1 INTRODUCTION 1
章节导读 1
The stories we live by 4
The ‘eco’ of ecolinguistics 9
The ‘linguistics’ of ecolinguistics 11
Ecosophy 13
The ecosophy of this book 16
Organisation of this book 18
A note about references to data and glossary 20
补充文献 20
2 IDEOLOGIES 21
章节导读 21
Destructive discourses 27
Ambivalent discourses 29
Beneficial discourses 31
Methods 35
The discourse of neoclassical economics 36
理论延伸 44
补充文献 46
3 FRAMING 48
章节导读 48
The framing of development 62
理论延伸 69
补充文献 71
4 METAPHORS 73
章节导读 73
The CORPORATION IS A PERSON metaphor 89
理论延伸 95
补充文献 96
5 EVALUATIONS 98
章节导读 98
Appraisal and the weather 112
理论延伸 120
补充文献 122
6 IDENTITIES 124
章节导读 124
Identity, gender and the body in Men’s Health magazine 138
理论延伸 146
补充文献 147
7 CONVICTIONS 149
章节导读 149
Facticity in climate change and coronavirus denial 165
理论延伸 172
补充文献 173
8 ERASURE 175
章节导读 175
Erasure in ecosystem assessment and the Sustainable Development Goals 188
理论延伸 198
补充文献 200
9 SALIENCE 202
章节导读 202
Salience in new nature writing 218
理论延伸 225
补充文献 226
10 NARRATIVES 228
章节导读 228
Ego, eco and origin narratives 240
理论延伸 251
补充文献 252
11 CONCLUSION 254
章节导读 254
Theory 257
The gathering 264
补充文献 266
APPENDIX 267
GLOSSARY 275
REFERENCES 285
內容試閱:
Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By is a ground-breaking book
which reveals the stories that underpin unequal and unsustainable societies and searches
for inspirational forms of language that can help rebuild a kinder, more ecological world.
This new edition has been updated and expanded to bring together the latest ecolinguistic
studies with new theoretical insights and practical analyses.
The book presents a theoretical framework and practical tools for analysing the key
texts which shape the society we live in. The theory is illustrated through examples,
including the representation of environmental refugees in the media; the construction of
the selfish consumer in economics textbooks; the parallels between climate change denial
and coronavirus denial; the erasure of nature in the Sustainable Development Goals;
creation myths and how they orient people towards the natural world; and inspirational
forms of language in nature writing, Japanese haiku and Native American writing.
This edition provides an updated theoretical framework, new example analyses, and an
additional chapter on narratives.
Accompanied by a free online course with videos, PowerPoints, notes and exercises,
as well as a comprehensive glossary, this is essential reading for undergraduates,
postgraduates and researchers working in the areas of Discourse Analysis, Environmental
Studies and Communication Studies.
Arran Stibbe is Professor of Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire.
He has an academic background in both linguistics and human ecology and combines
the two in his research and teaching. He is the founder of the International Ecolinguistics
Association, and author of Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology and Reconnection with
Nature. He was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education
Academy for teaching excellence and has published widely on discourse analysis of social
and ecological issues.
Preface to the Chinese Edition
I am delighted that this Chinese edition of my book Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and
the Stories We Live By will be published by Tsinghua University Press. Ecolinguistics is a
great passion of mine and is something which has benefited my life in many ways. I hope
that this edition of the book, with its very helpful Chinese introduction and notes, will help
others to discover the benefits that I have. Ecolinguistics is primarily an academic pursuit,
but people who study it find a new awareness of the world around them and how language
shapes that world. They find inspirational forms of language which help them rethink the
society that they are part of and imagine a new, more ecological civilization. This can
transform their own lives, making them more appreciative of the ecological systems that
life depends on and giving them the motivation to work with others to protect them.
There are many ways to tell the story of ecolinguistics. Traditionally, the story starts in
the 1970s, with sociolinguists such as Haugen who use the term ‘ecology’ as a metaphor
to describe the interaction of languages as if they were biological species (Haugen 1972).
