Translating climate change | BSR Online

This event will take place via Zoom and requires advance registration. 

Emily Apter (NYU), Federico Federici (UCL), Anna Lora-Wainwright (Oxford), Loredana Polezzi (Stony Brook), Antonia Walford (UCL). Chaired by Andrew Barry (UCL) and Florian Mussgnug (UCL)

It is accepted that climate change is a global problem, yet the ways in which climate change is spoken and written about are far from universal. There are significant differences in the ways in which the understandings of, for example, environment, crisis, climate, transition, and sustainability are articulated in different languages. Given the centrality of language and mutual understanding to the development of actions at a global level, this panel raises two sets of questions, discusses their significance, and considers how they may be addressed: 1) what are the most salient differences in the way that climate change is articulated across dominant and minority languages including the languages of indigenous people?; 2) how is climate change differently conceptualised in policy and science, on the one hand, and everyday life, on the other? The panel brings together contributions from linguists and researchers in the environmental humanities with anthropologists and geographers experienced in fieldwork on environmental problems.