Activism as Academia: Insights from the 4th International Ecolinguistics Conference (ICE) – Odense, Denmark

This August I had the opportunity to travel to beautiful Denmark again, as I did for the Critical Discourse Analysis last year. But unlike last year, in the ecolinguistics conference I not only heard wonderful talks, I also witnessed a new and enlightened branch of ecolinguistics forming. The experience this year at the historic and quaint Odense (did you know it was pronounced Ooo-n-se?), filled me with renewed hope that academic work can be a form of activism and promote justice. But let me back up here and start from the beginning.

It all started at lunch on the first day. Links started forming between members of a small group, when it slowly became clear that the plant-based items in the buffet were few. And far. Between overflowing trays of dead flesh piled high in various shades of pinks and reds, we managed to scrape the bottom of a single hummus bowl.

A pile of dead flesh? No thanks.

 

What would be our group, started talking around that single bowl of hummus, each piling up dry salad leaves, spoonful of hummus and reaching for the bread. Buzzing after Prof. Arran Stibbe‘s inspirational keynote, we sat together around a table, surprised at the seeming incongruity between the lunch options and what we believe the ecosophy of most ecolinguists should be.

Our table was spearheaded by Stibbe and his pioneering work establishing the International Ecolinguistics Association and developing one of the first ecolinguistic frameworks in his genius book and free online course , which I follow in my research and from which I draw inspiration for my own work.

In fact, it was Stibbe’s work that first outlined the need for an ecosophy, or ecological philosophy, against which to judge the stories or discourses we identify in the texts we analyse. Our group’s shared ecosophy united us, and it is a strong moral compass that guides us in our daily lives as well as in our work.

But what does it mean to be an (eco)- linguist?

This is a question that was asked by Michael Halliday, the father of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) whose speech at the Thessaloniki conference in 1990 is considered to have been the lightening that gave impetus for the growing branch of ecolinguistics that we are currently working in. This ecolinguistics is concerned with identifying  language used to construct beneficial or destructive stories about the environment, and nonhuman animals. Being critical about the way organisations (made up of individuals) use language to construct a particular worldview in turn creates a particular relationship with nature. The way we think about animals, for example, is socially and discursively constructed. Language does not passively reflect reality, it creates it. Therefore, we should think, speak and act in ways that cause the least harm.

Being a linguist means being socially and environmentally accountable. Sociolinguistics, for example, is a kind of practice that engages in social intervention. For example, the famous sociolinguist William Labov engaged in promoting a different understanding of African American Variety English (AAVE). He defended AAVE as a complex, and most importantly, valid variety of English, arguing that students speaking the variety should not be subjected to discrimination for their dialect, perceived as deficient.

Ecolinguistics, Stibbe explains, is the consilience of linguistics and ecological science – an interdisciplinary field that takes the best of two knowledge sciences to create a new discipline in which the way people interact through language, or languaging, creates and recreates social reality. But it does not stop there, because the way we language, has enormous consequences for how we, humans, behave towards one another, other nonhumans and the natural environment. The environmental crises, the sixth mass extinction, the Amazon fires, the climate crisis – all of these are not environmental problems as such, they are a direct result of human activity. Every human activity is done through languaging: from texts online, speeches, videos, posters and adverts – you name it.

 

 

 

One of my favourite quotes from Stibbe’s keynote was from Gus Speth, the founder of the World Resources Institute who described the environmental crises as being rooted in “selfishness, greed and apathy’, emphasising accurately that these problems are governed by human activity, human qualities. For Speth, the solution is a “spiritual and cultural transformation, but scientists don’t know how to do that”. Therefore, as Stibbe says, bringing together language and ecological sciences can help create a better understanding of how to tackle the necessary changes. As Stibbe elegantly offers: “One path is through investigating and preserving linguistic diversity, and by doing so protecting the remaining cultures that aren’t built around accumulation and greed. Another path is through analysing the role of language in forming the stories that underpin our unsustainable industrial civilisation, questioning their impact on the ecosystems life depends on, and contributing to the search for new stories to live by”.

Indeed, as identified by Gus Speth, a significant number of theorists agree that the environmental crisis is rooted in culture, and education is a powerful tool for effectuating change. Emile Farmer‘s research concentrates on developing a syllabus that would enable students to think critically and develop a deeper cultural perspective on nonhuman animals and our relationship with them. He sees language and education as an artifact of culture, and teachers are well-placed to help their students develop the skills to question environmentally destructive discourses.

What’s your beef?!

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Stibbe speak on a number of occasions and although he speaks of some of the most difficult, heartwrenching challenges we face, he has a way of offering hope and ways of action for change. He unapologetically demonstrates the destruction and cruely involved in the meat industry, giving discourses around meat a key place within ecolinguistics since they influence who eats who (a key ecological relationship) and encourage or dissuade people from acting in ecologically destructive ways. In fact, the criticism of meat was given a prominent stage in Alwin Fill‘s keynote as well, placing a strong emphasis on the ecological destructiveness of meat in his presentation.

This is a really poignant point for me: words are important, but action speaks. Steve Jenkins, co-founder of Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary and dad to Esther the Wonder Pig, recently commented on the Amazon Fires in response to many people’s reactions. Many people offered #PrayForTheAmazon. Jenkins stresses that prayers with no follow-through are meaningless. Without modifying our behaviour and choices, without acknowledging our contribution to the destruction, prayers are futile.

