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From the Analysis of Ecological discourse to the Ecological Analysis of discourse
Richard Alexander and Arran Stibbe
Abstract
This article consists of a theoretical consideration of ecolinguistics, starting off with aworking definition and then using this to look at two principle trends within the emerging
discipline. The two trends considered are ‘the analysis of ecological discourse’ and themetaphorical ‘language ecology’. The conclusion is that ecolinguistics is more than just theanalysis of texts which happen to be explicitly about the environment, and is more than just a
metaphorical way of thinking about language contact. Instead, ecolinguistics is, primarily, the‘ecological analysis of discourse’.
Keywords: ecolinguistics, language ecology, discourse analysis
1 Introduction
This article describes and explores Ecological Discourse Analysis as a central approach in thediscipline of ecolinguistics, and contrasts it with ‘the analysis of ecological discourse’ and‘language ecology’. The starting point is a definition of ecolinguistics, something which is
not without its difficulties since there is no generally accepted definition and any definition isbound to either be so vague that it is meaningless (e.g., the study of language in an ecologicalcontext) or to exclude approaches which someone, somewhere considers to be ecolinguistics.
Still, a definition is necessary even just for the span of this article, in order to put a caseforward for the central importance of ecological discourse analysis.
Clearly ecolinguistics combines ecology and linguistics, two disciplines which at first
appear to be unconnected. The disconnection occurs only if ecology, which is the study of therelationship of organisms with each other and the physical environment, fails to consider
human beings as organisms. An inclusive view would be that ecology consists of therelationships of humans with other humans, other organisms, and the physical environment.
Language, then, is relevant to the extent that it plays a role in how humans relate to eachother, to other organisms and to the environment. That does not mean that any study of therole of language in setting up relationships is ecolinguistics – there is another crucial aspectof ecology that needs to be present. The relationships that ecologists study are not justinconsequential ways that organisms interact with each other and their environment, but
specifically those that sustain life. In the same way that medical science is normatively
orientated towards the prevention of disease and sustaining the life of individual people, thediscipline of ecology is normatively orientated towards not just studying but also preserving
the ecosystems that life depends on. This is very much the spirit in which much ecolinguistics
is carried out, and there is no reason why a normative orientation towards protecting,preserving and enhancing the systems that support life should make it any less scientific or
evidence based than medical science.
If we take the definition of linguistics as simply ‘the study of language’ for now, we
end up with the following definition for ecolinguistics:
Ecolinguistics is the study of the impact of language on the life-sustaining relationships
among humans, other organisms and the physical environment. It is normatively orientatedtowards preserving relationships which sustain life.
In other words, ecolinguistics is concerned with how language is involved in forming,
maintaining, influencing or destroying relationships between humans, other life forms and the1environment. The idea of ‘humans’ is rather vague – what is meant is certainly not humans en
masse, since it would be impossible to generalize. It is not specific individuals, since on theirown few people have a heavy influence on general human behaviour. Instead, the mostappropriate level appears to be groups of humans as they are organised into cultures,
societies, professions, industries and institutions. Groups of humans coordinate their practices
and world-views using discourses – particular ways of talking about, writing about,representing, and, ultimately, constructing, reality. Discourses consist of clusters of linguistic(and other semiotic) features used by groups in speaking about the world, which cometogether to produce specific models of reality. These models or shaping devices enablehumans to construct relationships with the real world and so it is these models, and thecluster of linguistic features which make them, that are a primary concern of ecolinguistics.
The article does not aim to give a comprehensive description of the ‘ecologicalanalysis of discourse’, but rather to explain what it consists of through contrasting it with two
different approaches: ‘the analysis of ecological discourse’ and ‘language ecology’.
