Research Proposal Ecolinguistics: stages of formation and development Introduction

Research Proposal
Ecolinguistics: stages of formation and development
Introduction
Ecolinguistics is one of the modern scientific directions in the field of linguistics, which was formed at the intersection of social, psychological and philosophical directions in linguistics. Ecolinguistics as a new scientific direction in the study of the linguistic sphere of human habitation and society is formed on the identification of laws, principles and rules common to both ecology and language development, and explores the role of language in the possible solution of environmental problems. The social demand for ecolinguistics is determined by the growing interest of society in the problems of the surrounding world, including the problems of metaphorical modeling of reality in the mass consciousness. It is surprising that, until recently, linguistics has not been interested in the impact that language has on the current problems of the modern world, on the problem of the “ecological” crisis. Ecolinguistics, as a science that combines ecology and linguistics, studies the interaction between language, a person as a linguistic personality and his environment. At the same time, language is considered as an integral component of the chain of relationships between man, society and nature. The functioning and development of the language is presented as an ecosystem, and the surrounding world as a language concept. For the first time, the concept of ecology was applied to language by the American linguist Einar Haugen in 1970 in the report "Ecology of Language" and introduced the aspect of interaction into sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. Haugen's main idea is that languages, like different types of animals and plants, are in a state of equilibrium, compete with each other, and their very existence depends on each other, both within the state and other social groups, and in the mind of a person, proficient in several languages. Haugen also defined the subject of ecolinguistics - language and ecology, i.e. "the study of the relationship between languages ​​in the human mind and in a multilingual society" [Haugen1972:325]. Since then, ecolinguistics has developed rapidly in different directions. Following Haugen, the concept of ecolinguistics was developed and refined by a number of other linguists. Harald Haarman identifies 7 "environmental variables", or factors that determine the linguistic behavior of both language groups and individuals: demographic, social, political, cultural, mental, interactional and linguistic. They cannot be considered in isolation, because they are connected and interact with each other and form an "ecological system" themselves.