The year’s work in ecolinguistics 2022

2.1 Research areas

Ecolinguistics mainly straddles the two disciplines of “ecology” and “linguistics”, and it is a subject that intersects natural science and social science. There are several differences between the two disciplines. This means that researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds have different views on ecolinguistics. We included various research topics from different disciplinary foundations and perspectives. For linguists or those studying ecolinguistics using a linguistic framework, two main approaches are included, i.e. the Haugenian approach (also known as “linguistic ecology (I)”^[1]) and the Hallidayan approach (also known as “ecological linguistics”). However, this discipline is different from the research framework of ecologists, and the form of “linguistic ecology (II)” they identify is more inclined to be a natural science with a wider span (see Huang and Li 2021). Huang and Chen (2018) divided ecolinguistics into two categories: “micro-ecolinguistics” (a branch of linguistics) and “macro-ecolinguistics” (a trans-discipline above linguistics and ecology) according to the current research situation. Subsequently, Zhang (2021) affirmed and explained this classification through a visualization analysis. This study summarizes the research areas of ecolinguistics in 2022 from both micro and macro perspectives.

2.2 Academic conferences

Many countries and regions held academic conferences on ecological issues in 2022. Here, we identify several academic conferences that are related to ecolinguistics for the analysis of the processes, topics, and contents of those academic conferences. The workings of such academic conferences towards the construction of an ecological civilization are also explored.

The Sixth International Conference on Ecolinguistics (ICE-6)^[2] had the most widespread impact this year. This international conference series was initiated by the Chinese scholar Professor Guowen Huang and was held first at the South China Agricultural University in 2016 (Guangzhou, China), followed by Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beijing, China, 2017), Guizhou Normal University (Guiyang, China, 2018), University of Southern Denmark (Odense, Denmark, 2019), and University of Liverpool (Liverpool, UK, 2021). The ICE-6 was held at the University of Graz, Austria (organized by Hermine Penz), from September 21st–24th, 2022, with the theme “Language, Time and Sustainability: Ecolinguistics For, With, After, and Against the Future”. The ICE-6 was composed of five plenary sessions, 16 panel sessions, and other discussions. The five keynote speakers and the topics of their presentations were: Alwin Fill, “Ecolinguistics against Climate Change and for Peace”; Barbara Adam, “Reflecting on Future Matters for Eco-Linguistics”; Peter Mühlhäusler, “Time and Ecolinguistics”; Xingwei Miao, “Unity of Humans and Nature: Ecologization in Mandarin Chinese as Ecological Care for the Life-sustaining Environment”; and Andrew Goatly, “The Similarity and Contiguity Dimensions of Meaning and Ecology”. Regarding the 16 panel sessions, due to the large amount of content, we have organized and summarized some typical topics that appeared in linguistic studies as follows: ecological ideologies by Dai Faye, Panel 1; (multimodal) ecological discourse analysis by Wenjin Wendy and Baoyu Ma, Panel 1; linguistic accessibility by Braunsdorfer Johanna, Panel 1; prescriptive ecolinguistics by Zeniakin Oleksii, Panel 2; eco-critical metaphor discourse analysis by Festus Moses Onipede and Gabriel Abiodun Abioye, Panel 2; econarrative by Stibbe, Panel 3; and ecosophy by Drury, Panel 3. ICE-6 brought together scholars from many disciplines and regions who aimed to contribute to the solution of global ecological problems and to the sustainable development of humans and the natural world by discussing practical issues in ecolinguistics. ICE-6 highlights the importance of language and temporality in the sustainability debate. At the same time, this international conference promoted the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary development of ecolinguistics.

In addition to ICE-6, many regions around the world organized local academic conferences, symposiums, and seminars on ecolinguistics or discussions around the issues of “language” and “ecology” to alleviate regional and global ecological problems and achieve effective solutions to ecological problems at home and abroad. Greater ecological problems can be effectively solved by alleviating regional ecological problems. We list several regional conferences on ecolinguistics that were hosted in the UK and China in 2022.