2 Some preliminary remarks on language and the world
We begin with some general observations. Are our perceptions influenced by language? It is
practically a truism that they both are and are not. J. R. Firth’s (1957: 24) position can helpus:
Using language is one of the forms of human life, and speech is immersed in theimmediacy of social intercourse. The human body is that region of the world which is theprimary field of human experience but it is continuous with the rest of the world. We arein the world and the world is in us. Voice produced sound has its origins in the deep
experience of organic existence. In terms of living, language activity is meaningful.
Notice how Firth focuses on human oneness with the world – an anthropologically monist
perspective which is hence profoundly ecological. The ‘deep experience of organic existence’has given rise to human language and hence the key phrase ‘[i]n terms of living, language
activity is meaningful’ has clear material and social roots. Firth’s pupil, Halliday, has focused
holistically on the ‘meaningfulness’ of the material and social system that is language. He
notes that semantic systems (1978: 198) ‘are significant for the ways their speakers interact
with one another.’ Yet they do not ‘determine the ways in which the members of thecommunity perceive the world around them.’ Halliday pinpoints how they ‘determine what
the members of the community attend to’ (1978: 198). (Halliday’s emphasis.)
So it is the case that what people around us ‘attend to’ is linguistically shaped.
Recurrent wordings or expressions have a habitualizing effect on society, as too do particular
discourse patterns. These serve to mould and anchor the everyday culture of the speechcommunity which uses them. But such is human history that people can of course thinkoutside the box, as Halliday notes:
We are not the prisoners of cultural semiotic; we can all learn to move outside it. But thisrequires a positive act of semiotic reconstruction. We are socialized within it, and ourmeaning potential is derived from it (1978: 140).
In his later work (2007: 13) Halliday refers to ‘semodiversity’ or diversity of meanings,
raising the complex issue of how the human race as a whole actually benefits from suchdiversity. Against this background we now address the issue of how language influences
humans’ attention with regard to ecological issues.
We will be aiming to demonstrate that the discourse employed in specific contexts
and situations which deal with ecological issues constructs either explicitly, or more likely

2implicitly, standpoints on a problem. What is deeply embedded or even hidden by certain
linguistic choices is what a critical analysis of ecological texts sets out to unearth.
3 Analysis of ecological discourse
We turn now to what we can call the analysis of ecological discourse or the ways humans use
language to talk about ecology. We consider what has been achieved in research and practicaland impact terms.
Over the past three decades a considerable body of both academic research work andactivist, political and journalistic literature has accumulated. Copious research findings
analyzing the discourse surrounding a wide range of ecological issues and activities havebeen accumulated. Numerous methods have been applied to show how aspects of the ecology
and environment have been articulated and construed in the media and advertizing fields. We
will make no attempt to survey this vast field. Instead we briefly pick out some representative
findings to illustrate some of the main themes and approaches involved.
We can start off with Fill and Mühlhäusler (2001). This is collection of significant
contributions to the now established field of ecolinguistics. There is a section with many
articles explicitly analyzing ecological discourse. Such research brings out the involvement of
the language system in constructing or, at the least, shaping a viewpoint on, ecological issues.
Following Gerbig (1993) and Schleppegrell (1996) one can look at features rendering
abstraction and agency or lack of it. Nominalization is a feature which allows the agent to beomitted; for example, ‘extinctions of the rainforest’ leaves unstated who is responsible for theextinction.
Many studies have concentrated on lexical choices and their implications. For
instance, Goatly (2000: 278) notes that ‘[i]f we use the word environment, presumably wesuggest that humans are central and more important than nature.’ Heuberger (2007 and 2008)
provides an overview of how this anthropocentric and speciesist perspective is manifested in
English and German. Distancing techniques, euphemisms and the utility principle arereflected in talk about animals. Over 35 years ago Alexander (1973: 19) reviewed primate
studies and quoted Comfort (1966: 49-50), who made the point that especially in primatology
the practice of treating animals as if they were ‘quaint little men’ has ‘made us miss muchwhich is interesting in their behaviour, precisely at the point where it is unlike ours.’ This
paternalistic and arrogant attitude towards animals, arguably an unconscious cover-up for our‘fear’ of them, was dissected by the English critic John Berger (1971).
