Explore the Power of Language in the Culture Lab

Above image: Elettra Carbone stands beside her pop-up case in the Culture Lab

Although the Power! exhibition in the UCL Culture Lab has recently been deinstalled, we have extended the run of a pop-up case curated by Elettra Carbone, Associate Professor in Norwegian Studies, Scandinavian Studies, UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS). Elettra will run a range of workshops over the coming months on its themes.

By taking an innovative approach to language learning using artworks and objects from UCL’s collections as starting points, the Power of Language case reveals some surprising insights into how language and culture are linked.

We spoke to Elettra about the case and the engagement activities she’s running alongside it:

Your pop-up case explores the relationship between Power and Language. Can you explain why you chose this subject?
Language is such an integral part of our lives and of humankind in general that I think it is easy to take it for granted and underestimate its power. As linguist Carol Genetti points out, language is not only important on an individual level but is ‘the principal means by which societies are constructed and cultures are developed’ (Genetti 2014: 4). The case is an invitation to stop and think about the relationship between power and language using different examples and three broad themes: ‘language and ideology’, ‘language and the world’ and ‘language and culture’.

Image credit: Isaac Crukshank, French Happiness, English Misery, 1793, etching, hand coloured (UCL Art Museum, LDUCS-10264).

On a personal level, ‘Power and Language’ is a topic that has permeated my private and professional life for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a household of language enthusiasts, ended up myself studying Norwegian as an Italian in London and today I teach Nordic Studies at UCL having also worked extensively on the promotion of foreign languages, multilingualism and language awareness in various educational settings. 

Some of the works in the case are from UCL’s collections used in the Language and Culture Show and Tell series. Please tell us a bit more about the series.
‘The Language and Culture Show and Tell’ series was a project that came out of the Covid-19 pandemic and has, since then, evolved in all sorts of exciting and unexpected directions. In 2020 I was Widening Participation (WP) and Outreach Tutor for SELCS (School of European Languages, Culture and Society) but had really been working with WP since 2016. My aim has been from the start to design a comprehensive WP strategy for the promotion of languages that involved colleagues across SELCS and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities but also more widely across UCL. During the pandemic, when in-person activities had to be paused, I focused on finding ways to provide learners of all ages and teachers with freely available online resources promoting innovative approaches to foreign language learning and multilingualism. 

‘The Language and Culture Show and Tell’ series is a set of these resources. It consists of language tasters and related materials created around objects mostly from UCL Art Collections. In January 2023, the series also became the basis of the UCL Art Museum exhibition called ‘Not Just Words: Learning Languages through Art and Objects’, which I co-curated with Dr Andrea Fredericksen (Curator, UCL Art Museum). I think the series and the exhibition have shown how a collection-based approach to language teaching can successfully promote at the same time the importance of language awareness and the relevance of university collections to academic and non-academic audiences. I was thrilled to see how the showcase encouraged more tutors (across UCL and beyond) to create similar collection-based tasters as Ancient Greek, Faroese, Hebrew and Romanian joined the series in the course of 2023 and 2024. In fact, we very recently added yet another taster (generously supported by the Centre for Humanities Education) on Academic English and we hope to add more very soon!

Image credit: Put on OLR: Plan of London, from Civitates Orbis Terrarum (volume 1, plate 1), by Franz Hogenburg, published by Georg Braun, etching and engraving with hand-colouring on paper, 1572 (UCL Art Museum, LDUCS-4787).

Can you highlight one object from the case and talk about why you chose it and why it is significant?
The case features one of the most recent videos to join the ‘Language and Culture Show and Tell’ series, namely the one on Faroese language and culture. Faroese language used to be taught at UCL but, as we currently did not have the in-house expertise to produce a video taster on a Faroese, we worked closely with the University of the Faroe Islands to produce this. It all began when I became curious about a work of art displayed in one of our offices in a former room of the Department of Scandinavian Studies. The image, which is likely to be a print or reproduction, features a common Faroese motif: the sea in the background and people (probably fishermen) in the foreground. Thanks to the help of The Representation of the Faroe Islands in London and The University of the Faroe Islands, we were able to establish that the image represents a painting by Thomas (Tommi) Arge (1942-1978), a famous Faroese painter. This image later provided the inspiration for the video taster Bjarni Steintún (University of the Faroe Island) created, which gives a glimpse of Faroese history and culture and, particularly, of how the sea and weather have influenced them and Faroese language.  

You’re hosting a range of engagement activities related to the Power of Language case, please tell us more about these. 
The pop-up case will be the centre of a range of Widening Participation and Outreach activities organised for this summer. This are part of a programme organised by my colleague Christine Sas, SELCS’s current WP and Outreach Tutor. 

One of our Language and Culture Taster Days on 10 June will take place at UCL East. These are days we organise for non-selective state schools that want to give pupils (Y8-Y12) a taster of university life through a day focusing on languages. A workshop with the case will be one of the activities on the programme alongside a campus visit, a session on how and why learn foreign languages and a surprise language taster. 

This year we will be launching a new Non-Residential School Summer School called ‘Languages at Work’ which will focus on exploring different careers with languages. One day of this summer school (25 June) will be spent at UCL East using the case as a starting point to discuss language in displays and curation. 

We will also be spending a day of our WP Y12 Language and Culture Residential Summer School (on 23 July) at UCL East working with the case. 

Last but not least ,we are hoping to organise a Y6 Language and Culture Taster Days (date to be confirmed) to engage with local primary schools, so watch this space!

More information on how schools and individuals can apply to participate will appear soon on SELCS’s WP and Outreach page.

The case features a range of postcards written by some of our students in different languages (Dutch, Finnish, French, Norwegian and Spanish), but we would love to know more about languages in the local community! So come and explore the case during UCL Culture Lab’s opening hours, watch some of our video tasters, grab a postcard (or two) and add to our collection of postcards by writing your own using your language/s. 

Further information

The UCL Culture Lab is open to the public Wednesday afternoons 2 - 5pm, the first Saturday of the month at 11am - 4pm or by appointment.

The Power of Language case will be on display until the end of July 2025 You can find Power of Language in Case 5 at the Culture Lab. Case 5 is available to UCL staff and student for proposals of pop-up exhibitions. We will be doing an open-call in July for new ideas and projects.