Volume 11, Issue 1

This article presents a comprehensive and detailed survey of ecolinguistics, defined as an enterprise oriented to how language plays a role in the interactions between human beings, other species, and the natural environment. Since the early 1990s, ecolinguistics has been driven by a concern for life on Earth and as such it comprises the linguistic study of the current ecological crisis. Through a detailed close reading of the literature, in combination with the bibliometric tool of VOSviewer, it surveys eleven subfields of contemporary ecolinguistics. The eleven surveyed subfields of ecolinguistics are: discourse-oriented ecolinguistics, corpus-assisted ecolinguistics, ecostylistics, narratological ecolinguistics, identity-oriented ecolinguistics, ethno-lexical ecolinguistics, ecological discourse analysis, harmonious discourse analysis, cognitive ecolinguistics, educational ecolinguistics, and decolonial/transdisciplinary ecolinguistics. In the conclusion, the article discusses two challenges that face contemporary ecolinguistics: the repetition of certain tropes and narratives about the field, even in the absence of empirical evidence, and the lack of internal debate and critique.

Ecological discourse analysis (EDA) has sparked growing attention in ecolinguistics. To reveal the status and trend of EDA (2014–2023), this research conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) on this topic, employing the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement as the established standard. After analysis, the SLR revealed that the number of EDA increased significantly between 2014 and 2023. Notably, Chinese scholars demonstrated the greatest focus on this topic. While EDA was widespread across various countries, international collaboration still needs to be enhanced. Meanwhile, some scholars tended to conduct EDA by adopting multiple research approaches. This SLR also unveiled the latest focuses on EDA, such as the language and its relationship with ecosophy, the ecological influence of discourses, the noteworthy topics of climate change and children’s literature, and the gap of the study on video discourse. This enables the employment of multimodal discourse research and interdisciplinary approaches for EDA to be the future trend. Since this SLR gives a comprehensive description of the trajectory of EDA, it can offer a meaningful reference for the studies relating to EDA in the linguistics domain.

Astronomy is the most important subject treated in the Philosophical Transactions and the Mémoires de l’Académie Royal in 1715. Articles by Halley and Maraldi have been selected for analysis. The process type profiles of the two articles are very similar. The object of study is the most important type of theme in both, but the proportion of themes of this type in Maraldi’s text is much greater than that in Halley’s. Surprisingly, temporal themes play a significant role in Halley’s text. Also surprising is the fact that, in Halley’s text, adjunct themes are more frequent than subject themes. Nominalized processes tend to be material rather than mental, but the difference is greater in Halley’s text than in Maraldi’s. First person pronoun subjects tend to occur with mental process verbs, but whereas in Halley’s text material processes also play a part, there are hardly any in Maraldi’s text. These linguistic differences between the two texts can be explained in terms of their differing stances, that of Halley being Baconian and hence empirical, that of Maraldi being Cartesian and hence deductive.

Choices of what/how to say in social interaction are inherently intentional because interlocutors may not mean what they say, and they may pretend to give priority to others’ benefits or simply claim or deny in order to (dis)benefit certain participants. Thus, a significant question is on what basis humans choose what to say in order to power and/or (dis)agree or to be (un)cooperative, (im)polite and/or (ir)relevant. Since no intention is benefit-free, it can be assumed that benefit (physical, metaphysical or combinational) weighing on whom to (dis)benefit determines what to say. This principle is the pivot to the reconstruction of connections of intention expression and interpretation in language interaction. Nine basic categories of benefit weighing can be approached for the meaning of specific language choices. Presidential debates and saint dialogues which are salient and family talk which is subtle in benefit weighing are good examples to illustrate this principle. The best result of communication may be achieved when interlocutors disregard their own benefits and speak for the group, the community, or human beings in general. Overall, benefit weighing may serve as the anchor for tackling topics and themes in pragmatics.

This paper aims to discuss the methodological considerations in language description with Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen. It is a dialogic reflection on effective procedures and approaches that have been deployed by the interviewer and interviewee in their practice in language description. The discussion draws on the architecture of language outlined in systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to provide guidelines on ensuring comprehensiveness and reliability in language description. Some of the topics examined include the goals of language description in SFL, the use of theory as a guiding grid in language description, the effective way of structuring a grammar, common mistakes in language description and the role of register in sampling texts for language description. This paper provides insights for both novice and expert grammarians in the pedagogy of descriptive linguistics.

This article examines the different aspects of projection by focusing on the processes construing this area of the lexicogrammar. It also explores how Arabic construes this dimension of the lexicogrammar across the rank scale and beyond. Within the Hallidayan Systemic Functional paradigm, there are three variables that differentiate between any type of projection and this article investigates all three of them. It more precisely explores the three different projection systems which consist of (i) the level of projection which is about the distinction between mental and verbal projection. (ii) The mode of projection which is about tactic interdependency relations and whether what is projected is a quote (paratactic) or a report (hypotactic) and (iii) the speech function of projection which is where projection interacts with the system of mood and the projection of propositions and proposals. The last section studies the manifestation of projection patterns in a wide variety of lexico-grammatical environments. The findings will show how this pervasiveness substantiates the interpretation of projection as a fractal motif.

Although the notion of finiteness has been much debated from different theoretical perspectives, little is known beyond Indo-European languages. The present study examines finiteness in the Lobr dialect of Dagaare (Niger-Congo: Mabia) from a systemic functional typological point of view. The study contributes to debates on whether finiteness is a discrete system or a cline. The study first distinguishes between semantic and grammatical finiteness. The analysis then show that Dagaare has a grammaticalised binary system of finiteness in the verbal group, encoded by four kinds of finiteness markers: (i) tense-mood-polarity, (ii) modality, (iii) habitual tense, and (iv) remoteness particles. Also, the Dagaare verbal group embodies disassociated systems of tense , comprising futurity, habituality, and remoteness and choices from each of these systems result in multiple Finite elements in the verbal group. On the other hand, clausal finiteness in Dagaare is a semantic cline that depends on the system of freedom . Specifically, a clause is finite or less finite depending on whether it combines a finite verbal group with clause final negotiation or information focus. The article provides finer criteria for distinguishing between semantic and grammatical finiteness that can be used for the description and typology of finiteness across languages.

Reviewing the work of other scholars is a critical part of being an academic. However, the practise of writing reviews is rarely made explicit nor taught. In order to make this practice visible in our own field of linguistics, this paper describes the structure and key language features of a small selection of “accept with revision” peer reviews. Unlike previous studies of peer reviews, the analysis draws on the system of appraisal to identify the key evaluative meanings that have enabled the mapping of the generic structure of these peer reviews. The analysis shows they comprise two stages: Overview and Recommendation for revisions, with each stage comprising a number of phases. The analysis also shows how in evaluative genres such as peer review texts, preserving the face of authors and engaging in many implicit evaluative resources is a key feature.