Malinche mediating between the Spanish and the Americans (Source: Lienzo de Tlaxcala, mid 16th c)
We live in an age of crisis, as humanity confronts an ever-escalating climate and environmental disaster, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a steep decline in social and political trust. How to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters presents a set of fundamental collective action problems. Collective action can only come about through communication. That’s why language and communication need to be written into robust disaster prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery.
Social and linguistic exclusion go hand in hand
Those who bear the brunt of disasters are often the most marginalized members of society. One aspect of their marginalization is their linguistic exclusion. Linguistic exclusion can take many forms and the most pertinent language and communication barriers relate to:
- A mismatch between the language chosen for public communication and the language repertoires of the target audience
- A mismatch between the medium chosen for public communication and the literacy levels of the target audience
- A mismatch between the channels chosen for public communication and the channels accessible to the target audience
Where these mismatches pile up, as they often do, the result is, first, that excluded groups may lose out on vital information. Second, social fragmentation and loss of trust are likely to follow. These can deepen inequalities further and may result in a vicious circle working against constructive collection action.
Crisis communication in context
Language and communication are fundamental to both the problem and the solution of crises. Students in this year’s postgraduate unit about Literacies in the Master of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at Macquarie University undertook research projects to gain a better understanding of language as both problem and solution in the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of their research projects was devoted to water scarcity in India. Despite receiving good rainfall, lack of access to safe drinking water has reached crisis proportions in India. The problem is human-made and linked to a poor understanding not only of water conservation but wider political processes that impinge on water allocation, contamination, and over-exploitation.
Those most affected by water scarcity are poor rural women, for whom limited access to safe water intersects with low levels of literacy. Solving their water crisis thus must be embedded in participatory communication processes – in their language, communicated orally, and part of mutual, engaged face-to-face interactions.
This video by Hida Fathima Kassim, Ingrid Ulpen, Thi Tuyet Trang Tran, and Xiwen Chen sums up the students’ findings about water communications.
If you want to learn more how water scarcity has been made on the subcontinent, I’d recommend Mohsin Hamid’s novel How to get filthy rich in rising Asia. It illuminates how water has gone from fundamental elixir of life to capitalist commodity through the rags-to-riches story of a poor village boy rising to bottled water tycoon.
Confronting crises throughout history
Ours is not the first generation confronting the destruction of our world, even if we might be the first to do so on a global scale. Disasters and crises are painfully evident to students of language and culture contact. Foundational moments in language history – for instance, the prehistoric spread of Indo-European across Eurasia, the emergence of English out of a series of invasions of the British Isles, or the dawn of English as a global language – all went hand in hand not only with the elimination of other languages but also the destruction and large-scale transformation of conquered civilizations.
How did former generations deal with such crises?
In another postgraduate unit in the Master of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at Macquarie University, Languages and Cultures in Contact, we sought answers to this question by exploring objects of language and culture context that bear witness to the crises precipitated by often violent language and cultural contact. One of our case study objects was chocolate.
Additionally, we traced the stories and experiences of some of the most engaged – whether voluntary or forced – linguistic and cultural mediators. One of our case studies was of the inhabitants of precolonial Sydney who had to face the disaster of British colonization. How did they deal with the havoc wreaked on their world?
We studied the example of the warrior Bennelong, who was kidnapped by the British with the perverse intention to convince him of their kindness and to teach him English. Initially forced into the role of mediator, Bennelong soon actively sought to establish kinship relationships that would bind the Australians and the British together in a set of mutual obligations.
While we do not have first-hand accounts from Bennelong and the other First Australians who had to become crisis communicators as they confronted the destruction of their world, some of their stories can be gleaned from the accounts of the conquerors, as Inga Clendinnen does in her historical ethnography Dancing with strangers:
Inga Clendinnen "Dancing with Strangers"
In this thread students @MQLinguistics read Clendinnen's historical #ethnography based on the diaries of the officers of the 1st fleet to learn about #InterculturalCommunication between British colonizers and Sydney's Indigenous people pic.twitter.com/dfm6DbHNU7
— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) October 7, 2021
Women as linguistic and cultural mediators
Historical ethnography can also give us insights into the experiences of cultural mediators in the Americas. In precolonial American societies, women had long played roles as cultural mediators. Restoring peace after conflict and war was a role for which linguistically and spiritually gifted girls were trained for from a young age in some societies. The aim was that they would be able to act as interpreters and mediators by forging new kinship relationships and mutual obligations so as to minimize violence and suffering on both sides.
