The ECOSOPHY concept in discourses of language education: a cross-cultural perspective

Abstract

This paper focuses on studying the peculiarities of the linguocognitive actualization of the concept of ecosophy in language education discourses with an emphasis on its cross-cultural ontology in the English language teaching and learning environments of Argentina, Côte d'Ivoire, the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Ukraine. On the premise of analysing the multidisciplinary essence of ecosophy as deep ecology philosophy, within the methodological framework of cognitive linguistics, ecolinguistics and linguoculturology, the authors substantiate the status of ecosophy as a universal fundamental conceptual constituent of linguodidactic discourses of the twenty-first century, oriented at biospheric egalitarianism to realize the Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the United Nations as the blueprint to secure a better future. As a result of the conducted psycholinguistic experiment centered around elicitation techniques, such quantitatively dominant culturally universal components of the concept of ecosophy as harmony, resilience, and sustainability, together with the conceptual facets content and level, as the basis of better language education cross-culturally have been revealed. Our further conceptual and linguistic analysis has enabled our construing a multi-dimensional matrix as a representation of the concept researched. The data obtained have proved that the conceptual dimension content comprises the conceptual commonalities social life, economics, politics, peace/war/safety, environment, culture, whereas the dimension level embraces the concepts individual/identity, community, state. The matrix serves as a tool for explicating major conceptual highlights of ecosophy in language instruction discourses across eleven countries, thus perspectively contributing to the development of more efficient, culturally relevant linguodidactic methods and media.