Language and ecology: A content analysis of ecolinguistics as an emerging research field

•This study is the first quantitative meta-analysis of ecolinguistics from the perspective of journal publications.•A total of 76 journal publications on ecolinguistics between 1991 and 2015 were analyzed.•The results indicate a promising growth of ecolinguistics as an emerging subfield of language and communication studies.•The results also suggest current limitations and future research agenda of ecolinguistics.