Ecological Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and Ecolinguistics

Sarratt, Nicholas M., Ecological Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and Ecolinguistics.  Prepared for the Society of Ethnobiology’s 36th Annual Meeting, Denton, TX, May 15–18, 2013 ("Climate Change and Ethnobiology").  Session Title: Environmental Philosophy and Biocultural Conservation.

Abstract:

The present philosophical literature on philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein tends to either stagnate by focusing upon issues particular to Wittgenstein’s philosophy or expand the boundaries of Wittgenstein’s thought to shed light onto other areas of study.  One area that has largely been ignored is the realm of environmental philosophy.

I prepare the way for a solution to this by first arguing that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language shows ‘proto-ecolinguistic’ concerns, sharing much in common with the ecolinguistic thought of both Peter Mühlhäusler and Luisa Maffi. This reading, as well as the work of Mühlhäusler and Maffi, is a starting point for an opposition to a common trend in much of contemporary linguistics of adhering to a linguistic paradigm of universalizing linguistic atomism that gives an impoverished account of language.  This impoverished account is argued to have potential environmental and ecological consequences which the universalizing atomistic paradigm is ill-equipped to address.