In the UK, from October 22nd to 23rd, 2022, a conference entitled “International Conference on Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies”^[3] was held by the London Center for Interdisciplinary Research. This conference explored eco-environmental problem-solving, mainly from a humanities (i.e. linguistics, literature) perspective, focusing on the relationships between the physical environment and texts. The main topics listed on the conference website were animal studies, biopolitics, cultural and literacy ecology, ecofeminism, ecolinguistics, ecosophy, environmental arts, environmental history, ethnobiology, posthumanism, and sustainable development.

The China Association of Ecolinguistics has contributed much to the organization of conferences. First, the 7th National Symposium on the Strategic Development of Ecolinguistics was held on June 18, 2022, hosted by Guizhou Normal University (online/Guiyang, China). The conference consisted of two main parts: a colloquium and a roundtable discussion. More than 170 Chinese experts, scholars, and students participated in the colloquium, which consisted of keynote presentations by ten experts on issues surrounding ecolinguistics and its cross-fertilization with other disciplines. This roundtable discussion was attended by experts and scholars from the China Association of Ecolinguistics to discuss the next development path of ecolinguistics in China and promote the discipline of ecolinguistics.

Second, from August 20th to 21st, 2022, Inner Mongolia University held its 7th National Conference on Ecolinguistics (online/Hohhot, China). The theme of the conference was “Research on Ecolinguistics and the Construction of Ecological Civilization in the New Era”. The conference was attended by more than 240 Chinese experts, scholars, and students and included 14 keynote presentations by experts as well as a Young Scholars Forum. The keynote presentations by the experts focused on interdisciplinary research in ecolinguistics, developmental trends in ecolinguistics, linguistic landscapes, ecological lexicography, ecophilosophical perspectives, systemic functional linguistics, language planning, ecological identity, and corpus linguistics. The Young Scholars Forum was divided into ten panels for discussion, with the main topics being: “Connotative Development of Ecolinguistics in the Context of the New Era”, “Integration and Development of Ecolinguistics”, “Language Policy, Language Planning and Language Ecology”, “Research on Ecolinguistics and Language Teaching”, “Ecolinguistics and Translation Studies”, “Theory and Practice of Ecological Discourse Analysis”, “Ecolinguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics”, and “Ecolinguistics and Cognitive Linguistics”. Through academic exchange, the aim was to promote the emergence of new growth points in ecolinguistic studies and to realize the academic value of ecolinguistics researchers.

Third, on October 13, 2022, Beijing Foreign Studies University held “Frontiers Symposium on Ecolinguistics” online and the development conference of the Journal of World Languages. The Frontiers Symposium section included eight invited experts from the UK, China, Italy, Malaysia, Brazil, and the USA to give academic presentations. The names of the experts and the titles of their presentations were: Hildo Honorio do Couto, “Ecosystemic Discourse Analysis”; Arran Stibbe, “Econarrative and the Creation of the Earth”; Daniela Francesca Virdis, “Environmental Stylistics: Theoretical and Analytical Approaches to Discourses of Nature, the Environment and Sustainability”; Robert Poole, “Corpus-Assisted Ecolinguistics for Diachronic Analysis of Eco-Keywords and Constructs”; George Jacobs and Meng Huat Chau, “Ecolinguistics for and Beyond the Sustainable Development Goals”; Andrew Goatly, “Ecostylistics – and the Frontiers of Ecolinguistics”; and Alison Sealey, “Describing Animals: An Ecolinguistics Case Study”. The Construction Promotion Conference section discusses the progress of the Journal of World Languages and communication of further developments.

