"Lingua receptiva": ekolingwistyczne ujęcie słowiańskich kontaktów międzyjęzykowych w przestrzeni pogranicza (przypadek polsko-czeski)

Lingua receptiva: An Ecolinguistic Approach to Slavic Inter-Language Contacts in a Borderland Area (a Polish-Czech Case)Ecolinguistics has dealt with inter-language contacts ever since its beginnings as an independent linguistic discipline in the 1970s. However, it has not gained much interest among Slavic studies scholars in Poland. The aim of this article is to present the ecolinguistic concept of research on Slavic inter-language contacts on the example of Polish and Czech using the notion lingua receptiva. The proposed concept of integrated research on language ecology in the Polish-Czech borderland covers three dimensions of the language ecosystem: natural, social and cognitive. Research on the natural ecology of the language revolves around its interrelationships with the surrounding natural environment and can relate to topography, fauna and flora, etc. This research considers the potential of the natural and the anthropogenic environment in relation to the language (and vice versa). In the sociological observation of the language ecology, attention is paid to social and cultural conditions shaping the relationships between communicating individuals and the nature of the communities that are constituted or maintained as a result of these contacts. Cognitive language ecology, in turn, includes the cognitive skills and competences of users, especially those that enable flexible adaptation in a particular environment. A different methodology has been developed for each dimension: from sociolinguistic quantitative approaches based on surveys, to pragmalinguistic experiments designed to observe the shape of sender-recipient relations in inter-language receptive communication. These methodologies are presented together with the preliminary results of research which make it possible to state that lingua receptiva is the nucleus of inclusive multilingualism, breaking the paradigm of monolingualism and blurring the borders between languages in the pursuit of mutual understanding. Lingua receptiva: ekolingwistyczne ujęcie słowiańskich kontaktów międzyjęzykowych w przestrzeni pogranicza (przypadek polsko-czeski)Ekolingwistyka jako samodzielna dyscyplina językoznawcza, która ukonstytuowała się w latach 70. XX wieku, od początku zajmowała się kontaktami międzyjęzykowymi. Jednakże wśród slawistów w Polsce nie zyskała większego zainteresowania. Celem tekstu jest przedstawienie ekolingwistycznej koncepcji badań słowiańskich kontaktów międzyjęzykowych na przykładzie polsko-czeskim z wykorzystaniem pojęcia lingua receptiva. Proponowana koncepcja zintegrowanych badań nad ekologią języka na polsko-czeskim pograniczu obejmuje trzy wymiary ekosystemu języka: naturalny, społeczny i poznawczy. Badania nad naturalną ekologią języka oscylują wokół jego wzajemnych związków z otaczającym środowiskiem naturalnym i mogą odnosić się do topografii, fauny i flory itd. Pod uwagę bierze się w nich potencjał środowiska naturalnego i otoczenia antropogenicznego w relacji do języka (i odwrotnie). W obserwacji socjologicznej ekologii języka zwraca się uwagę na uwarunkowania społeczne i kulturowe kształtujące relacje między komunikującymi się jednostkami oraz charakter wspólnot, które są konstytuowane lub podtrzymywane w wyniku tych kontaktów. Kognitywna ekologia języka obejmuje z kolei zdolności poznawcze i kompetencje użytkowników, zwłaszcza te, które pozwalają elastycznie adaptować się w określonym środowisku. Dla każdego wymiaru została wypracowana inna metodologia: od socjolingwistycznych ujęć ilościowych opartych na badaniach ankietowych do eksperymentów pragmalingwistycznych służących obserwacji ukształtowania nadawczo-odbiorczego w międzyjęzykowej komunikacji receptywnej. Zostanie ona przedstawiona wraz ze wstępnymi wynikami badań, które pozwalają stwierdzić, że lingua receptiva stanowi jądro multilingwizmu inkluzywnego przełamującego paradygmat jednojęzyczności i zacierającego granice języków w dążeniu do wzajemnego zrozumienia.