Diego Luis Forte‘s talk addressed just that –  the culture and history of Argentina are so deeply drenched in meat, it has become nearly impossible to disentangle Argentina’s national identity from its meat industry that has become so defining of numerous social and cultural discursive practices of Argentinians for the past 200 years. These discourses create frames, cognitive stories in people’s minds, that they come to constitute the dominant worldview and make it difficult to imagine different ways of living. Diego analyses emerging counter-discourses in images and texts of pro-animal street campaigns that offer alternative stories to live by: compassion and kindness to all living beings.

Not far away up north in the U.S., counter-discourses to the veal and dairy industry are analysed by Ivy Gilbert. Evaluating sexist and speciesist discoursive practices in the industry, Ivy elegantly and clearly demostrates the narratives in the texts, subsumed in ideological prejudice in the veal and dairy industries, and offers ways in which animal rights organisations may challenge these destructive and unjust practices.

But how can veganism grow and have a wider reach, considering the negative stereotypes that are so discursively entwined in the term itself? ‘Vegan’,  and ‘Veganism’, index to many (including to my pre-vegan self) a variety of negative attributes, as Mario Leto’s research of vegan cookbooks reveals. However, vegans are already making a significant dent in the animal industry’s profits by chosing plant-based products, recognising that “a vegan lifestyle [is] a significant advocate for a transition to sustainable eco-civilizations”. Vegan cookbooks work to counter the negative stereotypes vegans are desparate to shake off, by demonstrating that the food can be easily and cheaply made. Vegans don’t just eat leaves, have protein deficiency and are sad and wasting away. It’s a fun, tasty cornucopia!

how is it that some animals receive a status of being ‘at risk’, such as hedgehogs in my research, or whales, or pandas, while others are not perceived to be in danger, even though their lives are at risk every single day: chickens, cows, fish, turkeys, cats and dogs, pigs, horses and others?

How can vegan and environmental campaigns create new stories to live by?

Complementing Mario’s work, campaigns to increase awareness and inform the public about veganism are examined in Alena Zhdanava’s project on the way in which nonhuman animals are represented in vegan campaigns. What I really liked about Alena’s work is her outlining of her vegan ecosophy and the values inherent within such as: freedom, life, compassion, equality, and morality. She then discusses whether the way in which animals are represented in the campaign align with her values.

Working on environmental and social online campaigns of Greenpeace, The Green Party, Freedom United and The Story of Stuff, Paul White highlights the different communicative approaches adopted by the groups. 

What about free-living nonhuman animals?

Alison Moore’s keynote brought forth issues I’m thinking about in my own research: how is it that some animals receive a status of being ‘at risk’, such as hedgehogs in my research, or whales, or pandas, while others are not perceived to be in danger, even though their lives are at risk every single day: chickens, cows, fish, turkeys, cats and dogs, pigs, horses and others? One reason, Moore argues, is that both dominant and progressive discourses conflate the interests of animals as individuals with the interests of species. This continues to feed into the different hierarchies between different species, and between humans and nonhuman animals. The individual/species divide is an issue separating different approaches in animal studies: welfarist approaches, animal rights approaches, but as Moore points out, a systematic attention to language is absent in these fields. How are different animals individuated or genericised in discursive practices and how do these pattern differ across registers? The result of this analysis are important to inform ways in which organisations and campaginers can resist specisist language.

It brought tears to my eyes to be sitting in among many who heckle at a video made by the dairy industry, featuring ‘happy cows’. To me, it means I am no longer alone – I’ve come home and change is coming.

Alison Moore on individuation and genericist language

 

Speciesism is a form of racism, homophobia, and ableism. Social justice is extended to environmental and animal justice in Mai Kuha’s keynote on speciesist language and the tools used by PETA to advocate alternatives.  When animals are talked about in derogatory terms through idioms and metaphors for example: smell like a pig, fat cow and the like, it influences the relationship we create with them, and most importantly: defines how we treat them. The world is arranged according to the priorities set by humans, and animals are relegated to a resource used liberally. By looking at language reform and drawing from previous studies that have examined feminist and gender language reform, Kuha argues that getting rid of speciesist language itself is not enough to enact change in the way animals are perceived, just as eliminating sexist language is not sufficient to bring about the end of sexism.

 

 

We may have been a minority group in the niche discipline of ecolinguistics, but we were heard and we have effectuated change from day one (in the next few days, more plant-based dishes appeared). In fact, Marianna Roccia reported on her recent research with Jessica Hubini-Hampton showing the wide reaching effect the free online ecolinguistics course had on its audience. Having taken the course, participants have reported that the course helped them critically evaluate, question and resist stories they have worked through. So, it is not that a new generation is emerging (some of us are not THAT young), nor is it an exclusive members’ club. For now, it is a minority group that is diligently and thoroughly engaging in research that bears consequences for the here and now, and is already causing a ripple effect in the community.

There was a palpable shift in thinking and acting, and an electric current of action around our tightly-packed lunch table. Between grumbles about the food and tiredness from travel, the future of ecolinguistics, a group of not only great thinkers but doers is forming.

So while I was dissapointed for having missed this year’s Animal Rights March in London, I am extremely proud, excited and hopeful to be a part of this growing community, and to have been even a small part in effectuating change at the lunch table, and hopefully sowing the seeds in others’ hearts and minds.

I would like to thank Prof. Arran Stibbe for his encouragement and never ending support, and to the scientific committee that provided me with the opportunity to attend the conference.  A big thank you to the organising committee, Sune Vork Steffensen and the student volunteers who made my visit easier and pleasant.

And finally, thank you to the Grantham Centre for their support, without which, I wouldn’t have been able to attend!