Towards an Ecology of Language, Communication and the Mind

The human language, as perceived by an ecologically-minded linguist today, is a life process, operating within the pulsating grid of other life processes. This book discusses an ecological approach to communicational processes. It reports the fundamental shifts occurring after ecological views had been infused into the Social Sciences and Humanities.

This book discusses an ecological approach to communicational processes. Raising consciousness about being green is not the only concern of present-day ecological linguistics. Ecolinguistics, with its attention focused on ecosystems as well as contexts of language and communication, probes deep into the core of not only modern linguistics but modern science in general, while relating to conceptions of the world as well as to the scientific method itself. Thus, when ecological thinking is applied to science, it eventually will incite a methodological and philosophical rethinking. This study reports the fundamental shifts occurring after ecological views had been infused into the Social Sciences and Humanities. The substance of various qualities, from the very dense and tangible, to subtle mental or cognitive non-matter, becomes an ecosystem for human language on both a very direct, material plane, as well as on the non-material plane. In fact, human language, as perceived by an ecologically-minded linguist today, is a life process, operating within the pulsating grid of other life processes.

Autorentext

Marta Boguslawska-Tafelska is an ecolinguist. She works as an assistant professor at the Department of English Studies at the University of Warmia and Mazury (Poland), where she set up the Ecolinguistic Studies Program for MA students of linguistics. She is co-editor of a linguistic series on new pathways in linguistics and author of a book on self-education as a strategy of life.

Inhalt
Contents: Ecolinguistics New linguistics New paradigm in language and communication studies Mind Meaning as a process Cognitive processes Communication Interdisciplinary linguistics.