There were also academic forums on functional linguistics in 2022 that did not mention ecolinguistics in their themes, but reminded participants of the discussion of the relationship between ecolinguistics and functional linguistics in specific research topics, for example: The 5th Forum on Integration, Innovation and Development of Functional Linguistics held on October 29th–30th, 2022. Its theme was “Learn from each other and integrate for innovative development”, i.e. functional linguistics and ecolinguistics at Qufu Normal University, Jining, China. The First Zhuhai Forum on Functional Linguistics: Ph.D. Student Forum was held on November 5th–6th, 2022. Its theme was “Cultivation of Foreign Language Talents in the Context of New Liberal Arts” at Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China.

2.3 Monographs and journals

In the previous sections, we reviewed the progress of ecolinguistics in 2022 from different perspectives, including some of the publications mentioned in this section. However, those sections did not directly focus on the ecolinguistics monographs and journals. This section focuses on two ecolinguistic monographs and six scientific journals published in the field of ecolinguistics in 2022 (Statistics until November 26th, 2022).

Wuhan University Press published Chinese scholar Rong Wei’s English monograph on ecolinguistics, entitled A Systemic Functional Framework of International Ecological Discourse Analysis, which was adapted from her Ph.D. dissertation. Eight chapters in the monograph combine theory, analysis, and action (Wei 2022). First, the ecolinguistics framework is constructed by combining the ecosophy of “Diversity and Interaction, Coexistence and Harmony” with relevant content of systemic functional linguistics in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. Subsequently, based on the ecolinguistics framework described above, the conservation, neutrality, and destruction of ecosystems in the international ecological discourse were evaluated in Chapters 5–7. Finally, Wei warned people to take action to promote beneficial discourse, resist destructive discourse, and improve ambivalent discourse in Chapter 8. This monograph brought forth international ecosophy, verified the “applicability” of systemic functional linguistics and the theoretical development of ecolinguistics, and strengthened the dialog between Western linguistic theories and traditional Chinese ecosophy.

Rong Wei’s book mainly adopted qualitative research methods to analyze ecolinguistics, but corpus-assisted quantitative research methods are also useful for the exploration of ecolinguistics (Stibbe 2021: 156). Poole’s (2022) monograph used a corpus-assisted path, titled Corpus-Assisted Ecolinguistics (published by Bloomsbury). Poole’s book contains seven chapters that apply corpus-assisted discourse analysis techniques to the study of ecolinguistics, highlighting the contribution of corpus linguistics to ecolinguistics. Poole begins his book by emphasizing the importance of ecosophy (also Stibbe 2021: 11–14) and applies ecosophy to discourse analysis, which consists of five elements: well-being, justice, awakening and transformation, compassion, and sustainability. The book reminded readers to be aware of the ecological turn in discourse; to question discourses that are inconsistent with their own ecosophy; to produce the linguistic forms behind the ecological crisis; and to contribute new ways of thinking, forms of behavior, and modes of existence for the ecological well-being and sustainable development of humanity.

Ecolinguística: Revista Brasileira de Ecologia e Linguagem (ECO-REBEL), the Journal of World Languages, Language & Ecology, and Language Sciences, all made significant contributions to the field of ecolinguistics in 2021 and continued to publish many articles representing the frontiers of ecolinguistic studies in 2022. All of these journals deserve attention from the academic community.

ECO-REBEL is a journal that focuses on ecosystem linguistics, treating language as a biopsychosocial phenomenon both exoecologically and endoecologically (Zhang 2022). Hildo Honório do Couto is the chief editor. Nineteen academic articles in the field of ecolinguistics were published in the journal in 2022. The content types offered in Issue 1 included editorials, articles, short reviews, interviews with ecolinguists, and obituaries. The main contents covered were: Bang et al. (2022) referenced the Danish dialectical theory of language and ecolinguistics, focusing on the investigation and analysis of various types of languages. Two articles in this issue presented pioneering scholars of ecosystem linguistics and their scholarly perspectives: Romanian linguist Eugenio Coseriu and Romanian psycholinguist Tatiana Slama-Cazacu (Fernandes 2022a; Silva 2022). Sarmento and de Moura (2022) incorporated interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ideas using discourse analysis and ecocriticism to identify the representation of the country’s people in O Sertanejo, revealing the relationship between humans and their natural and sociocultural environments. E. Couto (2022) connected ecolinguistics with the imaginary and found the feasibility of their combination by sorting their respective contents to provide a certain complement to ecolinguistic studies. Santos (2022) emphasized the importance of communication processes between different species to promote the development of an agro-ecosystem. H. Couto (2022) confirmed the multidisciplinary and multimethodological attributes of ecosystem linguistics through argumentation and stated that language is “a mode of communication or communication itself”.

