The Ecology of Language: Insight and Illusion
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THE ECOLOGY OF LANGUAGE: INSIGHT AND ILLUSION
INTRODUCTION
As a term and a focus of study, ecology is a mid-nineteenth-century coinage of Ernst Haeckel and, as its Greek root (οίkοB¼home) implies, the emphasis is upon the holistic study of environments within which lives are lived and intertwined. Ecology is about adaptations whose necessity arises from inevitable linkages. In both the ‘natural’ world and the constructed one, ecology is pivotal, and any ecological model deserves our notice. That is why it is important to understand the framework, the assumptions and the scope of the ‘new’ ecology of language. Although it is, I believe, a deeply flawed model, a broader ecological sensitivity is important; perhaps, in fact, the real value of current approaches is that their very inadequacies focus attention in salutary ways. In some ways, then, the ‘new’ ecolinguistics suggests a welcome extension to the breadth and depth of the larger ecological enterprise—and current ecological discussion does indeed touch upon the most central and relevant features of language-contact situations. A careful overview, however, of this new ecology of language reveals some substantial difficulties particularly in terms of its use in educational contexts. I have touched upon some of these in earlier publications (see e.g. Edwards, 2001, 2002) and it is important to deal with the matter here, as part of a multi-volume production aimed at an audience who may have neither the time nor the inclination for specialised study—and an audience who may (quite reasonably) equate the ‘ecology’ label with a fully fleshed treatment of the language-society nexus. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
The first specific reference to the ecology of language is apparently found in a chapter by Voegelin, Voegelin and Schutz (1967), but the term is particularly associated with Einar Haugen (1972). His intent was to emphasise the linkages between languages and their environments, with particular regard to status and function, and he produced a list of contextualising questions—about who uses the language, its domains, varieties, written traditions and family relationships, degree and type of
A. Creese, P. Martin and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 9: Ecology of Language, 15–26. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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J O H N E D WA R D S
support it enjoys, and so on (for more details and typological expansions, see Edwards, 1992, discussed further by Grenoble and Whaley, 1998). In themselves, these questions are neutral in tone. However, in a book forthrightly called Blessings of Babel, Haugen referred to a ‘problem of social ecology: keeping alive the variety and fascination of our country, diverting the trend toward steamrollering everything and everyone into a single, flat uniformity’ (1987, p. 11). The dislike of a monotonic landscape is clear, although Haugen’s quotation is not entirely transparent. He probably did not mean to imply that ‘social ecology’ was essentially devoted to the promotion of
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