Abstract
The new ecolinguistics treats language as a part of human action. Languaging, the basis for language development, co-constitutes technologically endowed environments. The result, we argue, can enhance both second language learning and aspects of human agency. Using historical and current research, we stress skillful action and, given a special stance, how expertise is generated by drawing on languages while engaging in a range of practices. A combination of languaging, statistical learning and skillful action therefore enables technology to sustain a vast range of coordinated activities. Accordingly, we advocate for the design of technology-rich environments where people change themselves by drawing on second languages to gain skills and expertise as they use new modes of action, coordination and collaboration.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Ames, R. T. (2011). Confucian role ethics: A vocabulary. University of Hawai’i Press/The Chinese University Press.
Andresen, J. L. (2013). Linguistics and evolution: A developmental approach. Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, M. (2010). Neural reuse: A fundamental organizational principle of the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, (4), 245.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1982). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. University of Texas Press.
Banov, I. K. (2022). Agentic development in online affinity spaces: Reddit as a place for second language learning. University of Hawai’i at Mānoa ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
Barab, S., Arici, A., Aguilera, E., & Dutchin, K. (2019). Ecosystem empowerment: Unlocking human potential through value creation. In R. Barnett & N. Jackson (Eds.), Ecologies for learning and practice (1st ed., pp. 129–145). Routledge.
Barab, S., & Squire, K. (2004). Design-based research: Putting a stake in the ground. Journal of the Learning Sciences, (1), 1–14.
Becker, A. L. (1991). Language and languaging. Language & Communication, (1), 33–35.
Blair, G. (2003). Distributed cognition in interpersonal dialogue [Unpublished masters dissertation]. University of Natal.
Borchmann, S. (2019). The spectator bias in the linguistic descriptions of information structure. Language Sciences, 76, 101180.
Boulton, A., & Cobb, T. (2017). Corpus use in language learning: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, (2), 348–393.
Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. Journal of the Learning Sciences, (2), 141–178.
Chapelle, C. A., & Sauro, S. (2017). Introduction to the handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning. In C. A. Chapelle & S. Sauro (Eds.), The handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning (1st ed., pp. 1–9). Wiley.
Chemero, A. (2011). Radical embodied cognitive science. MIT Press.
Cowley, S. J. (2014). Linguistic embodiment and rerbal constraints: Human cognition and the scales of time. Frontiers in Psychology, (5), 1085.
Cowley, S. J. (2017). Entrenchment: A view from radical embodied cognitive science. In H. J. Schmid (Ed.), Entrenchment and the psychology of language learning: How we reorganize and adapt linguistic knowledge (pp. 409–434). De Gruyter.
Cowley, S. J. (2019). The return of languaging: Toward a new ecolinguistics. Chinese Semiotic Studies, (4), 483–512.
Cowley, S. J. (2022). Ecolinguistics reunited: Rewilding the territory. Journal of World Languages, (3), 405–427.
Cowley, S. J. (2023). How expertise is enabled: Why epistemic cycles matter to us all. Social Epistemology, 1–15.
Cowley, S. J. (2024). Ecolinguistics in practice. In W. Li, H. Zhu, & J. Simpson (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 374–385). Routledge.
Cui, Z., Dong, J., Liu, Y., Nuesser, M., Rickman, K., Zhang, H., Zheng, D., & Zuo, Y. (2023). Becoming a resourceful language learner in a narrative-driven participatory game. In M. Peterson & N. Jabbari (Eds.), Advances in digital game-based language learning (pp. 136–157). Routledge.
Cui, Z., Dong, J., Liu, Y., Tangiyev, D. M., Nokes, J., Nuesser, M., Tang, S., Zhang, H., & Zheng, D. (2021). Design of a distributed language learning environment: Contextualizing Chinese language learning in a Panda reserve virtual reality. In Y-J. Lan & S. Grant (Eds.), Contextual language learning: Real language learning on the continuum from virtuality to reality (pp. 39–70). Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
Dufva, H. (2013). Language learning as dialogue and participation. In E. Christensen, L. Kuure, A. Mörch, & B. Lindström (Eds.), Problem-based learning for the 21st century: New practices and learning environments. Aalborg University Press.
Ellis, N. C. (2019). Essentials of a theory of language cognition. Modern Language Journal, 103, 39–60.
Fester-Seeger, M. T. (in press). Human presencing: The influence of the absent other in human action and its implications for the engagement with and in technology. AI & Society.
