Intersections of Environmental and Language JusticeExploring Pedagogy, Art and Activism
£95.00
Pre-order
Published 30 November 2026
About this book
Responds to the urgent need to confront the ongoing environmental crisis through interdisciplinary insights
- Examines the intersections of language and environmental justice, highlighting not only where these domains already converge but also where such connections are urgently needed
- Brings together an international range of contributors from both the so-called Global South and Global North, representing diverse contexts and places including land and water, villages and classrooms, universities and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs, community spaces, and many more
- Incorporates a wide variety of genres—artistic, conceptual, reflective, research-based, and pedagogical—to acknowledge the importance of multimodal meaning-making and ensure the book is accessible to a broad and diverse readership
- Demonstrates pathways for policy and pedagogical transformation by offering models for researching and representing necessary changes in educational policy, pedagogy, and academic structures and genres
Bringing together an international group of contributors from India, Turkey, Chile, the USA, the UK, Finland and the Netherlands, the book showcases critical, intersectional perspectives that shed light on language as an important lens for understanding and transforming our ecological realities. Through pedagogical, political, artistic and activist approaches, the contributors show that advancing environmental justice and advocating for language justice (can) go hand in hand.
The book explores how environmental and language justice intersect in a variety of different contexts such as language classrooms, social activism, arts, policymaking and community- based research. Featuring a variety of genres, including artistic, conceptual, reflective, empirical and pedagogical pieces, the chapters analyse how language and environmental learning co-occur, how language rights and environmental literacy are intertwined and how activism can be strengthened through attention to both language and environmental issues.
Table of contents
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Foreword
Dina Gilio Whitaker
Introduction: Exploring the intersection of language and environment for social justice
Deniz Ortaçtepe Hart, Johanna Ennser-Kananen & Radhika Borde
PART I: Exploring ecological knowledge and voices of environmental justice
1. Social actor representations in children’s environmental justice narratives: A critical linguistic analysis
Clare Cunningham & Helen Sauntson
2. A critical period for the linguistic encoding of ecological knowledge
David Stringer
3. Language learner, refugee, environmental activist? - Reflections on what researchers (don’t) see
Johanna Ennser-Kananen
PART II – Cultivating sustainability in language and culture education: Transformative approaches
4. Approaching sustainability through interculturality: Lessons from an interdisciplinary and a transformative course design
Mélodine Sommier, Yijing Wang & Ana Vasques
5. From Commodification to Sustainability?: Transforming an Intensive English Program Curriculum for Decoloniality
John Katunich, Di Liang, Jason Litzenberg, Nikki Mattson & Bryan McGeary
6. Environmental Education in the Language Classroom: English as a Foreign Language for Sustainable Futures
Reyyan Zülal Yöney, Adnan Yilmaz & Deniz Ortaçtepe Hart
7. Environmentally Responsible Pedagogy Model in the Second Language Classroom
Zeynep Erdil-Moody
8. Staging Climate Change: Leveraging Drama to Cultivate Environmental Justice in the EFL Classroom
Jepri Ali Saiful & Arif Bulan
9. The Pedagogy of the Oregon Water Values Project: Infusing water justice and activist applied linguistics
Janet Tom Cowal, Melissa Haeffner & Brandy B. Walker
PART III:
Co-thinking and rethinking language and environment for social justice
10. Water we to do?An everyday language framework to achieve water security
Shruti Sengupta, Rinan Shah & Abhishek Mitra
11. Sensing, communing, talking (and not): Academic humans and the culture-nature boundary
Mel M. Engman & Jenna Cushing-Leubner
12. Rooted in the neighbourhood: Place-based education initiatives in the Indian context
Vijayan Jithin, K. M. Adila Farisa & Anjitha Devarajan
13. Ontological Disobedience in Estado Vegetal (2017): Reimagining Communication and Ecological Justice through Non-Human Theatre
Paulina Bronfman
Conclusion: Language, Land, and Justice: A Transepistemic Reflection
Paul Meighan
References
Index