Some American societies tried to use this tried and tested approach to mediate inter-ethnic conflict in their encounters with the Spanish or British invaders, too. Some multilingual and multicultural women communicating at the frontline of the invasion crisis have gained ever-lasting fame and the names of Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea are still familiar today. These larger-than-life characters provide fascinating case studies in crisis communication on two levels: first, as intercultural communicators in their own right, and second, as the symbols of intercultural contact into which they were molded by later generations.
This video by Brynn Quick, Lydia Liu, and Vanessa Sanchez-Guayazan introduces these three women as misremembered linguistic interpreters and cultural ambassadors:
Preparing crisis communicators
In her book Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea: Indian Women as Cultural Intermediaries and National Symbols, Rebecca K. Jager argues that the precolonial societies into which these women were born had processes and procedures in place to prepare for crises by identifying and training talented girls to become linguistic and cultural mediators.
Malinche, for example, received an elite rhetorical education through the medium of Nahuatl before being sent to live in a Mayan trading hub, from where she was given to the advancing Spanish. This way, she already was an experienced language learner and intercultural communicator by the time she became the interpreter, advisor, and lover of the Spanish commander, Hernán Cortés. In a sign of respect from both sides, the Spanish bestowed the honorific title Doña Marina on her, and the Americans used a honorific title in their language, Malintzin. From what we can gather from the historical record, it seems that Malinche genuinely believed that accommodation between the Americans and the Spanish might be possible, and that she was prepared to work towards bringing about a joint future.
To return to the present day, what processes and procedures do we have in place to prepare the next generation of crisis communicators? How could those processes and procedures be strengthened and improved?
This work is licensed under a
I am really glad to be in the whole unit with Ingrid and other classmates. After this whole semester I am able to see a greater insight of how linguistic literacy can relate to other issues in society especially the emerging crisis of the COVID-19. Because each country in the world is becoming more and more multicultural, such crisis can push the government to think more about how to balance the language use that can be understood by the population. As can be seen, before the COVID-19 arrived, many country tended to use only their national language in their country, yet this crisis seems to raise the awareness of the literacy of minority groups.
Thanks, Professor Ingrid, for sharing this interesting article.
In my opinion, Covid showed us the bad and good sides of many of our political leaders and how the world has become increasingly globalised and interconnected because of social digital media. Therefore, various crises came out to the light to show us the incompetence of many political leaders who should have been prepared to handle communications quickly and effectively in both good times and bad. On the other hand, it brought us together as a community to deal with this situation, and many governments for example Australia recognize the presence of different languages in most of its communications. Also, this pandemic gave us a big lesson about how important it is to communicate the right things at the right time makes a remarkable difference between a disaster and a comeback.
Thanks, Ingrid for another great topic.
I totally agree with the other students’ opinion on the crisis, especially on the current COVID situation. For instance, in my country, part of the population is still in a nomadic lifestyle. Those people who live in isolated rural areas, always tend to be left out of important information and become the victim of any crisis. There are many reasons here, for example, literacy, technological affordance, living far from the community etc. It is very important that these people need to be informed, acknowledged and communicated through those essential information and government officials and agencies need to reach out to these people especially during crises.
Thank you, Enkhzaya! You make such an important point that is true internationally: rural populations are too often forgotten and neglected.
