It is generally agreed that about 7,000 languages are spoken across the world today and at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of this century. This state-of-the-art Handbook examines the reasons behind this dramatic loss of linguistic diversity, why it matters, and what can be done to document and support endangered languages. The volume is relevant not only to researchers in language endangerment, language shift and language death, but to anyone interested in the languages and cultures of the world. It is accessible both to specialists and non-specialists: researchers will find cutting-edge contributions from acknowledged experts in their fields, while students, activists and other interested readers will find a wealth of readable yet thorough and up-to-date information.

This book revisits and updates the concept of linguistic ecology, outlining applications to a variety of contact situations worldwide.

The increasingly rapid destruction of the ecological systems that support life is calling into question some of the fundamental stories that we live by: stories of unlimited economic growth, of consumerism, progress, individualism, success, and the human domination of nature. Ecolinguistics shows how linguistic analysis can help reveal the stories we live by, open them up to question, and contribute to the search for new stories. Bringing together the latest ecolinguistic studies with new theoretical insights and practical analyses, this book charts a new course for ecolinguistics as an engaged form of critical enquiry. Featuring: A framework for understanding the theory of ecolinguistics and applying it practically in real life; Exploration of diverse topics from consumerism in lifestyle magazines to Japanese nature haiku; A comprehensive glossary giving concise descriptions of the linguistic terms used in the book; Discourse analysis of a wide range of texts including newspapers, magazines, advertisements, films, nonfiction books, and visual images. This is essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers working in the areas of Discourse Analysis and Language and Ecology.

In this book I try to give a coherent and consistent overview of what an ecological approach to language learning might look like. This is not a fully fledged grand theory that aims to provide an explanation of everything, but an attempt to provide a rationale for taking an ecological world view and applying it to language education, which I regard as one of the most important of all human activities. Goethe once said that everything has been thought of before, but that the difficulty is to think of it again. The same certainly is true of the present effort. If it has any innovative ideas to offer, these lie in a novel combination of thoughts and ideas that have been around for a long, long time. The reader will encounter influences that range from Spinoza to Bakhtin and from Vygotsky to Halliday. The scope of the work is intentionally broad, covering all major themes that are part of the language learning process and the language teaching profession. These themes include language, perception and action, self, learning, critical pedagogy and research. At the same time I have attempted to look at both the macro and the micro sides of the ecological coin, and address issues from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. This, then, aims to be a book that can be read by practitioners and theoreticians alike, and the main idea is that it should be readable and challenging at the same time.

Thirty years ago a new linguistic paradigm was created when Einar Haugen combined language with ecology. For Haugen, 'the ecology of language' meant the study of the interrelations between languages in the human mind and in the multilingual community. Since then a special branch of linguistics, named Ecolinguistics, has developed in which the connection between language and ecology has been established in a variety of ways and using a multitude of methods and approaches. In addition to the original ecolinguistic topics of language interrelation, language endangerment and language pressure, Ecolinguistics Reader also gives due consideration to the themes of biological and linguistic diversity as well as the ecocritical aspect.

In this book, the author examines the transformation of the Pacific language region under the impact of colonization, westernization and modernization. By focusing on the linguistic and socio-historical changes of the past 200 years, it aims to bring a new dimension to the study of Pacific linguistics, which up until now has been dominated by questions of historical reconstruction and language typology. In contrast to the traditional portrayal of linguistic change as a natural process, the author focuses on the cultural and historical forces which drive language change. Using the metaphor of language ecology to explain and describe the complex interplay between languages, speakers and social practice, the author looks at how language ecologies have functioned in the past to sustain language diversity, and, at what happens when those ecologies are disrupted. Whilst most of the examples used in the book are taken from the Pacific and Australian region, the insights derived from this area are shown to have global applications. The text should be useful for linguists and all those interested in the large scale loss of human language.

This major new work explores the development of creoles and other new languages, focusing on the conceptual and methodological issues they raise for genetic linguistics. Written by an internationally renowned linguist, the book surveys a wide range of examples of changes in the structure, function and vitality of languages, and suggests that similar ecologies have played the same kinds of roles in all cases of language evolution. The Ecology of Language Evolution will be welcomed by students and researchers in sociolinguistics, creolistics, theoretical linguistics and theories of evolution.

This volume emphasizes the emergence of linguistic development through children's and learners' interactions with their environment - spatial, social, cultural, educational - bringing to light commonalities between primary language development, child and adult second-language learning, and language acquisition by robots. The studies presented here challenge a number of dominant ideas in language acquisition theory. It is of interest to language acquisition researchers and professionals.

High level linguistic theory monograph looking at the interaction between language and the environment.