The ecological perspective: Benefits and risks for sociolinguistics and language policy and planning

Abstract

In recent years, in order to answer the fundamental questions in the field of linguistic policy and planning, we have made metaphorical use of the conceptualization and organization of biological phenomena into systems, known popularly as ecology. Of course, sociolinguistic objects are not fundamentally (or exclusively) biological; they belong to a different, emerging order of phenomena. Nonetheless the analogies we construct, the concepts we adapt, the questions we raise, and, above all, the paradigm we seek to produce - by considering languages as cultural 'species' living in a particular environment with their own ecosystems - are likely to be illuminating and suggestive. We should, of course, be clear at all times that the model is metaphorical, and be aware of the potential dangers of a reification of systems of linguistic communication. Though we place them in broader sociocultural contexts than those usually considered, there is always the risk of neglecting individuals inside the model and of forgetting the fact that these cultural 'species' are, in the final analysis, the product and function of the cognitive and communicative activity of human beings.