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Paper short abstract

We interrogate the dominant onto-epistemologies shaping linguistics, showing how they reproduce colonial, capitalist, and anthropocentric logics they seek to resist. We propose a knowledge system model for language informed by an econarrative of identity based on our positionalities as researchers.

Paper long abstract

We interrogate the dominant onto-epistemologies that inform sociolinguistics, foregrounding how disciplinary self-definitions risk reproducing the very colonial, capitalist, and anthropocentric logics they claim to resist. Our proposal underscores a broader disciplinary tension (when the solution becomes the problem), informed by an econarrative of identity based on our positionalities as reserachers. Sociolinguistics and applied linguistics grew out of different strands: constructivist traditions tied to social justice, and structuralist traditions rooted in the comparative, functional, and typological insights. Yet much sociolinguistic scholarship misrepresents structuralism as reductive, reinforcing a binary between human-centred constructivism and supposedly dehumanising structuralist approaches. This strawman framing obscures how structuralist and functionalist traditions have long engaged with complexity, interconnection, and multi-level systems. We argue that constructivist sociolinguistics, despite its emancipatory ambitions, remains entangled in colonial, capitalist, extractivist, hegemonic, and anthropocentric frameworks. This risks limiting its capacity to contribute to decolonial and more-than-human perspectives.

As an alternative, we turn to ecolinguistics, which foregrounds the interconnectedness of life and the stories we tell about it. By re-situating humans within planetary and cosmic systems, we open sociolinguistics to models such as dynamic systems theory, which enable us to account for societal-level trends without reducing individuals to flattened datapoints. Quantitative methods, far from being inherently reductionist, can be repurposed with care and ethical intentionality, much like ecological models of variability in nature. Ultimately, we propose that embracing ecolinguistic and more-than-human perspectives allows sociolinguistics to move beyond dichotomies, dismantle extractive narratives, and foster econarratives that support just, interconnected identities as citizens of Earth.