Mélodine Sommier, University of Jyväskylä 

 fri 16.5. at 13.00 – 13.45 

The ‘Ecological Turn’ in Intercultural Communication 

Drawing on literature that is part of the ‘ecological turn’ in Intercultural Communication (Mendoza & Kinefuchi, 2016), this talk will serve to outline what thinking of interculturality and ecology together entails, and what implications this has for teaching languages and communication. While the ongoing ecological collapse affects all countries and species on Earth, accumulated research evidence reveals individuals and countries are far from being impacted the same way (see e.g. Ferdinand, 2022; Keucheyan, 2018; Waldron, 2021). The ecological collapse indeed underlines and intensifies historical and systemic inequalities that permeate societies and the world order. Connecting interculturality and ecology therefore helps highlight the interplay between social and environmental injustices and prompts us to examine and dismantle historical injustices (re)produced through and about land and people. The space of (intellectual) convergence conjured up by connecting interculturality and ecology invites us to think beyond dichotomous ideas of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, ‘nature’ versus ‘culture’, and ‘humans’ versus ‘non-humans’ (Mendoza & Kinefuchi, 2016). Connecting interculturality and ecology is an invitation to decenter research and teaching from Euro-western-centric views and associated epistemic injustices. 

 As will be addressed in this talk, the ‘ecological turn’ has important implications for redefining what is considered “intercultural” and what counts as “language”, and for moving away from anthropocentric viewpoints that reject non-humans and interspecies communication (see e.g. Puvaneswaran, 2023; Hermes et al., 2023).