The whole volume is available HERE
The present volume of New Pathways in Linguistics introduces the ecolinguistic paradigm into the considerations over language and communication. The ecological stance in the language studies is not novel; however, the recent years have brought a resurrection and, probably, new insights into the ecological considerations over the language processes. It seems that contemporary linguistics, in its most progressive stream, has reached the point when the interdisciplinary and multilayer analyses have to be organized along the ecological, holistic paradigm.
It has to be noted that the nonlinear, dynamic and emergent language processes pose a difficulty for those scholars who seek structural order and formalism. However, as Peter Mühlhäusler (2003) notices, linguists have to be careful when trying to encapsulate multidimensional and complex phenomena by means of two-dimensional, static models. Natural language, while having a dual design, which is both mental and physical by nature, is essentially a dynamic, multilayer and momentary process, fed by and co-existing with other life processes within the macroscale of the global ecosystem, as well as within the microscale of the individual communicator's biological-mental constitution.
The present volume is a hallmark of a growing scientific interest and passion among Polish academics to explore 'the life of language'. The group of scholars from Department of Ecocommunication, Adam Mickiewicz University, pioneers of the current ecological perspective in Polish linguistic research, together with linguists from newly-born Ecolinguistic Studies Program in Department of English Philology, University of Warmia and Mazury, propose in their scholarly work this re-introduction and re-vision of ecological views within modern language studies. The task sometimes becomes quite an audacious exploration of not only linguistic phenomena, but the study of humans being and acting in the world.
Stanisław Puppel
Marta Bogusławska-Tafelska
Olsztyn, November 2010