Monday (October 20, 2025 – Feburary 2, 2026) | 12.00 – 13.30 
University Library (Building 107), Seminar Room B V (Room 311)

Ecolinguistics is concerned with the role of language in environmental contexts. This comprises topics such as language loss (mainly in general or comparative linguistics), as well as how language construes our view of nature and environment (in linguistic pragmatics). In this course, we focus exclusively on the latter. For Fill (2018: 1) and Stibbe (2021) this involves a more rhetorical analysis which is about critiquing forms of language that contribute to ecological destruction and aiding in the search for new forms of language that inspire people to protect the natural world. To do this properly and scientifically, we need to reflect our own stances concerning environmental issues and include not only the analysis of form and function of language but also the discursive perception (e.g., in media user/reader comments).
The seminar’s medial domain of research extends to advertisement and corporate communication (Stibbe 2023), social media (Schwegler, Landschoff & Rommel 2023), newspaper discourse, IPCC reports or the speeches of climate activists (Penz 2021) as well as publicly used (multimodal) metaphors (Dancygier 2023; Zurro 2024). As a theoretical and methodological foundation of the seminar, we will explore and integrate language-critical ecolinguistic ideas with principles from cultural and sociolinguistics –that is, how social factors influence language use and how language, in turn, shapes social structures and identities.
In group projects, we will apply the above-mentioned eco- and sociolinguistic approaches to multimodal texts in the field of sustainability communication and education. Depending on the linguistic interest, semantic, pragmatic or cross-cutting analysis foci can be set, for example, such as multimodal image-text analyses, analyses of rhetorical strategies.

Procedure: 
As a first task, we will learn about eco- and sociolinguistic methods and approaches. Students will get the chance to "meet the expert" Jöran Landschoff, presenting and discussing the methodological approach from Schwegler, Lanschoff & Rommel (2024), Nov.10. Following this, we will assemble groups and conduct small projects under professional supervision. We will learn to summarise our projects in scientific abstracts (by approx. mid-December) and will have a guest speaker (Prof. Dr. Alessandra Lombardi) on the topic how to productively and critically integrate AI support to improve translations (e.g., with synonyms or technical terms) especially in summarising text forms, such as abstracts. This session will include a critical reflection on the potential problems and challenges that can arise from AI usage as well as the (advanced) skills users need to apply AI support effectively. Finally, we will create a scientific poster, which will be presented in English at the international conference “19th HEE Winter Meeting. Environment, Health, and Education: Hope in Times of Global Change” (Do/Fri 15/16 January 2026). The abstracts will be listed publicly in the abstract book of the journal Health, Environment, and Education, the posters will be available on the website of the UoC’s MESH Research Hub in the longer term. (Students studying a module with a written assessment will reflect scientifically on their project results and the methods used in a take-home exam or essay (time frame tba)).

Objective:
Through its innovative and research-oriented concept, this class is intended to provide an initial insight into academic linguistic and interdisciplinary work. It is designed to provide students with the opportunity to discuss texts/text types used in public communication. We will learn to write (different) types of academic texts (abstract, poster/oral presentation) and practice to present and discuss academic results to and with an international audience in a manner appropriate to the target audience.
 

Further information for students of the University of Cologne: Klips