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.