Thank you Ingrid for the interesting post. I really agree with the idea that ‘language and communication need to be written into robust disaster prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery’. Especially nowadays we are all experiencing COVID-19 pandemic, we need to work together to conquer this pandemic, and we need to use language to express what consequences that COVID-19 have brought to the whole world, so that everyone can have the awareness of the seriousness of COVID-19. And all the countries should help and learn from each other in terms of preventing the spread of COVID-19 rather than blaming with each other, of course, this is also based on the communication. But, to be honest, obviously, the communications among countries and countries with citizens do not achieve these purposes so far. Because of the inappropriate communication, the whole world spends long time on this issue, while it still exists and we even do not know when this can stop. If we communicate properly to stop COVID-19 together, this issue will not become worse. Besides spoken communication, I believe written language should also be used to solve this problem, as written is a communication as well, and government or authorities can use written language to express the terribleness of COVID-19 and appeal people to conquer this pandemic both on printed papers such as newspapers, books and magazines and on online webs.
Thanks, Yuxuan! It really is difficult not to feel regretful and despondent about the global COVID-19 response: if the whole world had locked down for a few weeks when the pandemic was declared in early 2020, it would all be long over by now, and so many fewer lives and livelihoods would have been lost …
Yes, that’s true. And another sad thing is that people always blame government instead of reflecting themselves.
Hi Ingrid,
In times like these during the COVID-19 pandemic, crisis communication has never been more important than now. One thing I have noticed in Australia is that there is communication done by official social media accounts from NSW Health as an example to spread information about how to keep safe, even in languages that I have never heard of like Karen language.
I saw one of your responses in the forum here saying that there are issues with social media and that it is a double-edged sword – I 110% agree with that. Whilst the world has opened up communication to the rest of the world, and we’ve never been more exposed to information – there is so much fake news happening and so many misleading reporting that happens. Within a few clicks, communication especially during a crisis can turn itself completely and the audience do not know who to trust.
Crisis communication has been a vital part of our lives, however even though this communication has never been so close to us, it has never divided people so much as well.
Hi everyone,
People constantly make an effort to find out the most holistic and viable way to ensure effective transmission of information, specifically communication related to natural disaster. However, the inequality between the use of English and other languages in emergency bulletins could cause a failure in accurate information transmission. Additionally, the inconsistency between the language in which disasters are communicated and the linguistic repertoires of the readers could exacerbate the effects of disasters on minority groups. It would be better if multilingual communities could establish additional, local websites and activities, in relevant languages, to connect, inform and educate members about disaster preparedness and disaster resilience.
Thanks Ingrid for your post.
It is fascinating that the British kidnapped the warrior Bennelong with a purpose of teaching him English and showing how kind they were. It sounds hilarious but true because a difference in languages gives out a sense of unfamiliarity, distance and even hostility. During crisis periods, communication is more urgent, so I think in order to prepare the next generation, processes will include effective target messages, information creation, quality control and information delivery. Regarding procedures, they involve an inclusion of a whole community, information being reliable and accessible, caution about different literacy levels among residents, feasibility in which some regions lack basic human needs, let alone high-tech, low supplied products or unlikely practice.
I think the Indian crisis is not a sole example of crisis and language communication. Vietnam is a country with plenty of typhoons and flooding due to its steep mountainous terrains in many places. Lots of efforts had been made through out the years to help the people and rebuild infrastructures throughout the years. In recent years, social media have become the main platform to Vietnamese people to help each other every flooding season. Communication and the movement of human, as well as financial help have been incredibly fast. People can easily donate money and clothes to health flooding victims. However, integrity and transparency have been an emerging problem where anyone could call for charity money online. In my opinion, crisis communication regarding aid and charity should not only focus on the quick informing of people in need, but also the informing of how the help has been carried out and managed.
Thanks, Nguyen! You make such an important point: once the worst of a disaster is over, people loose interest and move on to the next interesting thing, instead of working towards long-term sustainable solutions.
It seems that the responsibility of crisis communication has increasingly fallen to some of the largest companies in the world namely Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The uptake of the Internet by people around the world has made it an effective medium for communicating information and improvements in automated language translation as well as text-to-speech features have helped solve some of the issues discussed in this article. However, these technologies largely fall short of a complete solution. I believe that in this context, an effective crisis communicator is someone who understands how to utilize these technologies to share information among marginalized people. There are well documented limitations and dangers of these technologies that highlight the need for cultural mediators to be well-trained in responding to crises using modern technology. These processes and procedures can be improved by encouraging people interacting with or living in marginalized communities to undergo crisis communicator training online while developing avenues of communication that is appropriate for their local situation.
