Sprache als ökologisches Phänomen: Konzeptionelle Problematisierungen und produktive Überlegungen für die Ökolinguistik

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.