Goatly (2002) employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to investigate therepresentation of nature on the BBC World Service radio. Goatly shows how CDA has
espoused a form of Whorfian relativity. It is not through the structure of language which thismodified Whorfian theory affects thinking or expresses ideological positions. Instead,‘choices from within the resources of a single language do the same’ (2002: 3). He also
unearthed how grammatical choices underlie the phenomenon of speciesism mentioned
above, noting that (2002: 12) ‘[s]harks, like wolves have a bad press.’ Goatly holds that it ishuman connections and news values that feeds into the way nature is ‘constructed’ by the
BBC (2002: 21). There are alternative ways to represent nature, however, which lack suchgeneric and ideological imperatives.
Schultz (1992) also takes issue with words and phrases privileging exploitation (ofnature, of women, of people in general). She argues that people are unable to protect theenvironment if this continues. She provides options to exploitative terms and phrases: insteadof ‘controlled burning’ she suggests ‘authorized burning’, ‘to log forest’ instead of ‘to harvest
forest’ and ‘old or ancient tree’ instead of ‘over mature tree’.
The methods used to analyze ecological or environmental discourse are worthy of3

mention. Deconstructing language employing the tools of linguistic analysis demonstrates theideological import of language structures. Halliday’s (1978) ‘social semiotic’ contextualized
the social ecology of language use and inspired in part what has been called ‘Orwellian
linguistics’, whose importance Beaugrande (2006: 41) rightly, if baroquely, identifies as the‘immediate fons et origo of critical discourse analysis’. This ‘critical linguistics’ as
expounded by Fowler et al. (1979) – a form of ‘socially useful linguistics’ – has sincematured into the widespread use of critical discourse analysis (CDA) methods.
Stibbe and Zunino (2008) employ CDA to discuss the multiplicity of meanings of‘biodiversity’. Aspects uncovered include the presuppositions certain collocates andmetaphor usage hint at. The authors show how metaphor analysis serves ‘to unpack some of
the ideology and consequences behind various discursive constructions of biodiversity thatare used in different spheres’ (2008: 166). After enumerating a range of metaphors, which‘with their ready-made structures, provide a very efficient form for thinking about andcommunicating models’, they disclose the troubling entailments of certain metaphors. For
example, to speak about the ‘spaceship earth’ and biodiversity as a ‘life support system’ is tofocus on mechanical systems involving static functional parts (2008: 77). Yet ecosystems are
dynamic and living entities.
One method combines CDA with corpus linguistic techniques (Alexander 2009).
Such quantitative data yielded by a corpus can underpin results from a CDA approach, thus
showing empirically how specific linguistic features serve to uphold discourse processes,
such as evaluation and argumentative strategies and more generally the ideological stances
adopted by speakers or writers. Core chapters in Alexander (2009) interrogate how oilcompanies and agribusiness utilize language to argue for and propagate selected positions inrelation to the current ecological crisis. The book sets out to unpick lexical and discourse
patterning and unearths some disturbing truths along the way.
Stamou and Paraskevopoulos (2008) employ a CDA theoretical framework to throw
light on ecotourism activities. By coupling content analysis and an investigation of linguisticfeatures of visitors’ books at a Greek nature reserve the authors have tapped into the way
people construct protection acts and concern for environmental issues. The results are
sobering indeed. The authors ascertained that knowledge of the environment was lacking andthe visitors hardly feel any responsibility for the places they are able to visit. The texts
analyzed from two study periods (1996-7 and then 2005) suggest a slight increase inenvironmental awareness. Small comfort perhaps! They state (2008: 36): ‘By concealing its
consumerist essence, ecotourism functions ideologically for ecotourists themselves.’
