Ecolinguistics: Rhymed Reflections
POETRY FORMAT, 4 Sep 2017
Francisco Gomes de Matos – TRANSCEND Media Service
Between language users and their environments,
a myriad relationships there are.
Given such oceanic diversity,
has our human ecolinguistic identity gone very far?
How do Nature and Language interact?
Why is Nature a part of every communicative act?
How do all living things communicate?
Ecolinguistically, why should we also educate?
Can the totality of the natural world
ever be linguistically represented?
Through languages and other semiotic systems,
how are ecosystems presented?
Why is sharing the Earth in sustainable serenity
an urgently needed mission for all Humanity?
When Ecology and Language, together they walk;
About what ecolinguistic realities and imaginations
do they talk?
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Francisco Gomes de Matos, Ph.D. is an applied peace linguist from Recife, Brazil. He has degrees in Languages, Law, and Linguistics. He is Professor Emeritus at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco where he is active in the Dom Hélder Camara Human Rights Commission. He is one of the pioneers in Linguistic Rights (author of 1984 Plea for a Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights) and in the emerging area of Peace Linguistics. Currently he is President of the Board, ABA Global Education (www.abaweb.org). He can be reached at fcardosogomesdematos@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 4 Sep 2017.
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