shifting attention away from languages and texts as objects of analysis and towards the ecological and epistemic significance of languaging. His concept of “rewilding” ecolinguistic territory provides a useful theoretical framework for thinking about language as an active, situated process through which people perceive, understand and transform their environments.
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Ways of meaning link ecosystemic destruction with social and linguistic interdependencies. By freeing the entangled roots of these phenomena, we can find a way to rewilding ecolinguistic territory. Turning from focus on analysis of languages, texts, or practices, one unleashes the epistemic power of languaging. As we come to know and understand, languaging permeates perception and action. The perspective solves what I call “Haugen’s problem”, or how languages can interact with environments. Playing down the mind, semogenesis uses practices to graft the cultural on to the biotic. Saying things, like all natural innovation, connects history with cascading situated contingencies. With culture, artifacts, and voices, practical action enables discovery of techniques. These use natural evoneering as personal know-how draws on an evolving social semiotic (or cultural second order). Meanings link emplacement to practices that serve people who engage in organized action. The results shape realities which, along with languages, transform the bioecologies that make up the changing ecosphere. Pursuing the epistemic power of languaging brings new awareness that can ground practical theories. Once we focus on consequences of languaging and languages, ecolinguistics gains maturity. To become a discipline, however, theorists need to use historically effective work to build a clear vision of how, as ecolinguists, we can contribute to the future of evolution.
Article · Climate · Language · Indigenous Knowledge
Climate & Language: An Entangled Crisis
Why it matters
This article foregrounds the deep connections between climate change and language loss, challenging the tendency to treat ecological and linguistic crises as separate problems. It is particularly relevant to Language as Ecology because it highlights how the erosion of languages can involve the loss of ecological knowledge, cultural relationships with place, and ways of understanding and responding to environmental change. The concept of an “entangled crisis” provides a powerful framework for thinking about climate, linguistic diversity, colonial histories, and the resilience of communities as interconnected rather than isolated concerns.
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Rising ocean levels threaten entire communities with relocation. The continued erosion of Arctic coastlines due to melting ice sheets and thawing permafrost has forced Inuit communities to move to more secure locations. Each move dislodges Indigenous peoples and their languages from ancestral landscapes and ways of knowing, obligating communities to adopt colonial or majority languages. Scholars and activists have documented the intersections of climate change and language endangerment, with special focus paid to their compounding consequences. We consider the relationship between language and environmental ideologies, synthesizing previous research on how metaphors and communicative norms in Indigenous and colonial languages and cultures influence environmental beliefs and actions. We note that these academic discourses-as well as similar discourses in nonprofit and policy-making spheres-rightly acknowledge the importance of Indigenous thought to environmental and climate action. Sadly, they often fall short of acknowledging both the colonial drivers of Indigenous language “loss” and Indigenous ownership of Indigenous language and environmental knowledge. We propose alternative framings that emphasize colonial responsibility and Indigenous sovereignty. Finally, we reflect on emergent vitalities and radical hope in Indigenous language movements and climate justice movements.
Ecology, Geography & Biocultural Diversity
Research examining ecosystems, landscapes, biodiversity, biocultural diversity and the spatial relationships between human cultures and the more-than-human world.
Legacy effects of European colonialism on hotspots of biocultural diversity threat
Why it matters
This study provides a powerful empirical foundation for understanding biocultural diversity as an interconnected ecological and cultural system. Its most striking finding is that, although biological and linguistic diversity are threatened through partly different contemporary processes, the historical expansion of European colonial powers is the only common driver of threat to both. This reveals how colonialism has left long-lasting, spatially uneven legacies across ecosystems, cultures and languages. For Language as Ecology, the study is particularly important because it moves beyond the idea that linguistic and biological diversity merely happen to coexist: it demonstrates how human histories and systems of power have shaped the vulnerability of both, highlighting the need to address contemporary ecological and cultural pressures together.
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Patterns of biological diversity have been shaped by cultural practices in the past, while in turn, cultures and languages have evolved in close interaction with local species and ecosystems. However, in the Anthropocene, human activities are putting increasingly diverse pressures on ecosystems and cultures, resulting in accelerating threat levels on both. Understanding where biological and cultural diversity is threatened globally, and how far current and historical anthropogenic drivers such as colonialism shape their distribution is crucial for pinpointing hotspots and prioritizing efforts to counter these threats. We use global data on biological diversity (using amphibians, birds, mammals and reptile diversity as a proxy) and linguistic diversity (using as a proxy for cultural diversity) to estimate their current threat levels using the Red List Index framework. Using this data, we identify hotspots and coldspots of threat to both biological and linguistic diversity as well as a combined threat (here termed biocultural diversity threat). In a second step, we identify global drivers of biological, linguistic and biocultural diversity threat using beta-regression models. We find that the spatial patterns of the erosion of biological diversity and linguistic diversity are only weakly congruent on a global scale and that they are driven by differential sets of mechanisms. These include the level of urbanization in the case of linguistic diversity threat and roughness, per capita GDP and the proportion of intensive agriculture for biological diversity. The only common driver of biocultural, linguistic and biological diversity threat was the increasing occupation time of European colonial powers. Hence, our results show that the European colonial expansion has left long-lasting imprints on both biological and cultural diversity. This highlights substantial time-lags of human past actions and can be readily translated to today where the globe is more connected than ever, illustrating the importance of understanding and alleviating contemporary anthropogenic pressures.
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Work bringing linguistic, ecological, geographical, anthropological and cultural perspectives into conversation.
Book · Ecocultural Identity · Environmental Communication · Anthropocene
Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity
Milstein, T., & Castro-Sotomayor, J. (Eds.). (2020).
Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity. Routledge.
1st edition · 522 pages · Routledge · 2020 · Open Access
Why it matters
This interdisciplinary volume provides an important bridge between ecological thinking and sociocultural understandings of identity. Rather than treating identity as something formed independently of the environment, the handbook develops the concept of ecocultural identity: the ways people understand themselves through their relationships with ecological systems, places, cultures and planetary change. Its emphasis on the Anthropocene, environmental communication, political ecology and ecological regeneration makes it particularly valuable for thinking about how language and culture participate in shaping relationships with the more-than-human world.
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The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self. The editors introduce a broad, insightful assembly of original theory and research on planetary positionalities in flux in the Anthropocene – or what in this Handbook cultural ecologist David Abram presciently renames the Humilocene, a new “epoch of humility.” Forty international authors craft a kaleidoscopic lens, focusing on the following key interdisciplinary inquiries:
Part I illuminates identity as always ecocultural, expanding dominant understandings of who we are and how our ways of identifying engender earthly outcomes.
Part II examines ways ecocultural identities are fostered and how difference and spaces of interaction can be sources of environmental conviviality.
Part III illustrates consequential ways the media sphere informs, challenges, and amplifies particular ecocultural identities.
Part IV delves into the constitutive power of ecocultural identities and illuminates ways ecological forces shape the political sphere.
Part V demonstrates multiple and unspooling ways in which ecocultural identities can evolve and transform to recall ways forward to reciprocal surviving and thriving.
The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity provides an essential resource for scholars, teachers, students, protectors, and practitioners interested in ecological and sociocultural regeneration.
The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity was awarded the 2020 Book Award from the National Communication Association’s Environmental Communication Division.