Mühlhäusler (2000) provides a critical take on the ideological work engaged in byecotourism operators on Fraser Island, Queensland. After giving examples from brochures
and participation observation, he notes (op.cit.: 249): ‘The expressions discovery andexploration encountered throughout the ecotourism texts, have been reduced to mean “being
taken around on a guided tour to some of the scenic spots that thousands of other tourists
have already seen”.’His shattering summary says it all (op.cit.: 249): ‘What is left are
packaged tours, packaged images and ecotourism talk with its bleached meanings.’ And also
(op.cit: 250): ‘What this paper has tried to show is that green discourse, in the domain of
ecotourism, has become a substitute for green practice.’
Several linguists (such as Harré et al. 1999 and Mühlhäusler 2003a) have analyzed thelanguage companies use to talk about the environment in order to distract attention fromenvironmental problems. A recurrent theme considered by activists, and not just critical
discourse analysts, is that of ‘greenwash’ in corporate discourse and advertising (for an early
exposé see Greer and Bruno 1996 and also Howlett and Raglon 1992). Poole (2006: 42-49)
has documented how ‘climate change’ came to replace ‘global warming’, which sounds morethreatening. The ‘career’ of the phrase ‘climate change’ shows how controversial terms can

4be integrated by politicians and the media, or practically sidelined. Carvalho (2005) analyzed
the British quality press for the period 1985-2000. She demonstrates how ‘political
governance of climate change’ is ‘constructed in and by the media’, and underlines how
political responsibility and commitment are ‘represented and constituted’. Carvalho asked:‘Have the media validated or challenged policy choices with impact on climate change?’ Amajor finding of this study is that ‘the government’s discourse has had a strong and almost
constant effect of structuration of [sic] the press’s discourse’ (op.cit.:19). Moreover ‘theideological pillar of neo-liberalism has been left unshaken’ (op.cit.: 20). As elsewhere, wefind the preference for particular words and metaphors which help to conceal certain aspectsof reality and direct attention at others.
Similarly, using case and critical discourse-based textual studies, Alexander (2008)
reveals how easy it is for the anti-green movement and its ‘friends’ to create and control the
media discourse agenda. The paper highlights some of the forces and agents who areconsciously preventing or diluting environmentalist and ecological positions.
4 Language ecology
In this section we consider an approach which could be labelled ‘language ecology’, after
Haugen (1972), which uses the term ‘ecology’ metaphorically, and concerns the relationshipsof languages to other languages and the places the languages are spoken in. Within thismetaphor, languages are treated as species, which have contact with each other, can displaceeach other, and can become endangered or extinct. The normative orientation is towards
protecting and enhancing the status of minority or endangered languages. This is in contrast
with ecolinguistics, as defined above, where ecology is taken literally as the life-sustaining
relationships between humans, other organisms and the physical environment. However, thetwo approaches are not entirely distinct, and this section discusses the ways that insights from‘language ecology’ have been used within ecolinguistics.
‘Sustaining Language’ is the title of a collection of essays in applied ecolinguistics(Fill and Penz 2007). The calculated, ambivalent wordplay contains within it the two
approaches. On the one hand there is the task of ‘sustaining languages’, i.e., preserving
linguistic diversity, and on the other hand there is language which encourages people tobehave in ways which preserve the physical ecosystems that support life, ‘language which islife sustaining.’ This recalls a distinction made by Halliday (2007: 14) between ‘institutional
ecolinguistics, the relation between a language and those who speak it (and also, in this case,those who may be speaking it no longer)’, and ‘what we might call systemic ecolinguistics’,
which concerns the impact of language on human decision making and consequently on theecologically significant actions that humans take. Halliday refers to his (1990) AILA keynote
speech, as being about the latter, ‘systemic ecolinguistics’. In this speech, Halliday criticises
the linguistic construction of growthism. He asks: how do our ways of meaning affect the
impact humans have on the environment?
