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Abstract

In this talk, I will introduce languaging through an ecolinguistic perspective, defined not as the use of a fixed linguistic system, but as coordinated activity in which wordings play a part (Cowley & Fester-Seeger, 2023). Languaging, as a form of human agency, allows individuals to actively shape their environments, identities, and relationships through concerted verbal and bodily acts. By foregrounding concepts such as soft powers, enlanguaged cognition, emplacement, and semiotic assemblages, I will discuss how ecolinguistic perspectives can inform both language teaching and community outreach.

Two undergraduate courses, SLS 218 (Introduction to Second Language Learning and Technology) and SLS 250 (Languaging and Cross-Cultural Wellbeing), serve as case studies to explore how languaging shaped course design, pedagogy, and reflective practice. I will illustrate how the courses moved beyond traditional notions of language learning to cultivate languaging as co-action, self-construction, and affective attunement to others. Students were invited to reflect on their lived experiences, use bodily and verbal coordination to navigate cultural differences, and develop awareness of the links between language, wellbeing, cognition, and action.

By analogy, I propose that this approach aligns closely with Multiʻōlelo’s outreach mission, especially in fostering interdepartmental dialogue, campus-wide collaboration, and inclusive recruitment strategies. Rather than focusing solely on additional language learners, ecolinguistic pedagogy helps all students appreciate how language mediates cultural becoming, emotional intelligence, and ecological action. Through these examples, I aim to show that ecolinguistics is not merely a perspective, but a transformative practice, one that cultivates epistemic change and human becoming within and beyond the classroom.

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Dongping Zheng is originally from Changchun, historically Manchuria in China. She first became passionate about creating an East-West relevant model of teaching and learning languages when she found an English language school. She has been fulfilling her passion in various contexts of teaching, in multitudes of design-based research projects, and serving local and international communities. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Connecticut, Connecticut. She embraces ecological perspectives in her applied work and is a board member of The International Society for the Study of Interactivity, Language, and Cognition. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

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