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Language Policy and Ehe Ecological Turn

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Abstract

Although the notion of language ecology has been both popular and productive as a way of understanding language and environment, drawing our attention to the ways in which languages are embedded in social, cultural, economic and physical ecologies, and operate in complex relations with each other, a critical exploration of the notion of language ecology points to the need to be very wary of the political consequences of biomorphic metaphors: the enumeration, objectification and biologisation of languages render them natural objects rather than cultural artefacts; linguistic diversity may be crucial to humans, but language diversity may not be its most important measure; and languages do not adapt to the world: they are part of human endeavours to create new worlds.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Technology, Sydney, City Campus, PO Box 123, Broadway, Australia

    Alastair Pennycook

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  1. Alastair Pennycook
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Correspondence to Alastair Pennycook.

Additional information

This is a revised version of ‘The perils of language ecology,’ a plenary paper given at the Language, Education and Diversity Conference in Waikato, NZ, in November 2003. A different version is due to be published in the conference proceedings, edited by Stephen May.

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Pennycook, A. Language Policy and Ehe Ecological Turn. Lang Policy 3, 213–239 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-004-3533-x

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