Fill, A., & Penz, H. (2017). Ecolinguistics in the 21st century: New orientations and future directions. In A. F. Fill & H. Penz (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of ecolinguistics (pp. 437–443). Taylor & Francis Group.
Fuchs, T. (2017). Ecology of the brain: The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind. Oxford University Press.
González-Lloret, M. (2019). Technology and L2 pragmatics learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 39, 113–127.
Haeckel, E. (1866). Generelle Morphologie der Organismen: Allgemeine Grundzüge der organischen Formen-Wissenschaft, mechanisch begründet durch die von Charles Darwin reformierte Descendenz-Theorie. De Gruyter.
Harris, R. (1981). The language myth. Duckworth.
Haugen, E. (1972). The ecology of language. In A. S. Dil (Ed.), The ecology of language. Essays by Einar Haugen (pp. 325–339). Stanford University Press.
Hellermann, J., Thorne, S. L., & Fodor, P. (2017). Mobile reading as social and embodied practice. Classroom Discourse, (2), 99–121.
Hellermann, J., Thorne, S. L., & Haley, J. (2019). Building socio-environmental infrastructures for learning. In J. Hellermann, S. Eskicdsen, S. Pekarek-Doehler, & A. Piirainen-Marsh(Eds.), Conversation analytic research on learning-inaction (pp. 193–218). Springer.
Hodges, B. (2009). Ecological pragmatics: Values, dialogical arrays, complexity, and caring. Pragmatics & Cognition, (3), 628–652.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. MIT Press. Hutchins, E. (2014). The cultural ecosystem of human cognition. Philosophical Psychology, (1), 34–49.
Järvilehto, T. (2009). The theory of the organism-environment system as a basis of experimental work in psychology. Ecological Psychology, (2), 112–120.
Juffermans, K. (2015). Local languaging, literacy and multilingualism in a West African society. Multilingual Matters.
Kravchenko, A. V. (2007). Essential properties of language, or, why language is not a code. Language Sciences, (5), 650–671.
Kravchenko, A. V. (2011). How Humberto Maturana’s biology of cognition can revive the language sciences. Constructivist Foundations, (3), 352–362.
Lai, C., Hu, X., & Lyu, B. (2017). Understanding the nature of learners’ out-of-class language learning experience with technology. Computer Assisted Language Learning, (1–2), 114–143.
Lantolf, J. P. (2000). Sociocultural theory and second language learning (Vol. 78, No. 4). Oxford University Press.
Leont’ev D. A. (2013). O nekotorykh aspektakh problemy «kul’tura i lichnost’» [About some aspects of the problem “culture and personality”]. Kul’turno-istoricheskaya psikhologiya, 1, 22–30.
Li, W. (2017). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics, (1), 9–30.
Lisina, M. I. (2009). Formirovanie lichnosti rebènka v obshchenii [Forming child’s personality]. Piter.
Love, N. (2004). Cognition and the language myth. Language Sciences, (6), 525–544.
Love, N. (2017). On languaging and languages. Language Sciences, 61, 113–147.
Maturana, H. R. (1988). Ontology of observing: The biological foundations of self consciousness and the physical domain of existence. Conference workbook: Texts in cybernetics. American Society for Cybernetics Conference, Felton.
Morris, C. (1938). Foundations of the theory of signs. University of Chicago Press.
Mulcaster, R. (1582). The first part of the elementarie vvich entreateth chefelie of the right writing of our English tung. Ann Arbor, MI; Oxford: Text creation partnership 2005–10 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1). https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A07881.0001.001?view=toc.
Newgarden, K., & Zheng, D. (2016). Recurrent languaging activities in World of Warcraft: Skilled linguistic action meets the Common European Framework of Reference. ReCALL, (3), 274–304.
Newgarden, K., Zheng, D., & Liu, M. (2015). An eco-dialogical study of second language learners’ World of Warcraft (WoW) gameplay. Language Sciences, 48, 22–41.
Pennycook, A. (2017). Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism, (3), 269–282.
Piirainen-Marsh, A., & Tainio, L. (2009). Collaborative game-play as a site for participation and situated learning of a second language. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, (2), 167–183.
Port, R. F. (2010). Rich memory and distributed phonology. Language Sciences, (1), 43–55.
Reddy, M. (1979). The conduit metaphor. Metaphor and thought, 2, 285–324.
Reinhardt, J., & Sykes, J. M. (2012). Conceptualizing digital gamemediated L2 learning and pedagogy: Game-enhanced and game-based research and practice. In H. Reinders (Ed.), Digital games in language learning and teaching (pp. 32–49). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Rodríguez, J. C. (2017). Design-based research. In C. A. Chapelle, & S. Sauro (Eds.), The handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning (pp. 364–377). Wiley Online Library.