The metaphor has the advantage of encouraging sociolinguists to pay more attention
to interaction and provides a political tool to represent languages that are declining in
use as ‘endangered’ and threatened with ‘extinction’. This may provide motivation to
protect linguistic diversity, as a parallel to biodiversity. However, the metaphor has its
limitations too — imposing the metaphor draws attention away from the many ways
that the interaction of languages is different from the interaction of species, so can
obscure as much as it reveals. More importantly, using ‘ecology’ as a metaphor erases
the actual ecology — the humans, animals, plants, forests, rain, oceans, soil, and the
ecosystems that life depends on. As it becomes clearer that those ecosystems are being
destroyed, it becomes increasingly important for all subjects to focus attention not only
on humans and human societies, but on the literal ecosystems that are necessary for their
continued survival. This is the central goal of the ‘ecological humanities’ — ecocriticism,
ecopsychology, ecofeminism and many others including, of course, ecolinguistics.
Rather than starting the story of ecolinguistics with the early explorations of ‘language
ecology’, therefore, I prefer to start it with an inspirational speech given by Michael
Halliday in 1990 (Halliday 1990/2001). This speech was a clear and strong call to linguists
to start focusing on how language encourages us to behave in ways that protect or destroy
the ecosystems that life depends on. It was quite natural that this call arose from Halliday
because his approach, Systemic Functional Grammar, focuses attention on how language
construes human experience, makes sense of reality, and builds relationships between
people. Halliday was keenly aware of how language influences thought and behaviour and
can encourage people to behave in ways that are racist, sexist or ecologically destructive.
The following quotation from his speech is a useful demonstration of ecolinguistics:
…countless texts repeated daily all around the world, contain[s] a simple message:
growth is good. Many is better than few, more is better than less, big is better than
small, grow is better than shrink, up is better than down. Gross National Products
must go up, standards of living must rise, productivity must increase. But we
know that these things can’t happen. We are using up … the fresh water and the
agricultural soils that we can’t live without … We are destroying many of the other
species who form part of the planetary cycle …
What makes this ecolinguistic is the connection between language and its impact on
the ecosystems that support life. Halliday tended to focus on the language system, e.g.,
the markedness of the term ‘growth’ which gives it an inbuilt positivity. Subsequent
approaches to ecolinguistics focused more on characteristic patterns of language use, i.e.,
discourses, since these are more amenable to change than the deep levels of the language
system (e.g., Goatly 2000). And later work gave closer attention to the cognitive structures
in people’s minds which influence how they think, talk and act, which I call ‘stories’ in
this book. In cognitive terms, Halliday is criticising the story that growth is good, which is
an evaluation in people minds built through exposure to patterns of language in the texts
which surround them.
For me, the key element which distinguishes ecolinguistics from other forms of
linguistic enquiry is not a particular methodology, framework, or theory. Instead, it is
just that a linguist has reflected on human relations with other species and the physical
environment and taken the results of that reflection into consideration when coming
to the conclusions of their study. Informally, I would express this as linguistic enquiry
where the linguist notices and cares about humans, animals, plants, forests, rivers, and the
ecosystems that life depends on and dedicates their work to improving their wellbeing.
More formally, I would say that ecolinguistics is linguistic enquiry where judgements
about whether findings are positive or negative are made with reference to an ecosophy
(ecological philosophy). This is how Arne Naess describes ecosophy:
By an ecosophy I mean a philosophy of ecological harmony … openly normative, it
contains both norms, rules, postulates, value priority announcements and hypotheses
concerning the state of affairs… (Naess 1995, p. 8)
We know that Naess was influenced by Eastern thought (Katz et al. 2000), and his use
of ‘harmony’ to describe the goal of an ecosophy resonates with Chinese ecolinguistics,
where harmony is a central concept. Similarly, Michael Halliday was influenced by