Vol 29, No 1 (2025): Ecolinguistics: Consolidating a research paradigm

As the ecological crisis facing our planet deepens, understanding the role of language in shaping perceptions and behaviour in relation to the environment becomes ever more critical. This special issue focuses on ecolinguistics, an interdisciplinary domain of linguistics that explores issues of ecological significance through the lens of language and its functioning. Although the field has a rather eclectic history with researchers invoking the term ecolinguistics in diverse spaces from language contact and language acquisition to language policy and bi/multilingualism, it now seems quite clear that contemporary ecolinguistics is most reflective of and aligned with a discourse analytic approach that examines language use in a variety of contexts with aims to either critique language use that perpetuates ecological degradation or elevate alternative language practices that contribute to wellbeing and sustainability. This introductory article overviews recent developments in the field and outlines the main directions of ecolinguistic studies, specifying the range of its methods and approaches. It then introduces the exemplary collection of articles in this special issue and highlights their contribution to ecolinguistics research. The challenges we face are global in nature, and the dialogue between Russian and Western scholars in this issue underscores the importance of collective action and shared knowledge in confronting the ecological crisis. It is hoped that this growing body of ecolinguistics research will deepen our mutual understanding of ecological discourse and inspire concrete initiatives in the direction of a more sustainable and resilient future and foster a united approach to the urgent ecological challenges of our time.

As a subfield of ecolinguistics, cognitive ecolinguistics is concerned with the impact of language and cognition on our way and quality of life by approaching language as a medium in and off which a human lives, with which she operates. This paper focuses on linguistically traceable patterns of knowing (perception and thought) that have negative environmental outcomes. It argues that these patterns result from what I call ‘entrapped cognition’ - a human-specific mode of cognition when ways of knowing naturally supersede the known, but at the same time, unnaturally reduce adaptivity to the changing environmental conditions. The study aims to prove that cognitive entrapment is not the fault of the brain or body or environment alone, but rather our brain-body-environment engagement that we harness in and through language. To achieve this aim, I bring methods of systems thinking along to cognitive ecolinguistics and describe four major factors that account for entrapped cognition: a constraint on human agency that creates an illusion of control; the derivative structure of cognition whereby one deals with novelties through older ways of understanding; the observer fallacy by which one phenomenological experience, although occurring post factum, is taken to explain another in hindsight; the confusion of orders of abstraction in understanding experiences due to the ‘sameness’ of linguistic form. An investigation of entrapped cognition in discursive practices reveals four patterns of understanding: traps of allness, stillness, symmetry and sameness. All these ways of cognitive entrapment pose ecological dangers for human flourishing and a healthy, sustainable development of the environment.

This study focuses on the evolving environmentally related lexicon and the new meanings that have progressively arisen or born of the combination of pre-existing terms and lemmas. The increasingly widespread practice among news professionals, psychologists, sociologists etc. of listening, recording and collecting narratives centred upon environmental alterations has enhanced the tendency to coin new words. Neologisms, such as eco-grief, eco-anxiety, solastalgia, are progressively entering mainstream communication, though due to its more complex morphological makeup the term ‘solastalgia’ requires more in-depth analysis. The objective of the present study is to investigate the early use of the term solastalgia in scientific communication and trace its subsequent development and transition to mainstream communication. The progressive shift was investigated through an integrated methodological approach, based on a comparative corpus-based analysis (time span 2007-2023), and further informed by an ecolinguistics perspective. The data were obtained from two diachronic sub-corpora, specifically created for the purpose of this investigation: the Eco-PubMed corpus, extracted from the PubMed Central archive, and the Eco-Guardian corpus taken from the online international version of the Guardian newspaper. Both quantitative and qualitative aspects were taken into account, together with the cultural-pragmatic implications of this fast-emerging new locution. The results reveal that the term ‘solastalgia’ has only reached mainstream communication to a limited extent, since it occurs in 31 PubMed articles vs 17 Guardian articles. The diffusion of the term belied the authors’ expectations regarding the greater neutrality of scientific dissemination compared to mainstream communication. The study raises awareness of the dissemination of environment-related terminology and its interdisciplinary relationship to other domains.

Transport companies face the dual challenge of addressing transparency issues in communicating their potential role in environmental disasters while cultivating trust with stakeholders. Set against this background, this paper explores how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports showcase companies’ awareness of both their role as social actors and their impact on the planet and the community. More specifically, it aims to investigate how environmental issues have been framed and described by companies operating in the rail sector from a linguistic and discursive perspective. From an eco-linguistics perspective, this paper examines trigger words that are used to frame issues related to the environment in CSR reports of rail companies. Specifically, we avail ourselves of a corpus consisting of CSR reports published in English between 2021 and 2022 by rail companies of both English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. An analysis of our corpus highlights recurrent phraseological units related to zero and protection, suggesting some basic frames of corporate environmental action. A close study of the lexico-grammatical patterns linked to such words shows different trends in the disclosure of reports from both a linguistic and discursive perspective. Results shed light not only on how companies represent themselves through the genre of CSR reports, but also on cross-cultural differences. Specifically, countries using net zero as their main objective present themselves as efficient while those preferring climate protection as caring. The study contributes to the further understanding of the role of corporate social responsibility in environmental action. By framing environmental protection and net zero not only as a mission but also as a corporate strategy, rail companies seem to reinforce their public image in an increasingly eco-conscious market.

In the Lebenswelt of everyday communication, meaning emerges from the interplay of verbal and nonverbal semiosis. While textual discourse analysis offers valuable insights, the richness and complexity of human communication come to the fore when considering communication in its entirety, including nonverbal elements. This paper aims to move beyond theoretical analysis and support real-world organizing efforts, offering a more comprehensive understanding of the human-environment relationship and its implications for environmental justice. It argues for integrating nonverbal analysis into ecolinguistic praxis, particularly in engagement with communities and civil society, or the ecolinguistic ‘grassroots.’ However, there is a gap in existing ecolinguistic scholarship regarding frameworks for this integration. To address this, the paper presents a multilevel methodology based on eight hours of audio and video recordings, which capture different perspectives on mining operations and proposed developments. These include interviews, documentaries, and recordings from ‘town hall’ meetings from YouTube recordings uploaded between approximately 2007 and 2018. Analysis of facial expressions and gestures reveals distinct cognitive responses at different thematic levels of discourse (ecological, cultural, socioeconomic). This paper demonstrates how such findings have important implications for practitioners engaging with working-class communities impacted by environmental change. As nonverbal research increasingly focuses on human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence, this study advocates for nonverbal analysis as humanistic inquiry, emphasizing meaning-centered approaches that draw from the embodied nature of human interaction to foster empathic understanding and more effective organizing within communities.