Short description:

This handbook is the first comprehensive overview of ecolinguistics or language ecology. It discusses language diversity, language minorities and language endangerment; the role of language and discourse in describing, hiding and helping to solve environmental problems; and argues for ecolinguistics as a pace-maker into a new scie

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Long description:

The Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics is the first comprehensive exploration into the field of ecolinguistics, also known as language ecology. Organized into three sections that treat the different topic areas of ecolinguistics, the Handbook begins with chapters on language diversity, language minorities and language endangerment, with authors providing insight into the link between the loss of languages and the loss of species. It continues with an overview of the role of language and discourse in describing, concealing, and helping to solve environmental problems. With discussions on new orientations and topics for further exploration in the field, chapters in the last section show ecolinguistics as a pacesetter into a new scientific age. This Handbook is an excellent resource for students and researchers interested in language and the environment, language contact, and beyond.

"We live in the world, and shape the world we live in, through the language we use. Ecolinguistics studies this relation between language and the world. Ecolinguists describe, but also critique, forms of language that create but may also threaten environments and languages. This book brings together the best in ecolinguistic scholarship and contains chapters that merge linguistic analysis with reflections on science, politics, philosophy and ethics. Anybody trying to understand our future life on this planet should find something interesting to read in this collection."
Brigitte Nerlich, University of Nottingham, UK

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Table of Contents:

PART I: Languages in their social and individual environment

A. Linguistic and biological diversity: minority and majority languages, endangerment

and revival

1. Biological diversity and language diversity: parallels and differences

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and David Harmon

2. The ecology of language contact: minority and majority languages

Albert Bastardas-Boada

3. Language endangerment and language death: the future of language diversity

Suzanne Romaine

4. The Economy of language ecology: economic aspects of minority languages

Alwin F. Fill

5. Language Evolution from an ecological perspective

Salikoko Mufwene

6. Ecological aspects of language planning

Robert B. Kaplan

B. Language Contact (bilingualism and multilingualism) and contact languages

7. Individual and societal bilingualism and multilingualism

Sabine Ehrhart

8. Linguistic imperialism and the consequences for language ecology

Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

9. What creolistics can learn from ecolinguistics

Peter Mühlhäusler

10. Ecosystemic Linguistics

Hildo Honorio do Couto

PART II: The role of language concerning the environment (biological and ecological)

A. The role of language in creating, aggravating and solving environmental problems

11. Positive discourse analysis: re-thinking human ecological relationships

Arran Stibbe

12. Using visual images for showing environmental problems

Anders Hansen

13. Investigating texts about environmental degradation using critical discourse analysis and

corpus linguistic techniques

Richard Alexander

14. The pragmatics of metaphor: an ecological view

Jacob L. Mey

B. How environmental topics appear in texts and in the media: ecological and

unecological discourse

15. Lexicogrammar and Ecolinguistics

Andrew Goatly

16. The treatment of environmental topics in the language of politics

Mai Kuha

17. Eco-advertising: the linguistics and semiotics of green(-washed) persuasion

Hartmut Stöckl and Sonja Molnar

18. ?Global warming? or ?climate change??

Hermine Penz

19. Media reports about natural disasters: an ecolinguistic perspective

Martin Döring

C. How do language and discourse transport ecological and unecological ideas?

20. The discursive representation of animals

Guy Cook and Alison Sealey

21. Euphemisms for killing animals and for other forms of their use

Wilhelm Trampe

22. Overcoming anthropocentrism with anthropomorphic and physiocentric uses of language?

Reinhard Heuberger

23. Ecolinguistics and place-names: interaction between humans and nature

Joshua Nash

PART III: Philosophical and transdisciplinary ecolinguistics

24. The ethics of scientific language about the environment

Brendon Larson

25. Language, ecolinguistics and education

George N. Jacobs

26. The micro-ecological grounding of language: how linguistic symbolicity extends and

transforms human ecology

Sune V. Steffensen

27. Transdisciplinary linguistics: ecolinguistics as a pace-maker into a new scientific age

Peter Finke

28. Religion, language and ecology

Todd LeVasseur

PART IV: New orientations and future directions in ecolinguistics

29. Ecolinguistics in the 21^st century: new orientations and future directions

Alwin F. Fill and Hermine Penz

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