Ecosemiotics

Ecosemiotics is a branch of semiotics in its intersection with human ecology that studies the sign relations established by culture, which deal with other living beings, communities, and landscapes.

Ecosemiotics is a field of semiotics that explores semiotic processes related to ecological phenomena. In particular, ecosystem semiotics examines the sign processes that influence the functioning of ecosystems, the signification of the environment, the interpretation of nature in culture, and the semiotic aspects of environmental problems.

For the eco-semiotic view, the environment is semiotic at different levels and in different ways. A physical environment such as the earth has the potential (aptitude) to participate in semiotic relationships. Different animal species give meaning to the environment according to their needs and their own world. In human culture, the environment is celebrated in many different ways, for example by highlighting the symbols of nature or depicting the environment in art and literature. Environmental representations in culture, in turn, influence the environment through human activities.

The field was initiated by Winfried Nöth and Kalevi Kull.

The central focus of ecosemiotics concerns the role of concepts (sign-based models people have) in designing and changing the environment. Ecosemiotics includes (or largely overlaps) with semiotics of landscape.

Ecosemiotics analyzes the interactions, transmissions, and problems between the different levels of the label in their environment. Important concepts in eco-semiotic analysis are, for example, semiocide, fit (or opportunity), eco-field, consortium.

The field of eco-semiotics emerged in the 1990s as a result of research by Winfried Nöth and Kalevi Kulli. Later, Italian ecologist Almo Farina has contributed to the development of eco-semiotics. Since 2001, summer seminars on ecosemiotics have been held in Estonia, organized by the Jakob von Uexküll Center and the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu. The Department of Semiotics and Tallinn Zoo are organizing a series of Nature Culture seminars.

Biosemiotics
Biosemiotics is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, or production and interpretation of signs and codes in the biological realm. Biosemiotics attempts to integrate the findings of biology and semiotics and proposes a paradigmatic shift in the scientific view of life, demonstrating that semiosis (sign process, including meaning and interpretation) is one of its immanent and intrinsic features. The term biosemiotic was first used by Friedrich S. Rothschild in 1962, but Thomas Sebeok and Thure von Uexküll have implemented the term and field. The field, which challenges normative views of biology, is generally divided between theoretical and applied biosemiotics.

Biosemiotics is biology interpreted as a sign systems study, or, to elaborate, a study of

signification, communication and habit formation of living processes
semiosis (changing sign relations) in living nature
the biological basis of all signs and sign interpretation

Ecolinguistics
Ecolinguistics, emerged in the 1990s as a new paradigm of linguistic research, widening sociolinguistics to take into account not only the social context in which language is embedded, but also the ecological context.

Michael Halliday’s 1990 paper New ways of Meaning: the challenge to applied linguistics is often credited as a seminal work which provided the stimulus for linguists to consider the ecological context and consequences of language. Among other things, the challenge that Halliday put forward was to make linguistics relevant to overarching contemporary issues, particularly the widespread destruction of the ecosystems that life depends on. The main example Halliday gave was that of ‘economic growth’, describing how ‘countless texts repeated daily all around the world contain a simple message: growth is good. Many is better than few, more is better than less, big is better than small, grow is better than shrink’, which leads to ecologically destructive consequences.

“Ecolinguistics explores the role of language in the life-sustaining interactions of humans, other species and the physical environment. The first aim is to develop linguistic theories which see humans not only as part of society, but also as part of the larger ecosystems that life depends on. The second aim is to show how linguistics can be used to address key ecological issues, from climate change and biodiversity loss to environmental justice.”

Environmental hermeneutics
Environmental hermeneutics is a term for a wide range of scholarship that applies the techniques and resources of the philosophical field of hermeneutics to environmental issues. That is to say it addresses issues of interpretation as they relate to nature and environmental issues broadly conceived to include wilderness, ecosystems, landscapes, ecology, the built environment (architecture), life, embodiment, and more. Work in environmental philosophy, ecocriticism, environmental theology, ecotheology, and similar disciplines may overlap the field of environmental hermeneutics.

In the public sphere, much of the focus on “the environment” is concerned with discovering scientific facts and then reporting how policy can act on these facts. On its face, philosophical hermeneutics might appear to be an unrelated enterprise. But… even the facts of the sciences are given meaning by how humans interpret them. Of course this does not mean that there are no facts, or that all facts must come from scientific discourse. Rather… [it calls] for mediation—the mediation that grounds the interpretive task of connecting fact and meaning through a number of different structures and forms.

Environmental history
Environmental history is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time, emphasising the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs and vice versa.

Environmental history emerged in the United States out of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and much of its impetus still stems from present-day global environmental concerns. The field was founded on conservation issues but has broadened in scope to include more general social and scientific history and may deal with cities, population or sustainable development. As all history occurs in the natural world, environmental history tends to focus on particular time-scales, geographic regions, or key themes. It is also a strongly multidisciplinary subject that draws widely on both the humanities and natural science.

The subject matter of environmental history can be divided into three main components. The first, nature itself and its change over time, includes the physical impact of humans on the Earth’s land, water, atmosphere and biosphere. The second category, how humans use nature, includes the environmental consequences of increasing population, more effective technology and changing patterns of production and consumption. Other key themes are the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer communities to settled agriculture in the neolithic revolution, the effects of colonial expansion and settlements, and the environmental and human consequences of the industrial and technological revolutions. Finally, environmental historians study how people think about nature – the way attitudes, beliefs and values influence interaction with nature, especially in the form of myths, religion and science.