The Language Ecology of Graduate Students: An Exploration through Vocabulary Contribution

This study explores the language ecology of graduate students through vocabulary contribution. Understanding students’ learning ecology may be done through the identification of pertinent sociomaterial networks with which students engage to initiate or complement learning. This study was set in an academic writing module taught by the researcher. An open invitation was extended to his students to contribute any vocabulary they encountered outside of his classroom. Along with the vocabulary contribution, students also had to provide the excerpt where the word occurred and the source-type. Contributions were made on an online Excel file. There was a total of 277 contributions made, of which 259 were unique (229 words and 30 unique strings of words). Students’ contributions of strings of words were not anticipated. A majority of these contributions came from academic sources, such as research articles or book chapters, which may be a pertinent aspect of the graduate students’ language ecology. Through the findings, it is recommended that English for academic purposes (EAP) or English for specific purposes (ESP) instructors identify language ecologies found in the broader university setting to glean relevant pedagogical materials that can support students’ language development.

A COMPARATIVE EXAMINATION OF LANGUAGE ECOLOGY AND LANGUAGE POLICY IN POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA

In the late Soviet era, the domains of use of languages were largely a function of ethnic groups’ status in the Soviet administrative hierarchy. Russian was at the top; below it were the eponymous languages of the non-Russian 14 “Union Republics;” all other languages were used in relatively narrow sets of domains. The “Union Republic languages” included five in Central Asia-- Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek. These languages’ use in fewer domains than most other Union Republic languages profoundly affected their expansion into new domains after 1991. Two other factors affecting this primarily rooted in the Soviet era were the ethnic composition of the republics upon the USSR’s collapse and their populations’ language repertoires. In addition to these “Soviet heritage factors,” language policy and ecology have also been shaped by each country’s nation building project, its international orientation, the nature of its political system, and its economic resources. Russian today remains more widely used in high prestige domains in Central Asia than in all other former Soviet republics except Belarus. However, Russian is less used in a wide variety of domains in Central Asia than it is in “autonomous” units of the former RSFSR.

Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By: The Ecolinguistics of Tholkappiyam

The term “ecolinguistics” is relatively a recent discussion with Eliar Haugen (1972) bringing up the concept of “The ecology of Language”. Since then, various methods and approaches to the field have been suggested to study the language-ecology interaction, primarily from the west. As a result, ecolinguistics is conceived as a new-born western discipline. However, Ecolinguistics, as the term suggests is the specialized study of language-ecology interaction. The “feeling” of the existence of the necessary relationship between language and ecology even before makes us ask the question if the concept of ecolinguistics has not been discussed by linguists before 20th Century. The ancient Tamil linguistic treatise called Tholkappiyam (dated between 6th BCE to 8th CE) presents the fundamental nature of the relationship between ecology, language and culture through the theory called Tinai. The paper primarily draws attention to look into the linguistic philosophy of Tholkappiyam through an ecological perspective. From the ecolinguistic perspective, the paper analyses Tinai based on three criteria: Ecosophy, Aspects of Language-ecology-culture interaction and the theoretical framework of Tinai. Having analysed from the aforementioned criteria, the paper advocates that the framework of Tinai can contribute to the ecolinguistic studies parallel to the philosophies of Edward Sapir (1912) and Hagege (1985).

Lexical variation in Caribbean English

The present paper seeks to further develop an interdisciplinary research into language variation and contact studies. Integrating cognitive-onomasiological and ecolinguistic approaches, it addresses lexical diversity in the Caribbean English. The permanent contacts between English and other local and transported languages have caused a wide range of modifications in the Caribbean English lexicon, including allonymy. Allonymy is treated as a contact-induced type of lexical variation leading to the formation of alternative names for the same referents. By tracing the sources of allonyms and disclosing cognitive mechanisms involved in their formation, this study explains the vitality of allonymic lexical items in the complex language ecology of the Caribbean region. It is argued that variation in naming processes is determined by speakers’ cognitive preferences as well as their cultural vigour that manifest in multilingual and multicultural ecology.

Ecolinguistics

Review a: Arran Stibbe. 2021 (2nd ed.). Ecolinguistics. Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By. London-New York: Routledge, 260 pp.

Ecological Approach to the Second Language (L2) Teaching and Nepali English Teachers

Ecological approach to L2 teaching is based on the concept of language ecology. In this ever changing world nothing is static. After so many approaches, methods, views, and ideas, ecological approach has made its appearance on the ELT stage. The approach is new to many Nepali English teachers who equate it with teach­ing ecology through the English language. The present paper explores the origin of the approach, shows differences between ecological approach to L2 (English) from teaching ecology through English, presents situation of language ecology, and ELT in Nepal, and suggests what could be possibly the best ways to teach English in Nepal.