生态语言学视域:语言与生物生态的必然统一

An Ecolinguistic Terrain:Language and the Bio-Ecology

本文以格雷戈里·贝特森的心智与自然统一说为理论基础,探索生态语言学如何将研究重点从对语篇的关注,转向对人类和生物世界的双向联系,即对影响生物生态领域的语言、个体能动性和集体能动性的深切关注。人类在生命发展史上通过社会控制模式和个人生存技巧改变世界,因此,人类既是集体能动者,又是生物生态领域的生命主体。探索人类与其他生物体的双向关系就要首先厘清科学认识的局限性。因此,生态语言学应肩负全新使命:首先要批判割裂人类与其他生物体的思维模式,其次要提升生物生态的影响力。这就需要发展一种生物思维,意识到人类生命体的发展与能量、价值以及个体的集体行为方式三者息息相关。批判话语分析也可与生物生态共存观研究相得益彰。生态语言学完全可以联合科学家和其他研究者,重视人类对地球生命体所承担的重任,这与中国传统哲学中的"天人合一"不谋而合。

The paper seeks to shift ecolinguistic focus from discourse to the bidirectional coupling of the human and the living world. In so doing, it endorses Gregory Bateson's unity of mind and nature. Accordingly appeal is made to the bio-ecology, a domain affected by, not just languages, but also individual and collective agency. Indeed, humans change the world by linking social modes of control with individual skills based on life-history. On this eco-logic, humans are both collective agents and living subjects that act within the bio-ecology. To pursue the reciprocal relations of humans and the living is to clarify the limits of scientific knowing. Accordingly, ecolinguistics has the mission, first, of critiquing models that separate the human from the living and, second, of raising the bio-ecology's profile. It needs to build a bio-logic where life draws on energetics, values and how human(and other)collectives behave. Critical approaches to discourse can be complemented by work aimed at bio-ecological awareness. Ecolinguists can join scientists and the many others who stress our responsibility for terrestrial life or, in the terms of ancient Chinese tradition, for harmony between heaven and earth.