Schmid, H-J. (2020). The dynamics of the linguistic system: Usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment (1st edition). Oxford University Press.
Seiberth, L. C. (2021). The role of languagings in Sellars’ theory of experience. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, (2), 19–48.
Steffensen, S. V., & Cowley, S. J. (2021). Thinking on behalf of the world: Radical embodied ecolinguistics. In X. Wen, & J. R. Taylor (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 723–736). Routledge.
Steffensen, S. V., & Fill, A. (2014). Ecolinguistics: The state of the art and future horizons. Language Sciences, 41, 6–25.
Swain, M. (2006). Languaging, agency and Collaboration in advanced second language proficiency. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Advanced language learning: The contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 95–108). Continuum.
Thibault, P. J., & King, M. E. (2016). Interactivity, values and the microgenesis of learning in a tertiary setting. In C. C. Ng, R. Fox, & M. Nakano (Eds.), Reforming learning and teaching in Asia-Pacific universities (Vol. 33, pp. 173–211). Springer Singapore.
Thorne, S. L., & Hellermann, J. (2022). Coda: The interactional affordances and constraints of technology-rich teaching and learning environments. Classroom Discourse, (2), 231–239.
van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Wang, C. (2016). Accelerate learning with the concept of “Xu.” Modern Foreign Languages, 3, 784–794.
Wells, A. (2006). Rethinking cognitive computation: Turing and the science of the mind. Palgrave Macmillan.
Wittgenstein, L. W. (1958). Philosophical investigations (2nd edition). Blackwell.
Zheng, D. (2012). Caring in the dynamics of design and languaging: Exploring second language learning in 3D virtual spaces. Language Sciences, (5), 543–558.
Zheng, D., Dai, Y., & Liu, Y., (2017). Place, identity and becomings with mobile technologies: Feminist and Chinese philosophies. International Communication of Chinese Culture, (3), 319–337.
Zheng, D., Hu, Y. & Banov, I. (2019). A multiscalar coordination of languaging: Harmonizing styles across classroom and virtual-environment ecosystems. Chinese Semiotic Studies, 4, 571–587.
Zheng, D., Liu, Y., Lambert, A., Lu, A., Tomei, J., & Holden, D. (2018). An ecological community becoming: Language learning as firstorder experiencing with place and mobile technologies. Linguistics and Education, 44, 45–57.
Zheng, D., Newgarden, K., & Young, M. F. (2012). Multimodal analysis of language learning in World of Warcraft Play: Languaging as values-realizing. ReCALL, (3), 339–360.
Zheng, D., Schmidt, M., Hu, Y., Liu, M., & Hsu, J. (2017). Eco-dialogical learning and translanguaging in open-ended 3D virtual learning environments: Where place, time, and objects matter. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, (5), 107–122.
Zheng, D., & Tian, J. (2020). Co-constituting second language learning from EDD perspectives and virtual environments. Foreign Languages in China, (3), 36–44.
Zheng, D., Young, M. F., Wagner, M. M., & Brewer, R. A. (2009). Negotiation for action: English language learning in game-based virtual worlds. The Modern Language Journal, (4), 489–511.
Ziegler, N. (2016). Taking technology to task: Technology-mediated TBLT, performance, and production. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 36, 136–163.
Acknowledgments
In the writing process we revisited and learned literature across the fields of applied linguistics, second language studies, language sciences, learning sciences, educational technology, cognitive linguistics, ecolinguistics, and psychology. We thank Anastassia Kolmogorova of the National Research University of Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg for her help with Russian ways of conceptualizing the social emergence of human agency. We are most appreciative of this opportunity for the three of us co-authoring this bold ensemble across disciplines and generations, which is modeled after the Confucian philosophy of “You can learn from everyone.” We are very grateful for the amount of research available for understanding language and technology. We acknowledge that many more great minds and research can enhance this dialogue. We welcome any suggestions and critiques.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest Dong** Zheng and Stephen J. Cowley are members of the Editorial Board of Frontiers of Digital Education, who were excluded from the peer-review process and all editorial decisions related to the acceptance and publication of this article. Peer-review was handled independently by the other editors to minimise bias.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zheng, D., Cowley, S.J. & Nuesser, M. The New Ecolinguistics: Learning as Languaging with Digital Technologies. Front. Digit. Educ. 1, 109–119 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3868/s110-009-024-0011-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3868/s110-009-024-0011-5