Thanks, Jeff! Communication technologies are certainly part of the solution. But they are also part of the problem: adding oil to the fire of a crisis through misinformation is more profitable than dousing the flames …
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/25/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-calls-for-urgent-external-regulation
Thank you so much for this post.
In order to comment on it, I did some reading on crisis communication and the first thing that came to my mind was the way crisis has been dealt with in my country for the last couple of years. Although it is quite difficult to sum up what has been going on in Colombia, there has been an excruciating internal war for more than 60 years and the governments that have ruled for most of that time have been characterised by their high levels of corruption, their disregard for the overall population, to name only a couple issues.
From mid-2019 until now, citizens have decided to systematically take their dissatisfaction to the streets and to the web, which has led to national strikes, clashes between protesters and police, and even several deaths. Unfortunately, the crisis response by the government has not adhered to the principles of crisis communication, to put it lightly.
Crisis communication has ethics and humanistic care as its cornerstone and the priority during a crisis is “to protect stakeholders from harm, not to protect the organisation reputation”. Crisis communicators are supposed to communicate with their audience early and to provide clear explanations on what the crisis is like and how it is/will be managed. Crisis communication is also supposed to show concern for the safety of the involved and to show accountability for any involvement in said situation. Unfortunately, none of these aspects has been applied to the way the government has dealt with the crisis in my country.
There is a clear example of how the crisis has been health with by the government that has been news during the last few days. La Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP) (https://www.flip.org.co/index.php/en/) revealed that, during the difficult protests that took place in May this year, government organisations such as the military, the Ministery of Defense, and the police posted on all their networks a message saying that there had been an attempt to hack them. They did not talk with the press and kept quiet for several hours until the Minister of Defense released a message basically saying that there had been an attack aimed to disseminate false information online about the strike to cause digital terrorism. What media and the people understood as a hacking attempt, turned out to be a campaign strategy against “fake news” involving abuse from authority. This campaign would have a negative effect on freedom of speech as it indicated that cyber patrolling was being carried out, and this could potentially affect any online user who posted anything against national security forces.
To deal with the social outburst that was happening, the crisis communication strategy implemented by the government was aimed at placing accountability on an invisible cyber enemy, providing minimal false information on a cyberattack that didn’t happen, and protecting the government’s image. Basically, quite the opposite of what crisis communication is expected to be.
I bring this example so as to illustrate the way crisis communication is handled in some parts of the world. The overall preparation of crisis communicators may be done under the guidelines of ethics, accountability, sincerity, and goodwill; however, in real practice, these fundamental aspects may be bent to accommodate the objectives of only a few.
The preparation procedures for crisis communicators could be improved by increasing focus on equality, ethical responsibility, and humanistic care. By making sure that replies are prompt, clear and accessible to the totality of the audience, that they are sympathetic and that they follow up on the crisis itself so the affected can be accompanied and taken care of. Yes, all these measures would contribute to improving and strengthening crisis communication and its effects on people. However, it seems to be too idealistic in some contexts where the driving forces behind crisis management do not have people’s wellbeing at heart.
Hi again,
I forgot to include my references in my previous post:
On crisis communication:
– https://www.pagecentertraining.psu.edu/public-relations-ethics/ethics-in-crisis-management/lesson-1-prominent-ethical-issues-in-crisis-situations/crisis-communication/
On the social outburst referred to:
– https://flip.org.co/index.php/es/informacion/pronunciamientos/item/2817-los-jueces-de-la-verdad-el-mar-de-mentiras-detras-del-ciberpatrullaje-del-estado
– https://www.infobae.com/america/colombia/2021/10/30/instructivo-que-uso-mindefensa-para-fingir-ataque-cibernetico-pidio-no-contestarle-a-medios/
– https://mobile.twitter.com/flip_org/status/1399438783012016133 (Twitter thread by FLIP)
Thanks, Ness! And here are some references for my response 🙂
Galeano, E. (1971). Las venas abiertas de América Latina. Mexico: Siglo XXI.
Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism. Camberwell, Vic: Penguin.
Reinert, E. S. (2008). How rich countries got rich … and why poor countries stay poor. London: Constable.
Thank you so much, Ingrid!
I will definitely check these out 🙂
Thank you, Ness, for this detailed discussion of crisis communication in Colombia. Latin America has had such a raw deal for the past 500 years and internal elites in collusion with North American and European governments and corporations seem hellbent on extinguishing each flame of hope …
Thanks Ingrid for this post.
The Indian water crisis was really an eyeopener for me. I was first shocked to hear that there was enough water India and that clean water can be used by the whole population if they are properly taught how to obtain clean water. It definitely shows the importance of communication to those who are not educated and make sure they are included in the society.
Not only COVID19 is one the main issues of the world today, there are many other current social issues across the globe. Through this case study of India, it made me wonder about the different issues that have occurred or is still an issue in particular societies and how it can be simply resolved through communication.
Thanks, Hee Won! Communication alone won’t solve crises, of course, but it’s crucial aspect.
The Australian Curriculum for Foundation to Year 10 has several strands that appear to provide a good level of preparation for future communication needs. It views English, including multimodal texts, as an essential social tool. The learning area of Civics and Citizenship includes concepts such as Continuity and Change, Cause and Effect, Perspectives, and Empathy, while Intercultural Understanding is a general capability to be developed in all curriculum areas. In light of significant communication failures during Covid-19 lockdowns in areas with a high proportion of residents of non-English speaking background, and ongoing issues with vaccine hesitancy, it appears that the intention behind the curriculum has not always been achieved by agencies tasked with providing official communications. In Australia, now is a good time to re-evaluate the detail of these strands and the status they are generally given in schools.
Thanks, Ingrid! It seems to me that the Australian Curriculum equates “communication” with “English” and really neglects that communication may occur in a variety of languages.
Crisis communication occurs in part because of cultural misunderstandings. In the world, there are many organisations working to help underdeveloped countries, these organisations also often go to those countries to support many things. However, everything will get back to the way it was when these organisations return head offices. In order for these organisations to better understand the life and culture of the underdeveloped countries, the organisation should have volunteers who are residents and curently living there; and immigrants to working at head office. Residents and immigrants will understand the lifestyle and cultures deeply to provide suitable helps. In addition, the resident volunteers will ensure that there is someone of organisation still stay there to help poor people all the time. Moreover, organisations should regularly update information from volunteers in those and people at head office always plan to take action to help. The volunteers of organisations are in both underdeveloped countries and head office will be easy to exchange information to help the those countries.
Thank you, Frances! These are all great and practical suggestions for development organizations!
Crisis communication is always an obstacle in human interaction. I would like to use COVID-19 pandemic as an example, where most of the communication should be conducted online instead of face-to-face. I agree that language and communication is an essential element in the event of prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery of a disaster. When a disaster happened, it needed many parties to restore the living, and the only way to work together is through communication. However, when one’s language, culture, literacy level, or even accessibility (offline vs online information) is different from one another, the crisis communication is heightened, and recovery of disaster will be delayed and obstructed. Therefore, having one party as the coordinator in managing the communication between people and providing the more diverse information in different language and different method will prevent the crisis communication to happen before, during, and after the event of disaster.
Thanks, Ingrid
Culture and communication are critical subjects, as a new migrant, I found that communicating with the rest of the community is difficult somehow. Language communication is trouble in general for the migrants specifically those with a low literal background. There is isolation the migrants have, and the main reason is the language that was an obstacle for them to communicate with the others and it can cause this isolation between first and second generation of migrants. I think the solution by find projects to engage those migrants in social activities, finding proper jobs that didn’t give them the feel of isolation from others, so they didn’t find there is a social injustice for them.
Thank you, Arakah! You are so right – if we only start to think about inclusive communication when a disaster hits, it’s too late …
Thank you for teaching us over the semester and it was interesting to learn about linguistic injustices that happened around the world when Covid-19 hit. What really stood out was the mismatch mentioned between the language policies, medium, and the channels with the target audience. More could have been done to ensure that the correct message was being sent in different communities and this could have been improved by engaging members of the community to help spread the message. I also agree that preparing the next generation for crisis communication is very important and that it should start early such as from primary education.
