ABSTRACT
This opening chapter introduces the eight types of ‘story we live by’: ideologies, framings, metaphors, evaluations, identities, convictions, erasure and salience. These stories, it is argued, are cognitive in the sense of being in people’s minds, while also manifesting themselves in distinctive patterns of language. The aim of ecolinguistics is to analyse these patterns, reveal the stories we live by, and open them to critical examination. The idea of an ‘ecosophy’ – an ecological philosophy used to judge stories against – is introduced and the specific ecosophy used in the book is described.
