Folia Linguistica 2018; 52(2): 549–552
Book Review Alwin F. Fill & Hermine Penz (eds.). The Routledge handbook of Ecolinguistics. New York: Routledge, 2018, pp. 458. ISBN 9781138920088. Reviewed by Ke Zhang, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China, E-mail:
[email protected] https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2018-0018
As a rigorous approach, ecolinguistics is well situated to reveal, resist, and intervene in the ideologies, discourses, and social practices (Lamb 2017: 276). The past four decades since the 1970s, thanks to the efforts made by scholars, have witnessed its birth and development. Particularly noteworthy is Fill and Penz’s The Routledge handbook of Ecolinguistics reviewed here, which is, no doubt, the latest contribution to this expanding field of scholarship. This edition also serves as a timely complement to the previously published The Ecolinguistics reader (Fill and Mühlhäusler 2001), Language of environment, Environment of language (Mühlhäusler 2003), Ecolinguistics (Stibbe 2015), which would illuminate readers in the ecolinguistic area to a larger extent. Structurally, aside from a brief introduction and a glossary of index, this collection is composed of 29 chapters arranged in four parts. In the opening introductory chapter, Fill first discusses the history of ecology; then goes into detail about ecolinguistics, particularly about its two complementary strands: the Haugenian and the Hallidayan approaches. Last in this chapter is a brief interpretation on the philosophical approach to ecolinguistic studies. Part I, “Language in their social and individual environment”, consists of two sections. Section A (Chapters 1 to 6) zooms in on language diversity and biological diversity, with due reference to minority languages, such as Catalan, Irish and Welsh. More specifically, it illustrates such topics as language endangerment, language economy, language evolution, together with language planning, from theoretically and methodologically perspectives. For instance, in Chapter 2, Bastardas-Boada justifies and explains in detail language contact and linguistic ecology by taking the interplays and interrelations between minority and major languages into consideration. The content that follows is concerned with issues like language shift, language preservation, language recovery, as well as language development in minorized communities. Similarly, with attention on some European languages, Fill’s Chapter 4 approaches language economy, language diversity and language endangerment. To address the main question of in what way minority languages are an
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economic advantage or disadvantage to countries and to individual speakers, Fill forcefully highlights not only three contexts in relation to language use, including the individual level, the community level, and state as well as global level, but also three economic parameters: costs, benefits and discrimination effects. Next, with foci on language contact, Section B touches upon bilingualism/multilingualism (chapter 7), language imperialism (Chapter 8), pidgins/ creoles (Chapter 9) and ecosystem (Chapter 10), by referring to not only individual languages but also social communities or countries. Contrary to the preceding part concerned with the Haugenian approach, the Hallidayan approach to ecolinguistics is the focus of Part II, titled “The role of language concerning the environment”. Central to this longest part is the ecologically-oriented discursive analysis of multiple texts, including visual discourse (Chapters 12 and 17), environmental discourse (Chapter 13), political discourse (Chapter 18) and media discourse (Chapter 19), to name a few. Among them, Stibbe’s Chapter 11 is noteworthy as it rethinks human ecological relationships in a positive way. In his article, Stibbe also explicitates the relationship between positive discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis. For an in-depth understanding, readers are referred to Stibbe’s (2014) paper “An ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse analysis”. Part III, “Philosophical and transdisciplinary ecolinguistics” (Chapters 24 to 28), adds an interesting twist to ecolinguistics: ethics (Chapter 24), education (Chapter 25), science (Chapter 27), as well as religion (Chapter 28). Taken together, these five chapters pave ways for and set examples to further exploration on relations between language and ecology on the one hand, and between language and the world on the other, in both cases from interdisciplinary perspectives. Part IV, “New orientations and future directions in ecolinguistics”, contains a closing chapter, by Fill and Penz. To start with, they review what has been discussed in the previous parts. Subsequent is a brief summary about the future of ecolinguistics in threefold, which resonates with Steffensen and Fill (2014) earlier article that outlines future horizons for ecolinguistics. Fill and Penz’s future illuminating insights into ecolinguistics are quoted as follows: (1) the level of language diversity and all related topics, including minority languages, language endangerment and language death (2) the level of language, discourse and the environment, and the role of language and discourse in describing, creating, aggravating, but more importantly helping to solve environmental problems (3) Ecolinguistics as a transdisciplinary science (or a dialectical philosophy) which transcends traditional linguistics and creates an awareness of the interdependency of all things and ideas.