Thanks, Grace! I like the idea of communication volunteers. Organizing multilingual and multicultural community members in a volunteer communication force would surely improve our disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
I wish to amend my previous comment, as I lost my point in too many details.
I enjoyed the presentation on women as linguistic and cultural mediators through the stories of Malinche, Pocahontas and Sacagawea. They demonstrated how women in some cultures traditionally played the role as effective intercultural communicators. In Canada, native women played a significant role in first encounters with colonisers. At that time, they were seen as wise women who their tribes looked to for counsel in all matters, including social justice, the challenges of war and communication between tribes and eventually colonists. One tradition, was that during menstruation, women were relieved of all duties, and able to mediate, relax and reflect, in a designated, sacred house. Other women looked after their families and duties. They would often have visions, providing guidance for their tribe. Some native communities are now restoring their cultural traditions. Alkali Lake is one community which has been successful, making a two-part film, playing themselves, called, “The Honour of All: the Story of Alkali Lake” to educate others and tell their story. They began travelling to indigenous communities all over the world, encouraging them to learn and embrace their own traditions, and exchange ideas with other indigenous communities globally. Their success story started with the initiative of the chief’s wife. Numerous examples have illustrated that when women and girls are educated, families rise from poverty, hunger and illness are significantly reduced or completely eradicated and local communities and societies on a global scale, thrive and benefit. In my opinion, women and girls of all ages, can play a key role in effective intercultural communication success within families, communities, small businesses, governments and corporations, locally and globally.
Thank you, Ally! Inequality, including gender inequality, is a large part of all crises, and reducing social inequality is an important means of prevention.
Thank you for sharing this intriguing article. The problem of language and communication barriers mentioned in this article reminds me of the case of ethnic minority communities in Vietnam. To deal with this issue, the Vietnamese government has established many policies to increase literacy rate for these communities such as ensuring basic education for ethnic minority groups. Due to the impact of Covid 19, many schools are closed and online learning is the only choice for them. However, most of them do not have devices and internet connection. Moreover, they do not even have enough digital skills to handle distance learning. This issue raises the urgent need to equip this group of people with sufficient digital skills as well as the accessibility on the internet and technological devices.
Thank you for another insightful article. It is apparent that managing a crisis is certainly no easy task and in developing a communication strategy that is both effective and easily accessible by the entire population, many variables need to be taken into consideration. One key message I learned from our course’s group projects was the value of collaboration between all stakeholders. For a successful collaboration to work, openness and clear communication are needed. If no real collaboration and communication is established, the consequences might be dire. But as a government, you should strive to make accessibility to information fair to everyone as much as possible and aim to learn from past mistakes. Last month, I was very disappointed to read that Auslan interpreters would not be present during most press conferences as decided by the new Premier of NSW. It definitely felt like taking a step back in handling communication crisis and making crucial information available to this group among others.
Hi Emme
This is such a great point. I concur that collaboration between all stakeholders is so important for any successful communication. Particularly in crisis communications it is so essential and can potentially save or destroys lives. I am saddened to hear the Auslan interpreters are not going to be used. I always enjoyed watching them, they are so skilled, fascinating to watch and so essential for so many people’s wellbeing. What a tragic backwards step. Best of luck with your studies.
To the present day, crisis communicators aren’t limited to humans. We have many AI technologies and applications which are being used at various steps of crisis communication. While planning a crisis response plan, we should be taking into account that how effectively we can use technology. Few technologies can help us early identification of the crisis and speedy response. For example, consider a situation where a gunman is trying to enter a bank; the AI technologies can help us detect the gunman and communicate about it to the nearest police station and the security guards without someone having to pick up their phone and dial, which takes more response time and isn’t always possible. On the other hand, we must also acknowledge the current limitations of technologies. For example, while communicating important information in crises situations with a multi-lingual and multi-cultural environment, it isn’t a good idea to rely on tools like google translator. They are good tools indeed, but they aren’t perfect and can make blunders in some cases. It’s always better to have expert interpreters communicate the important information in crises situations to avoid any miscommunication.
