International Ecolinguistic Conference 2021
What has been brewing in modern Western interdisciplinary science for the last several decades is the scholarly realisation that we have been reaching the limits of the Cartesian, mechanistic and materialistic paradigm. A paradigm change has already started in the collective (non)consciousness, in the philosophy of sciences, and in the minds of many scholars. The very change, currently in process, embraces new pathways being initiated in the language studies as well. Ecolinguistics, in its most recent facelift, turns its attention on ecosystems, contexts of language and communication, and reaches deep into the core of modern science and its conceptions of reality as well as the scientific method itself.
This newparadigmatic meta-scientific developmental and cultural shift does not reject the materialistic dimension of life systems; such changes usually happen as a result of inclusion (cf. Galileo Commission Report, 2019), where the upcoming ontological framework includes the old paradigm as its special case. Today, we look at the emergence of the expanded science, as a result of the postclassical paradigm extending our ontological-epistemological-methodological landscape beyond the constrictions of the materialistic Cartesian-Darwinian classical paradigm. The classical paradigm becomes a special case in this expanded framework we opt for.
What seems essential, in order to study these paradigmatic changes, we need a modified aesthetics and style of our scientific approach. Indeed, sciences and scholars do need new narration and new communicational styles in their scholarly work. We can reach for a descriptive, explanatory concept of the ‘feminine’ behavioural, interpretational and perceptual models. This is what seems needed in the academia and Western science today, that is, more ‘feminine’ – cooperative and open attitudes and behaviours. ‘Feminine’ models are to counterbalance harsh, confrontational and categorical style of academic work – in terms of thinking styles and communication styles. Softer, cooperative models are needed to take us beyond communicational and thought dramas of the critical approach and the crisis discourse, towards a newparadigmatic plane of research.
We notice this new alley opening for Western sciences, focusing less attention of on ‘dry’ discussions and cross-paradigmatic empty battles, and shifting the focus towards the content-related, potential-related and applicational merits of the postclassical paradigmatic terrain we are entering. Alexander Bird, while referring to Kuhn’s theory of paradigms, rightly observes that it is ‘an immature science, in what he (T. Kuhn) sometimes calls its ‘pre-paradigm’ period, as lacking consensus. Competing schools of thought possess differing procedures, theories, terminology even metaphysical presuppositions. Consequently, there is little opportunity for collective progress. Even localized progress by a particular school is made difficult, since much intellectual energy is put into arguing over the fundamentals with other schools instead of developing a research tradition’ (Bird, A., ‘Thomas Kuhn’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013 Edition). Hence, our Łomża Ecolinguistic Conference 2021 is to become a comfortable academic and intellectual space to go beyond criticisms of what is there and what is being left behind, beyond oppositions and confrontations – towards the postclassical paradigm itself, where researchers – when getting there – immediately find themselves very busy indeed, with all novel, fresh theoretical and empirical tasks which are presented to them.
Among the topics for consideration during our Conference meetings are the following:
- most recent models of inner and outer reality, being the essential starting-point frames for research work in any discipline
- the classical, Newtonian paradigm vs. the postclassical, post-Newtonian paradigm and the implications of this complementarity for the language sciences
- theoretical and methodological questions concerning the contact points between the matter and the nonmatter; the hypothesis of communication being a binding mechanism in the living world
- language as a life process
- nonlocality in life processes
- the ecolinguistic extensions, i.e. the actual scope of biosemiosis; communication mechanisms and semiosis in the healing process
- the expanded educational paradigm
- meaning as a process
- transdisciplinary routes: linguistics, systems theory, cell biology, epigenetics, postclassical physics, zoology and modes of animal communication.
English is the language of the conference.
We cordially invite scholars representing their fields of specialisation to come to our Conference in June and join us to present their perspectives on the expanded science of the 21st century. The International Ecolinguistic Conference initiates a new series of international academic meetings to be held in the comfortable setting of the Polish regional University of Applied Sciences in Łomża.