Emotional competence in Foreign Language communication: ecolinguistics and applied aspects

Abstract

The relevance of the study stems from the growing importance of foreign language communication in intercultural, digital, and educational environments, where linguistic accuracy alone does not ensure effective interaction. In these contexts, emotional regulation, rapport building, and maintaining a respectful communicative tone are essential. The study aims to identify the ecolinguistic and applied dimensions of emotional competence in foreign language communication, focusing on written, oral, digital, and lingua franca discourse. A qualitative-quantitative corpus-interpretive approach was employed using open corpus resources, emotion-related lexical tools, survey data, descriptive statistics, and coding into five analytical categories. The findings indicate that emotional competence is primarily expressed through hesitation markers, self-correction, clarification, reformulation, mitigation strategies, supportive responses, and repair moves. The results also demonstrate that linguistic uncertainty does not necessarily lead to communication failure when accompanied by appropriate regulatory strategies. The study proposes an applied ecolinguistic model integrating emotional awareness, emotional regulation, communicative adaptation, ecological interaction, and communicative outcomes. The model can be applied to foreign language discourse analysis, the design of educational activities, and digital language feedback systems. The findings contribute to improving foreign language education and provide a basis for future validation of the model in authentic educational, online, and professional intercultural communication contexts.