Fill and Penz’s (2007) collection contains essays both about the influence of specificforms of language on (real) ecosystems, and on ‘language ecology’, which focuses on thepreservation of linguistic diversity. However, the two groups of essays are not pursuingunrelated goals. Those writing on ‘language ecology’ claim that there is a relationshipbetween linguistic diversity and biological diversity. Diversity is therefore the bracket linking
Halliday’s two dimensions. On the consequences of languages dying out, Halliday says
(2007: 13) ‘it is tempting to argue from the biological to the linguistic sphere, and to say, justas diversity of species is necessary to environmental, ecological well-being, so diversity oflanguages is necessary to cultural, eco-social well-being. But does the analogy hold?’ Hecautiously considers this to be a moot point.

5And yet for Mühlhäusler, ‘language is interconnected with the world – it bothconstructs and is constructed by it’ (2003b: 68). Language is interlinked with the world in‘numerous complex ways’. He sets out his unabashed ecological stall (op.cit.: 68): ‘I take theecological view that many interrelationships and inter-dependencies in any ecology aremutually beneficial and that some are exploitative and parasitical. In a healthy balanced
ecology about 90% of the interrelationships are mutually beneficial.’ He notes: ‘Another
ecological hypothesis is that diversity is needed for the long-term sustainability of any
ecology.’ Mühlhäusler’s arguments against the growthism of the English language can beseen as parallel to Halliday’s (1990) arguments against economic growthism (see Alexander
2003).
Mühlhäusler has demonstrated the dramatic consequences of what happens when
English replaces other languages. He wrote (2003b: 78) that:
Crystal’s view (1997: 116) that ‘English is a language which has repeatedly found itself
in the right place at the right time’ needs to be queried. For many Pacific Islands,
including Pitcairn, it was not the right place.
When local languages are displaced by dominant world languages such as English what islost are the discourses which encode everything people have learned about living sustainably
in the local environment. These are replaced by discourses such as those of economic growth,
consumerism and neoliberalism that are at the core of an unsustainable society. The prospectof English moving from a foreign language to a second language to the sole language of a
growing number of communities is clearly, then, ideological. In the social world, use of thedominant neo-liberal discourse that holds that the spread of English is a ‘natural’ processneeds questioning. Mühlhäusler ([1994] 2001: 164) writes that:
I would suggest that Westerners are trapped within the limitations imposed on them by
their languages and this is one of the principal reasons for the lack of genuine progress inthe environmental sciences. The example of environmental discourse illuminates thedangers of monolingualism and monoculturalism and shows how many different
interpretations – and many languages – are necessary to solve the problems facing theworld.
Pennycook (1999) adopts a different view ‘Taken alone, however, the language ecology
metaphor is limited since it relies so heavily on a notion of what is ‘natural’ and therefore onwhat may at times appear a conservative notion of preservation...conservation may easily
slide into conservatism.’ The main criticism of the ‘language ecology’ metaphor, however, isthat while the general mapping of endangered species to endangered languages appears
logical enough, there is no reason to expect languages to interact with each other and thephysical environment in ways which parallel the way that organisms do, since the languages
are not subject to the same laws of thermodynamics, energy flows and geochemical cycles as
species are. As Pennycook (2004: 213) points out:
Although the notion of language ecology has been both popular and productive as a way ofunderstanding language and environment, drawing our attention to the ways in which
languages are embedded in social, cultural, economic and physical ecologies, and operate
in complex relations with each other, a critical exploration of the notion of language
ecology points to the need to be very wary of the political consequences of biomorphic
metaphors: the enumeration, objectification and biologisation of languages render themnatural objects rather than cultural artefacts; linguistic diversity may be crucial to humans,
but language diversity may not be its most important measure; and languages do not adapt
to the world: they are part of human endeavours to create new worlds.

