From Cognitivism to Ecologism in Language Studies

September 2022

Marta Bogusławska

Nevertheless, people of the western cultural zone are still very much navigated through life by their cognitive minds, which means that we need mental/theoretical models to support us in what we do; we need theoretical patterns to organize our behaviours and reassure ourselves in our basic decision-making, problem-solving and other cognitive operations. H. Walach ponders that “a paradigm and a theory are always stronger than data. […] humans are predictive, theoretical animals” (2015a: 75). So, regarding practical/applicational objectives of ecolinguistics, as well as the service-to-the-world orientation of its research programme, ecolinguists nevertheless need to start installing ecolinguistics in the mainstream of language studies by building a paradigm that is a solid theoretical platform. Without such a grounding, systematic theory, the applicationally orientated research in ecolinguistics may lack organization and impact. The theoretical work has a consolidating and instituting function as regards the field, the research, and the overall reception of the research in the scientific circles.

In order to delineate the theoretical framework of the twenty-first-century ecolinguistics, we start from reflecting upon the general idea of the state of facts we are about to observe and study. This is not an obvious discernment, as today we have two general choices, (i) we can decide on the classical world model/classical paradigm, or (ii) the postclassical world model/postclassical, post-Newtoninan, holistic paradigm. Both theoretical, meta-cognitive choices are available to scholars and each carries very different consequences upon choosing one or the other.

3. The Ecolinguistic Multimodality Model of Communication

In the post-classical, holistic paradigm, humans and the rest of the living world are seen and studied as open systems (Bertalanffy, 1968: 32; Couto, 2014: 127), which dynamically and continually interact intraorganismically and interorganismically. A portion of this interaction is observable within the realm of the material world; the material reality being included in the postclassical model – to the surprise of those who assume modern holism is about the unseen and nonmaterial only.

Holistic assumptions begin with a basic idea that all living systems are interconnected at some level. At the same time, the world model and collectively agreed upon perceptions of modern western societies do not fully embrace this precept, because the idea of connectedness does not fit the Cartesian-Newtonian-Darwinian conceptualization of reality. Another reason for this lack of full absorption of modern holism is that, to date, sciences have not delivered systematic or theoretical evidence of interconnectivity as the possible basic ontology of life of the planet. For centuries, materialism has successfully influenced thinking in western societies.

I would like to point out that all this is currently in the process of change. That is to say, recent years have brought a shift in this respect and first serious scientific studies into holistic phenomena of life systems and life processes occurring separately on one layer of being, while being intertwined on other layers. Ecolinguistics, interested in building a meta-theory of life, is naturally active to enable this research and, consequently, facilitate the collective absorption of modern holism.

The research into the holism of life on the planet points to communication processes being the primary/basal linking mechanisms in the scheme of things. Current cell biology research (Michaud & Yoder 2006; Prodromou et al. 2012; Jin & Cordes, 2019) as well as studies on tissues and facia (Ofner & Walach, 2020) show the healing and regulatory effects healthy cells exert on damaged cells in an organism, and this balancing happens through intercellular, intra- and inter-tissue communication. Recent research indicates that healthy cells in a human body communicate with DNA of damaged cells and cause DNA repair modulating effect (Jin and Cordes, 2019). These mechanisms have just been observed and now studies have been focused on further modelling these mechanisms.

Another field of current research delving into the holistic aspects of life is the neurocognitve research on mirror neurons (Rizzolatti, 2005; Marshall, 2014; Kilner & Lemon, 2013). Mirror neurons were discovered in the laboratory research about twenty years ago. These are clusters of neuronal cells in the pre-motor brain regions, which get active when triggered by the actions of another, external living system with whom an experiencer comes into contact/interacts. In other words, mirror neurons of an experiencer neurobiologically reflect not his/her own experiences but the experiences of another.