Environmental Ethics in Foreign Language Teaching: an Eco-social Aesthetics Multimodality Dimension

Abstract

As the twenty-first century world ecology state has created the urgent need for wholistic educational projects to be implemented, this article focuses on the actual issue of teaching environmental ethics through teaching foreign languages with an emphasis on the multimodality aspect of both verbalized and non-verbalized eco-social aesthetics as media for ecological meaning development, which constitutes its aim, thus contributing not only to foreign language education but to overall sustainability literacy within the framework of higher education. As a result of the authors’ analysis of research papers in the corresponding field, the status of the pedagogical concept ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS as a fundamental one in modern linguodidactics has been substantiated. An experientially tested outcome approach to teaching environmental ethics within the framework of eco-social aesthetics in the process of teaching foreign languages (English, in our case) has been outlined. It has been revealed that in response to the current eco-social crisis, it is both verbally and non-verbally represented eco-social aesthetics in its multimodal dimensions that can serve as a highly efficient and intellectually challenging vehicle for pursuing integrated environmental, social, educational and cultural sustainability objectives. It has been proved that the application of an art-based eco-social aesthetics foreign language teaching increases students’ eco-language and eco-social skills, as well as a sense of connectedness with their environment. The work is methodologically based on both global educational objectives for environmental language education and internationally established CLIL principles. Our findings demonstrate that the developed ecolinguodidactic strategy with its focus on students’ engagement with the environmental social concerns through multimodal eco-art aesthetics and its verbal representations greatly encourages learners’ critical thinking, decision making and foreign language acquisition.