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The publication of The Routledge handbook of Ecolinguistics is, beyond doubt, the long-waited promise of a new day in the field. Compared with previous works in relation to ecolinguistics, the prominent strengths which make the volume most welcome and highly recommendable lie in four areas. The primary strength of the handbook is the gathering of contributions by leading scholars from broader fields related to language-&-ecology, for example, Fill, Goatly, Mühlhäusler, Steffensen and Stibbe. Secondly, this book breaks important and insightful new ground in its coverage of future horizons concerning ecolinguistics. That is to say, it not only illustrates the state of the art from a global perspective, but also opens further research avenues for the next few decades. The third key merit of the edition lies in its reference to diverse perspectives on ecolinguistics. Simply speaking, what is novel is that the volume centres not only on the most notable Haugenian and Hallidayan approaches, but also on the philosophical level. Methodologically, the collection finally demonstrates strength by drawing upon a great variety of research methods, which include contrastive analysis, multimodal analysis, statistics, corpus linguistics and critical analysis. In addition, the collection is also impressive in its recurring discussion of ecolinguistics, especially its definition. Albeit from different perspectives, most of the contributors provide a definition for it, which may lead the reader to consider further interfaces between language and ecology, and the like. However, dare I say, there is still room for improvement. In the first place, while (specifically Chinese) readers will be pleased to find references to Chinese philosophy, such as Confucianism and Taoism (Chapter 29), they would have liked to have seen more essays by Chinese ecological scholars – Professor Wei He’s (Beijing Foreign Studies University) team has been devoted to the proposal of a framework for ecological discourse analysis, notably on the basis of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Additionally, an inclusion of complex interplays and interactions between ecology and other disciplines, such as literature, cognition, translation and international relations, would have provided a more holistic picture of this burgeoning field. As Steffensen and Fill (2014: 21) note, the main problem in ecolinguistics has not been internal disagreement or struggles for power but, rather, the lack of genuine interaction between its various parts. And yet, it goes without saying that nobody can contend that only theories derived from linguistics can apply to ecolinguistics. Insomuch, despite its weak points, this volume succeeds above all in examining ecolinguistics with great attention not only to the social environment of language but also to the natural environment of language, which particularly appeals to students and researchers of ecolinguistics. Indeed, it also stands out
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as a reliable and helpful reference work for those engaged in (ecological) discourse analysis and sociolinguistic research alike.
References Fill, Alwin & Peter Mühlhäusler (eds.). 2001. The ecolinguistics reader: Language, ecology and environment. London: Continuum. Lamb, Gavin. 2017. Book note of Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology, and the stories we live by. Language in Society 46. 276–277. Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2003. Language of environment, environment of language: A course in ecolinguistics. London: Battlebridge. Steffensen, Sune Vork & Alwin Fill. 2014. Ecolinguistics: The state of the art and future horizons. Language Sciences 41. 6–25. Stibbe, Arran. 2014. An ecolinguistic approach to critical discourse studies. Critical Discourse Studies 11. 117–128. Stibbe, Arran. 2015. Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology, and the stories we live by. New York: Routledge.
Note: When revising this review, we heard the heart-breaking news that M.A.K. Halliday had passed away peacefully in Sydney. This is definitely a great loss to the whole linguistic community, particularly to the field of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Just as Dr Annabelle Lukin mentioned in her e-mail that “A mighty tree has fallen in the forest”. May he rest in peace.
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