Communication as a Life Process

This volume presents the meta-proposals of the ecolinguistic paradigm within contemporary language and communication studies, and will serve to incite further scholarly work within this research program. Eclectic and interdisciplinary as the contributions gathered here are, they all pertain to a dynamic, multilayer approach to human communication. The ecolinguistic framework delineated and put forth for consideration here is founded on the large and vibrant scientific plane of the holistic paradigm, also referred to in the book as the post-Newtonian paradigm. As such, the contributions complement the mainstream linguistic focus on the cognitive and material forms of the language system with another perspective, pointing to non-cognitive communication modalities active in the communication process along with the (neuro-)cognitive machinery. The human communication process is seen here as a life process occurring in the context of other life processes, intraorganismically, interorganismically, transpersonally and ecosystemically, to enumerate these layers of the communication grid.