6

Overall, we can say that ‘language ecology’ is a metaphor which, like all metaphors, has uses
and limitations. The danger of the metaphor is that any kind of research which happens to
consider the relationships between languages and the places they are spoken in is labelled‘ecolinguistics’ because of the metaphor rather than any relationship to actual ecology. Only
when research explores the implications of language contact or linguistic diversity for humanbehaviour and the consequent impact on real, physical ecosystems does it become‘ecolinguistics’. In our opinion it would be quite possible to explore the implications oflanguage contact on the ecosystems which support life without using the word ‘ecology’ torefer to the interaction of languages with each other. It would be possible to explore, forexample, how local sustainable discourses are displaced by dominant global discourses ofconsumerism and neoliberalism through the global spread of English without the term‘language ecology’, as in fact, Mühlhäusler (2001) quoted above does.
5 Ecological analysis of discourse
The article started by claiming that the primary focus of ecolinguistics is on discourses whichhave an impact on the way that humans interact with each other, other species and theenvironment. Among those discourses are those of environmentalism, ecology, and biologicalconservation, but it would be a mistake to think that these are the only discourses which havean impact on how humans treat the systems that support life, or even that these are theprimary ones. Articles in the online journal Language and Ecology(www.ecoling.net/journal.html) have, for example, explored the discourses of men’s healthmagazines, consumer electronics magazines, advertising, neoclassical economics, financial
institutions, and animal product industries. To focus on just one of these – Stibbe (2003)
shows how linguistic distancing techniques used in the pork industry represent pigs as
machines and objects, a representation which provides the foundation of a form of intensive
farming that is both inhumane and environmentally damaging. Texts such as animal industry
handbooks, lifestyle magazines, and economics textbooks are not part of explicitly‘environmental’ or ‘ecological’ discourses, but all have a potential impact on humanbehaviour. In fact, it is specifically because dominant discourses such as those of economic
growth or animal product industries fail to mention environmental or ecologicalconsiderations that they are so potentially damaging to those systems.
Halliday (1990: 25) started off the discipline of ecolinguistics not by analysing thelanguage of the environmental movement but instead by investigating aspects of grammar
which he claims ‘conspire...to construe reality in a certain way...that is no longer good for ourhealth as a species.’ The first aspect he describes is that mass nouns like soil and water areunbounded and do not therefore reflect the limited supply of such essential resources; thesecond is that antonymic pairs have a positive (unmarked) pole which means that ‘bigger’ isaligned with ‘better’; the third is that humans tend to be given more agency in grammar thanother species; the fourth is that pronoun use and mental processes divide the world falsely
into conscious beings (humans and to some extent their pets) and non-conscious beings(other species). Chalwa (1991: 262) likewise claims that ‘the language habits of fragmenting
the mass, quantifying intangibles and imaginary nouns, and perceiving time in terms of past,present and future are factors in our inability to perceive the natural environment holistically’.
Halliday (1990) gives a pessimistic comment about the power of ecolinguistics toaddress sustainability issues, primarily because both his and Chalwa’s analyses focus on thelevel of the general grammar of languages. He writes ‘I do not think even the language
professionals of AILA can plan the inner layers of grammar’ (op.cit.: 27). To take one

7example, Halliday is concerned that as the unmarked pole of the pair growth/shrinkage, theword ‘growth’ is intrinsically positive. The idea that the economy must shrink, or that‘economic shrinkage is good’ is therefore unlikely to catch on. He considers terms such as‘negative shrinkage’ or ‘elephantisis’ (as alternatives for growth), and ‘zero growth’ or‘negative growth’ (as a goal), but rejects these unpromising alternatives (op.cit.: 25). Clearly,
in this case, ecolinguists cannot intervene on the level of grammar and change ‘shrink’ into
the unmarked, positive member of the pair.
Halliday’s analysis, however, is limited. A more realistic approach would be torecognise that the term ‘growth’ is part of an economic discourse which models or shapes
reality in a particular way, and look for whole alternative models/discourses which havegreater practical adequacy. The New Economics Foundation, for example, points out thatgrowth in GDP beyond a certain level does not correspond with increases in wellbeing, andso replaces the inadequate proxy, growth, with the end itself, wellbeing. This leads to a
discourse where the maximisation of wellbeing, rather than growth, is the goal and includes
terms such as wellbeing indicators, Gross National Happiness and Happy Planet Index.
