Ecolinguistics PDF - Understanding Language and the Environment

10 Ecolinguistics In the linguistic framework of this book, the most basic level is the ‘story’ – a mental model within the mind of an individual person. A story of ‘progress’ for example, may consider the past negatively as a brute struggle for survival, the pre- sent as a great improvement due...

10 Ecolinguistics In the linguistic framework of this book, the most basic level is the ‘story’ – a mental model within the mind of an individual person. A story of ‘progress’ for example, may consider the past negatively as a brute struggle for survival, the pre- sent as a great improvement due to technological innovation, the future as even more promising, and further industrialisation and technological innovation as what we should aim for. Each person will have their own collection of stories in their minds, but some stories, like that of progress, are shared by large numbers of people. They do not just exist in individual people’s minds, but across the larger culture in what van Dijk (2009: 19) refers to as social cognition. The stories-we-live-by are, therefore, cognitive structures which influence how multiple people think, talk and act. The story of progress has a fairly simple struc- ture – a direction (forwards or backwards), an evaluative orientation (forwards is good and backwards is bad), certain elements which are mapped onto ‘forwards’ (e.g. technological innovation or industrialisation), certain elements which are mapped onto backwards (e.g. living closer to nature), and a sense that progress is inevitable and unstoppable. This structure could influence people’s thinking, e.g. their reasoning process in deciding whether or not to support industrialisation of a green area. It could influence how they talk, e.g. in using expressions like ‘you can’t stop progress’. And most importantly, it could influence how they act, for example in purchasing the latest technology or agreeing to development of a green area. In this way the story has an impact on people’s lives and how they treat the ecosystems that support life. Since the stories are mental models they cannot be analysed directly, but we can get clues to them through analysing common ways that people use language. For example, by examining what people represent as ‘moving forwards’ and what they represent as ‘going backwards’ it is possible to get clues to the underlying story of progress that exists in people’s minds, and then question whether ‘progress’ is a beneficial story or not in terms of the actions it encourages. Although other modes such as visual images also provide clues to the stories-we- live-by, language is particularly revealing. It is important also because it is a key mechanism by which stories are transmitted across generations and across cultures and therefore a potential point of intervention. As the quote which opened this chapter describes, ‘change the stories that individuals or nations live by and you change the individuals and nations themselves’ (Okri 1996: 21). The ‘linguistics’ of the form of ecolinguistics described in this book uses a variety of linguistic theories to analyse patterns in language in an attempt to reveal the underlying stories-we- live-by, as a step towards changing them. Ecosophy The purpose of revealing, exposing or shedding light on the stories-we-live-by is to open them up to question and challenge – are these stories working in the current conditions of the world or do we need to search for new stories? Whether or not the stories are considered to be ‘working’ depends on the ethical vision of  Introduction 11 the analyst, i.e. on whether the stories are building the kind of world that the analyst wants to see. Clearly, all critical language analysts have an ethical framework that they use for evaluating the language they are analysing, whether or not it is made explicit. An analysis of racist language, for instance, is likely to be conducted within a framework which sees racism as something negative that needs to be worked against rather than just an object for disinterested analysis of the technicalities of language. Only some- times is the ethical framework made explicit, however. Gavriely-Nuri (2012: 83) makes her framework explicit when she calls for a Cultural Critical Discourse Analysis based on ‘values, attitudes and behaviours based on the principles of freedom, justice and democracy, all human rights, tolerance and solidarity’. This form of analysis is explicitly direc- ted at exposing mainstream discourses which work against these values, and searching for ‘discursive tools that practically promote the “culture of peace”’. Like many philoso- phical frameworks used in linguistics, however, the framework does not specifically mention ecological issues. Democracy, justice and solidarity do not automatically lead to sustainable levels of consumption, and peace in a society that exceeds environ- mental limits will be short lived. Indeed, contamination and over-exploitation of nat- ural resources is one of the key drivers behind war, as Hiscock (2012) shows. The ecolinguist Jørgen Bang uses a philosophical framework similar to that of Gavriely-Nuri, but does include ecological consideration. For Bang (personal communication, July 2014), ecolinguistics is based on: contributing to a local and global culture in which (i) co-operation, (ii) sharing, (iii) democratic dialogue, (iv) peace and non-violence, (v) equality in every sphere of daily life, and (vi) ecological sustainability are the fundamental features and primary values. If this framework were employed, then stories would be judged on the degree to which they encourage cooperation or competition, sharing or greed, peace or violence, and ecological sustainability or destruction. Larson (2011: 10), in his ecolinguistic analysis of metaphor, uses a philosophical framework of ‘socio- ecological sustainability’ and considers ‘whether the metaphors we have chosen will help us on the path of sustainability or lead us further astray’. He describes his ethical vision of sustainability through statements such as the following: … we seek not just ecological sustainability, but a more encompassing socioecological sustainability. We want a sustainable relationship between humans and the natural world rather than a sustained ecological system without humans which, to many of us, would be a sign of failure … are the metaphors we choose fertile, or effective, for socioecological sustainability? (Larson 2011: 17) Each ecolinguist will have their own set of philosophical principles they use to judge stories against, reflecting their own values and