• Related work
• Organisation

Ecolinguistics represents a relatively new field of linguistic research that in-vestigates the interaction between language and the environment. Having initially been developed in 1972 by Einar Haugen, the field advanced in the course of time and now-adays represents an established sub-discipline in linguistics with its own journals, text-books, book series, expert association and bi-annual conferences. This degree of insti-tutionalization does not, as the paper will show, go hand in hand with its theoretical, methodological and empirical development. On the contrary, theoretical and methodo-logical work is scarce while most of the studies published empirically examine environ-mental discourses from a linguistic point of view. Studies that explicitly draw on eco-logical approaches or theories to analyse the relation between language and environ-ment are almost non-existent. This has recently led to a certain degree of unease among ecolinguists and instigated a theoretical discussion. The paper takes this aspect as a starting point and provides a historical and conceptual overview of Ecolinguistics. It addresses past and present developments, analyses conceptual con- and divergences and expounds them to productively engage with the still hidden potentials of framing language as an ecological phenomenon.

Die Beiträge des Bandes beruhen zum Großteil auf den gehaltenen Vorträgen, setzen aber zum Teil einen anderen Fokus: Workshop "Exploring Eco-Discourses – eine interdisziplinäre Research School", 09.10.2023-11.10.2023, Darmstadt, Germany.