Language and ecology in social imaginaries: ecolinguistic perspectives

Ecolinguistics, an emerging interdisciplinary field at the intersection of language and ecology, explores the intricate connections between linguistic practices and ecological systems (Penz and Fill 2022; Stibbe 2020). Aligned with the aims and scope of the Journal of World Languages, this special issue is mainly devoted to the Hallidayan tradition within ecolinguistics. Different from the theme of other special issues on ecolinguistics (e.g. Chau and Jacobs 2022; Fill and Steffensen 2014; Ponton and Sokół 2022), this special issue mainly focuses on the profound influence of language on our perceptions of nature and modern societies. It brings together diverse contributions that examine how language shapes and is shaped by societal imaginaries. The contributions in this special issue draw functional-oriented linguistic theories and discourse analysis approaches often adopted within the interdisciplinary field of ecolinguistics, such as systemic functional linguistics (e.g. transitivity system, appraisal framework), cognitive linguistics (e.g. conceptual metaphor theory, conceptual blending theory), multimodal discourse analysis (MDA), positive discourse analysis (PDA), and critical discourse analysis (CDA). Besides, the data analyzed in this special issue encompass a wide variety of discourse genres in different national contexts including advertising discourse, tourism discourse, political discourse, online discourse, digital discourse, news reports, and language textbooks.