priorities, but all will have in common a consideration of the interrelationships of humans with other organisms 12 Ecolinguistics and the physical environment. Naess (1995) uses the term ecosophy (a shortening of ‘ecological philosophy’) to describe a set of philosophical principles which include ecological consideration. He expresses it like this: By an ecosophy I mean a philosophy of ecological harmony … openly nor- mative it contains norms, rules, postulates, value priority announcements and hypotheses concerning the state of affairs … The details of an ecosophy will show many variations due to significant differences concerning not only the ‘facts’ of pollution, resources, population, etc. but also value priorities. (Naess 1995: 8) Since the ecosophy includes ‘norms’ and ‘value priority announcements’ there is not one ‘correct’ ecosophy that ecolinguistics should be based on. Ecosophies can, however, be judged by whether evidence confirms or contradicts the assumptions about the state of the world that they are based on, or whether there are any internal inconsistencies. There are many possible schools of thought that can be drawn on in forming an ecosophy, and they tend to run along three spectra. The first spectrum is from anthropocentric (human centred) to ecocentric (centred on all life including humans). The second spectrum is from neoliberal at one end to either socialist, localist or anarchist at the other. The third spectrum is from optimistic to pessimistic. Inter- estingly, the three spectra broadly align with each other, so conservative neoliberal frameworks tend to be optimistic and anthropocentric, while politically radical approaches tend towards pessimism and ecocentrism. It is useful to give a brief outline of some philosophical perspectives, to illustrate how the frameworks align along the spectra. At the most politically conservative end is ‘cornucopianism’. This philosophy considers that human ingenuity and ever advancing technology will overcome environmental and resource issues. Humans should therefore continue with and accelerate industrial progress for the sake of human (and only human) benefit (e.g. Lomborg 2001; Ridley 2010). Then there is a cluster of perspectives under the umbrella of ‘sustainable development’, which attempt to combine economic growth with environmental protection and social equity (e.g. Baker 2006). These vary from more conservative positions, where economic growth is the priority, to approaches which more fully consider social and ecological factors. Social ecology (e.g. Bookchin 1994, 2005) is a more politi- cally radical perspective which sees the roots of ecological destruction as existing in oppressive social hierarchies. In this perspective, humans will continue dominating nature and treating it as a resource until they stop dominating each other and treating each other as resources. Ecofeminism (e.g. Adams and Gruen 2014) also locates the cause of ecological crisis in domination, but focuses on the parallels between the oppression of animals and the environment and men’s domination of women. One of the aims of ecofeminism is to change society so that the ecological sensitivity gained by women through their practical role in subsistence and community building is valued and used in rebuilding more ecological societies.  Introduction 13 Deep ecology (e.g. Drengson and Inoue 1995) recognises the intrinsic worth of humans, plants, animals, forests and rivers, that is, their value beyond direct, short-term use for humans. Recognising worth in nature, it is argued, is likely to encourage people to protect and preserve the conditions that support all life, including human life. The Transition Movement (Hopkins 2008) is based on a philosophy of ‘resi- lience’ as a key goal, as both climate change and the depletion of oil lead to an inevitable decline in the ability of the earth to support human life. Transition is localist in encouraging communities to regain the bonds and skills to look after each other and fulfil their own needs outside of a turbulent and unreliable inter- national economy. The Dark Mountain Project (Kingsnorth and Hine 2009) sees even the hope of resilience as overly optimistic, and aims at generating new stories for survivors to live by after the inevitable collapse of industrial civilisation. The aim of the Dark Mountain Project is to discover stories which do not repeat the same errors of the past and consider humans as part of the natural world rather than conquerors of it. Deep Green Resistance (McBay et al. 2011) sees industrial civilisation as evil due to the damage and suffering it causes both humans and other species. Rather than waiting for industrial civilisation to destroy itself, Deep Green Resistance aims to hasten its destruction through carefully planned sabotage. At the far other end of the spectrum there is the semi-serious Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT 2014), with a utilitarian philosophy that it would be better for one species (homo sapiens) to become extinct (voluntarily through a global decision not to have children) rather than the millions of species that humans are driving to extinction. This is radically ecocentric, and pessimistic since it views any continuation of human life as a threat to the ecosystems that support life. An individual ecolinguist will survey the wide range of possible ecosophies described in the literature, consider them carefully in light of available evidence and their own experience of human communities and the natural world, and build their own ecosophy through combining them, extending them or creating some- thing entirely new. Gary Snyder, ecocritic, poet and philosopher, for instance, has built a personal ecosophy which combines and extends social and deep ecology (Messersmith-Glavin 2012). The ecosophy has to be scientifically possible – for example an extreme version of sustainable development that promoted economic growth everywhere, even in the richest of countries, could be argued to be impossible given environmental limits. It has to be plausible, which the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is clearly not since it relies on everyone in the world agreeing not to have children. And it has to be aligned with the available evidence: Transition, for example, is dependent on evidence that oil production is due to peak and decline, that climate change is occurring, and that both will have a serious impact on human society. The ecosophy of this book This section briefly summarises the ecosophy that this book is based on. Ecosophies are complex and sophisticated, changing and evolving as the analyst is exposed to