FEATURES
THOUGHT-
PROVOKING
Performance by
Caroline Bergvall in
Tilbury, 2016 – part of
her Ragadawn project,
which was given a
grant by Language
Acts and Worldmaking
14 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020
thelinguist.uberflip.com
How does language form the world around us and what is
the impact of the pandemic on this, asks Catherine Boyle
I
n Language Acts and Worldmaking, we argue that
language empowers us by enabling us to construct our
personal, local, transnational and spiritual identities
(www.languageacts.org). Language also constrains us,
through the ideological force of the history of these
identities. It is this complexity that we understand as
worldmaking: we shape the world around us through
the language we use and are shaped by the languages
around us. If one language can give us a sense of place
and belonging, learning another helps us move across
time and place, encounter other ways of being, other
histories and realities. For us, language is a material and
historical force that opens us to the world that surrounds
us; it is this belief that informs the work we do.
The project consists of six strands of research that
cover literary and cultural history, linguistics, translation,
performance, digital humanities and pedagogy. These
strands are linked by a shared interest in exploring and
understanding the movement of people and language
across time and space.
We foreground the ways in which learning a language
means recognising how the cultures embedded in it are
shaped by encounters with other cultures and languages.
This is the force of language learning, and Language
Acts and Worldmaking advocates for the potential of the
discipline of Modern Languages to open pathways
between worlds past and present. From the start, our
goals have been imbued with a political consciousness,
which has been strengthened throughout the project.
The beginning was 2014, when we started to develop
our ideas in response to the Arts and Humanities Research
Council's Open World Research Initiative (OWRI), which
called on projects that would have a transformative effect
on Modern Languages in the UK.
1
We took the call as a
Shaping the world
©
THIERRY
BAL