The types of content in Issue 2 were editorials, articles, and reviews. In terms of the contents, it involved the following aspects: Pang and Marlow (2022) focused on the development of ecolinguistics in China and discussed the study’s contribution to the development of the discipline. Garner (2022) explored an ecological approach to language research and promoted linguistics as a genuine ecological scientific discipline. Using the critical discourse analysis framework, Forte (2022) explored whether texts in Argentine environmental law allowed participants to take certain actions within a particular framework. Finke (2022) practiced transdisciplinary thinking and discussed four aspects of historical and current prerequisites centered on the future, knowledge, and language, namely, the Anthropocene perspective, two contributions of linguistics, and steps that can be taken toward a sustainable understanding of knowledge. Fernandes (2022b) aimed to contextualize hate speech, link it to hate practices, and concluded that both are contradictory to the principles of ecosystem discourse analysis. Lins and Neto (2022) considered the relationship between humans and the plant kingdom, providing examples of human behavior through the knowledge of plant neurobiology. Guisan and da Silva (2022) studied migration along the Brazil–Venezuela border for a theoretical exploration of the interaction and use of discursive markers based on ecosystemic linguistics.

The Journal of World Languages, which explores the role, function, and structure of language worldwide, specifically highlights the research areas of ecolinguistics and ecological discourse analysis. Fifteen articles related to ecolinguistics appeared in 2022, and the second issue of this year was a Special Issue on ecolinguistics, entitled “Practical Applications of Ecolinguistics”, involving both an editorial and research articles. In eight research articles on this Special Issue, Penz and Fill (2022) traced the trajectory of ecolinguistics from the Haugenian and Hallidayan approaches and discussed the main trends in current research. They also provided suggestions for the next phase of ecolinguistic development. Gilquin (2022) drew on corpus linguistics to discuss ways to reduce people’s ecological footprint (i.e. second-hand consumption). The study revealed how discourse representations of second-hand consumption (i.e. frequency and collocation) have evolved over time and made suggestions for its further development (Gilquin 2022). Franklin et al. (2022) also used a corpus approach and combined the elements of ecolinguistics and cognitive linguistics to investigate consumer attitudes toward plastic use in the UK. Suggestions were made as to how to communicate information on packaging and plastic recycling. Chau et al. (2022) addressed the important role of ecolinguistics in solving real-world issues and suggested how linguists could be involved in solving ecological problems and working towards achieving sustainable development goals. The next two articles emphasized the importance of language teachers inside and outside the classroom in addressing ecological issues and offered directional guidance for their teaching activities (Maley 2022; Micalay-Hurtado and Poole 2022). Merskin (2022) began with a discussion of the personal pronouns “she”, “he”, and “it” and proposed an animal protection initiative for the sake of our ecological well-being. The last article told the story of the local natural world and explored the conservation and revitalization of language (Hampton 2022).

Several other issues of the Journal of World Languages published in 2022 (including those that are “ahead of print”) also included articles with links to ecolinguistics, for example: the book review of New Developments of Ecological Discourse Analysis (Cheng 2022), the themes for ecostylistics (Goatly 2022a), the discourse analysis of the terms “climate change” and “global warming” (Liu and Huang 2022), the contrastive study of the general debate statements made by the USA and China at the United Nations General Assembly from the perspective of ecological discourse analysis (Ma and He 2023), the lecture review of Arran Stibbe (Ma and Stibbe 2022), and the study review of ecolinguistics in 2021 (Zhang 2022).

