The ethnoterminology of Mundurukú Tupi-language and the contributions of ecolinguistics

Abstract

Ethnoterminology studies the terms found in the discourses of an autochthon community’s expertise. For each ethnic context, there will be different terms, or ethnoterms. In order to do this, it is necessary to recognize that these communities have their own expert knowledge. Since 2009, we research the ethnoterms of the rich healing and care systems of Mundurukú people. Besides the theoretic and methodological grounding of the two fields that compose Ethnoterminology (Ethnolinguistics and Terminology), recently we began to consider the Ecolinguistics, since it embraces the relationship between language and environment, understanding language as a component of an ecosystem, which is seen as the product of the relationship Territory (T) + People (P) + Language (L). When we analyze a language and its ethnoterminology, we dapart from a cultural linguistic proposal and include the ecological view of Ecolinguistics, mainly because our object is a people’s traditional medical wisdom, which necessarily involves natural resources, offered by its own Territory. In addition, there is no doubt that the ethnoterms employed in this medicine undergo direct influence of the available resources; thus, environmental and territorial losses imply cultural and linguistic losses. For this reason, the Lexical construct of Econlinguistcs must integrate our Ethnoterm construct and the epistemology of our Ethnoterminology.