ABSTRACT
Chapter 14 starts with a vitally important question that today’s linguists have begun to ask, a question that may at first seem far removed from discussions of phonemes and phrase structure rules: “Do linguistic patterns, literally, affect the survival and wellbeing of the human species as well as other species on Earth?” (Steffensen & Fill, 2014, p. 9). This final chapter examines how language is related to the environments in which it exists and how our language use is connected to how we act in the natural world, especially when those actions contribute to the destruction of the environment. The chapter concludes with a discussion of eco-critical linguistics, examining anthropocentrism and greenwashing, among other types of discourse.