So, rather than trying to alter the grammar of the English language by changing themarking of the term ‘growth’, it is far easier just to stop talking about growth, because it is
not a measure of anything important, and instead start talking about something likewellbeing. This has already occurred with the term ‘balance of trade deficit’, which used to
be used extensively in government circles and right across the media, but has been virtually
dropped because economists cannot agree whether it measures anything important or not. The
discourse surrounding economic growth could similarly be dropped and replaced with thediscourse of ‘wellbeing’. David Cameron, for instance, took up the discourse of wellbeing
early on in his leadership of the Conservative Party: ‘Wellbeing can’t be measured by moneyor traded in markets. It’s about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture, and,above all, the strength of our relationships’ (Cameron in Brown 2007).
There are two things that this discussion of Halliday illustrates. One is that theclustering of grammatical and semantic features within specific discourses is a more
promising level for ecolinguistics to focus on than general comments about the ‘grammar ofEnglish’. The second is that what is most important for ecolinguistics is the analysis of thepotential impact of particular discourses on human behaviour and hence on the ecosystems
that support life. This means analysing discourses, any discourses, within an ecologicalframework, rather than simply analysing discourses which happen to be about theenvironment. Halliday (1990: 23-4) gives some clues as to the ecological framework he uses
to analyse language:
We are using up the capital resources – not just the fossil fuels which we could (paceBoeing) do without, but the fresh water and agricultural soils which we can’t live without.
As expressed in this one sentence, the ecological framework is clearly limited, since itconsiders human survival but not human wellbeing, social justice, or the wellbeing of otherspecies. It also fails to consider the central importance of fossil fuels in global foodproduction. All ecological frameworks are, however, likely to contain simplifications andomissions, but what is important is the degree to which the authors make the ecologicalframework they are using explicit, so the reader knows what criteria discourses are being
judged against. Without being specific about the ecological framework it is possible for
ecolinguistics to appear to consist of scarcely more than ad hoc comments about texts whichhappen to be related to the environment.
Ecological frameworks, in this sense, consist of a set of philosophical backgroundassumptions which together form a structure which grounds the normative orientation. The

8

assumptions are about values, such whether life is valuable, whether both human life and thelife of other animals and plants is valuable, whether beings have a nature and thrive ifallowed to follow that nature, whether that thriving is valuable. The assumptions are also
about the conditions which allow valued outcomes to occur, such as the role of biodiversity
and the climate system in supporting life and allowing beings to flourish according to theirnature.
6 Conclusion
This article started off by giving the following definition of ecolinguistics:
Ecolinguistics is the study of the impact of language on the life-sustaining relationships
among humans, other organisms and the physical environment. It is normatively orientatedtowards preserving relationships which sustain life.
Given this definition, the scope of ecolinguistics is clearly far wider than the analysis of texts
which happen to be explicitly about environmental or ecological concerns. Instead the scopeis on all discourses which have the potential to encourage people to behave in ways which
damage or preserve ecological systems. The definition makes it clear that the term ‘eco’
refers to literal ecosystems made up of interacting organisms, geochemical cycles and theatmosphere rather than the metaphor of a ‘language ecology’ made up of interacting
languages in places. Research on ‘language ecology’ only becomes ecolinguistics when theimpact of language contact on human behaviour and hence on real ecosystems is considered.
It could be argued that all discourses have a potential impact on human behaviour,and that all human behaviour has a potential impact on the ecosystems that support life. So
does that make ecolinguistics simply ‘discourse analysis’? The answer to that is no, since tobe ecolinguistics in the definition given in this article, it is essential that discourses areanalysed within an ecological framework which considers the impact of the discourses on thesystems which support life, hence, ‘the ecological analysis of discourse’.

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