In the volume, to locate the science of language and communication in the most recent philosophical and methodological context that science offers today, we have proposed reconciling two avenues of the scientific process, i.e. the "third-person observation-experiment-algorithm method being the traditional method of doing science; and the inner, first-person insights of contemplative science, in a sense of phenomenological flanerie through unexplored cultural landscapes". The present book targets research addressing the phenomenological aspect of communication and the methodology of linguistic research. The volume may be of interest to linguistic scholars, cultural linguists, semioticians, interdisciplinary scholars, and students of the humanities and cultural/social specialisations.

This book discusses an ecological approach to communicational processes. Raising consciousness about being green is not the only concern of present-day ecological linguistics. Ecolinguistics, with its attention focused on ecosystems as well as contexts of language and communication, probes deep into the core of not only modern linguistics but modern science in general, while relating to conceptions of the world as well as to the scientific method itself. Thus, when ecological thinking is applied to science, it eventually will incite a methodological and philosophical rethinking. This study reports the fundamental shifts occurring after ecological views had been infused into the Social Sciences and Humanities. The substance of various qualities, from the very dense and tangible, to subtle mental or cognitive non-matter, becomes an ecosystem for human language on both a very direct, material plane, as well as on the non-material plane. In fact, human language, as perceived by an ecologically-minded linguist today, is a life process, operating within the pulsating grid of other life processes.

This volume proposes a new, post-Newtonian alley in modern language and communication studies. The new linguistics receives here the label ecolinguistics, as the conceptual-terminological field founded on the "ecological" metaphor seems optimal to formulate the thesis of human language being a life process, and involving a repertoire of ecosystemic, not exclusively cognitive or social, parameters. Communicators are living systems and as such they transpersonally co-build momentary meanings and communicational senses together with the rest of the communication field. The communication apparatus which is phylogenetically present in humans includes both the cognitive modalities and the noncognitive communication modalities. The ecolinguistic paradigm in modern linguistics offers new theoretical departure models for educational programs, for psychological/therapeutic interventions, or for self-exploratory and self-educational undertakings of a human communicator.

This volume is a collection of texts authored by an international team of linguistic scholars who provide their response to the concept of 21st century holism in language studies. The expertise of its contributors is reflected in the thematic scope of the book; it discusses topics such as the concept of harmony in interpersonal communication, semiotic and cultural phenomena handled by discourse analysis, selected aspects of religious discourse, and the study of proverbs or educational processes, to name but a few. 21st century holism embraces a solid theoretical base in post-Newtonian physics (quantum theory in particular), and departs from materialistic and atomistic perspectives based on Darwinism or cognitivism, however tempted we may be to allow the inertia of these in Western science and culture. Once a scholar decides to shift their paradigmatic perspective, thinking style, and research methodology, they start to co-build a collective mental representation herein referred to as 'the culture of consciousness'.