Language & Ecology is the ecolinguistics journal of the International Ecolinguistics Association, edited by Amir Ghorbanpour, which publishes articles on the role of language in life-sustaining relationships between humans, other species, and the natural environment, as well as creative work that fosters ecological literacy.

In 2022, it published three types of content (articles, creative work, and book reviews). Three articles were a combination of corpus linguistics and ecolinguistics, discussing intra-continental parallels of new Englishes in climate change discourses (Angwah 2022), the English pronoun “they” and human exceptionalism (Brown 2022), and comparing the difference between activists and politicians in the climate change debate (Cunningham et al. 2022). Zeniakin (2022) conducted a case study of British online media to uncover the anthropocentric framework in contemporary media discourse, laying the groundwork for ecocentrism. Cuadrado-Fernandez (2022) presented a range of issues regarding the emancipation of indigenous poetry in Mexico using an ecopoetic approach. Ubanako and Acha (2022) investigated the deictic categories of ecocentrism in Cameroonian newspaper discourse, promoting nature conservation. Litvinovich (2022) described a concrete image of the universal concept of “water” in Belarus. Moene (2022) applied ecofeminist theory to the teaching of English as a foreign language in classrooms, highlighting the role of educators in sustainable learning and ecological conservation. Ambe (2022) emphasized the importance of ecological narratives and concluded that although they are missing from people’s linguistic expressions, they are very important in today’s society.

Text & Talk, a journal for interdisciplinary research in language, discourse, and communication studies, edited by Srikant Sarangi, published a Special Issue 4 with 10 editorials and full-length articles on “Environmental issues in the Anthropocene: Ecolinguistic perspectives across media and genres” in 2022 (Ponton and Sokół 2022). The specific content of the articles was as follows: assessing the prevalence and use of the Anthropocene concept (Zottola and de Majo 2022), the connection between the modernist industrial development and eco-friendly discourses (Ponton 2022), how particular discursive constructions relate to environment-oriented causes (Molek-Kozakowska and Szymańska-Czaplak 2022), the interdiscursive practices of lifestyle vloggers in implementing eco-activism (Sokół 2022), a diachronic analysis of “risk” and “resilience” in the global press (Bevitori and Johnson 2022), how to effectively communicate climate change information to the public and motivate them to intervene rationally (Penz 2022), changing the discourses on climate change by emphasizing social-ecological resilience (Plastina 2022), the beneficial discursive strategies embodied in the lectures of The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century. Finally, Goatly (2022b) reflected upon the articles of this Special Issue in the form of an epilogue.

In China, the Journal of Poyang Lake, edited by Yingfeng Hu, provided significant support for ecolinguistic studies. According to the official website of South China Agricultural University,^[4] the “Guowen Huang Album” (including five articles) was published in the first issue of 2022’s Ecological Scholarship to introduce the team of Huang’s contributions to the field of ecolinguistics in recent years. Guowen Huang described his ecological turn in the field of linguistics and his thoughts on ecolinguistic studies (Huang 2022). Chen conducted an interview with Huang that focused on highlighting the role of language in the harmonious coexistence of humans and nature (Chen and Huang 2022). The other three articles in the album were a summary of Huang’s ecolinguistic research dimensions (Zhou and Zhai 2022), a review of harmonious discourse analysis (Zhao 2022b), and a review of an ecolinguistics book (Wang and Chen 2022).

In addition to the aforementioned journals, Language Sciences, edited by Sune Vork Steffensen, published a large number of articles on ecolinguistics. One of the articles in this journal within the academy offered great insight into the study of ecological discourse analysis, namely from the “analysis of ecological discourse” to the “ecological analysis of discourse” (Alexander and Stibbe 2014). In 2022, this journal published an ecolinguistics article that aimed to contribute to “the construction of an ecologically valid framework for the emergence of symbolic communication in development” (Raczaszek-Leonardi et al. 2022: 1).