Applied Cognitive Ecostylistics: From Ego to Eco

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This book offers an up-to-date account of one of the most influential strands of eco-research: cognitive ecostylistics. The onset of the 1970s saw a global shift in scholarly perspective upon the relation between egocentric and ecocentric views of the world. The so-called eco-turn was not only linguistic at its roots, but engaged the bulk of academic thought in social sciences and humanities.

Cognitive ecostylistics invites a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the conceptual relations between oral or written texts and their impact on the environment. This volume is a collection of the latest research that seeks to apply the theory and methodology developed over the last 40 years to both literary and real-life texts, engaging with a wealth of examples from First World War poetry and Anne of Green Gables through to Cond Nast Traveller hotel descriptions. Exploring the cultural effects of the eco-turn, the collection engages the reader in the problem of the present-day Anthropocene, manifested as Ego-Eco tensions at the level of communicating self-needs and the needs of the Other. Divided into two parts, it considers first the human-angled semiotic interplay contained within the universe of people, before examining the problem of semiotic engagement of texts as extraneous to the human, highlighting crucial aspects of nature, culture, and beyond.

Reviews

Applied Cognitive Ecostylistics is a welcome insight into the promise of a methodological shift from stylistics to ecostylistics, with applications to text analysis and understanding that center language as an embodied ecosystem nested in other ecosystems: social, cultural, and biological. Accessible yet written with academic rigor, the chapters will be of interest to scholars in the environmental humanities and anyone who recognizes language as the primary space in which an ecological civilization can be imagined, described, and dreamed into being - Marek Oziewicz, Professor of Literacy Education, University of Minnesota, USA.
This fascinating volume of essays demonstrates the rich field that is developing under the heading of ecostylistics and shows how the tension between EGO and ECO can be negotiated by a combination of textual analysis and contextual interpretation, making it truly stylistic and ecological in equal measure - Lesley Jeffries, Honorary Professor of Linguistics and English Language, University of Lancaster, UK.

Author Bio

Malgorzata Drewniok is the Head of International College at the University of Lincoln, UK.

Marek Kuzniak is Professor of Linguistics and Head of the Institute of English Studies at the University of Wroclaw, Poland.