Thank you for sharing this fantastic presentation about water communication. I cannot agree more that to deal with any crisis, language and communication are fundamental. Also, the history of people’s recognition of crises and their way to solve them really touched me. Especially the women’s role as linguistic and cultural mediators. I believe women still have a significant contribution in mediating between different parties. And the multicultural and multilingual people play a key role in such practices. A language teacher who teaches students from different cultural backgrounds may also meet some communication barriers and they could also be a mediator to bridge two or more cultures. However, although we have recognized the importance of language and communication, there is a long way to go to solve these crises in history and nowadays.
Thank you, Chen Wang, for your shout-out for teachers!!!
HI Chen
I concur that language teachers can play an essential role in intercultural communications in the classroom. From my experience the classroom essentially can become like a mini UN where students learn about and appreciate each others cultures and how to negotiate friendships and learning experiences together. In my classes I have noticed that at first students tend to hang out in their separate linguistic and cultural groups, but with a little encouragement they start to form friendships which can turn into lifelong bonds with those from other countries and cultures. This can also rapidly improve their English language acquisition because English becomes their common language. I have found that after a few class group cultural field trips together, and a bit of prompting from the teacher, they quickly start making plans to do things together. It also significantly eases the isolation and loneliness many international students feel when studying far from their home and families. Best of luck with your studies.
After reading many articles related to literacy of the people, I realize that to ensure the equal literacy justice is not really easy. Also, the problem of low literacy population is getting more problematic during the pandemic and other global crisis as many low-literate people are facing more struggles to stay inform to update information. Also, it needs more effort from the government to design a clear message that can benefit everyone regardless of their level of literacy. This challenging task will get harder in high level of multicultural society which consists of many ethnic groups.
Thanks, Vatnak! It’s complicated, as you say – that’s the nature of crises, and makes the search for solutions all the more important.
I agree that effective crisis communication needs to be right, credible, respectful, and empathetic. Providing translated materials that has errors takes away its credibility and instils mistrust. It also shows there is a lack of respect for the target group as care had not been taken to create the translation. Finally, empathy can be inculcated through education of the next generation in cultures and languages other than English. Through an understanding and awareness of other cultures, it is hoped empathy can be manifested. This education in culture could simply be in the form of inter-school exchange, between schools in marginalised areas and more privileged areas.
Thank you, Thao! You are right – intercultural communication needs to start in childhood!
This Covid19 pandemic has been the greatest mass communication challenge in history. Sadly, as a global community we failed on a grand scale, with a few exceptions. Non-English speakers, those with low economic status and low literacy levels suffered most. The world has become a connected community like never before which can have a positive or horrific effect. The dangerous ease of deliberately spreading lies and fake news, in order to confuse, divide and encourage hate and racism, for the political gain and profit of a privileged few, has had dire ramifications for many, with few consequences for the perpetrators. Increased regulations and significant penalties for politicians, corporations and social media like Facebook, who deliberately feed the communication misinformation crisis for profit or gain, are needed on a global scale. Most governments indeed failed massively and have an important role and responsibility to improve crisis communications. However, I believe the most effective, holistic, humanistic solutions will come about by connecting communities on grassroots, multilingual level. In particular, providing education and resources to all members equally and in appropriate contexts, and providing effective channels to share successes and solutions between communities is essential. Using appropriate cultural methods of communication, such as the use of loudspeakers in Korea, harnessing art as a medium, like song was used so effectively in Vietnam, and using existing resources such as community centres, mosques and churches is indispensable. Also, it’s crucial to provide effective multilingual education for all everyone, particularly women and girls. As both fabulous presentations so effectively illustrate, the water crisis in India and women as linguistic and cultural mediators, women have long played a significant role as cultural mediators and facilitated communication on a family, community and global scale. Countless examples and research have illustrated that when women and girls are educated, families rise from poverty, wars can be averted and peace increases, hunger and illnesses are significantly or completely averted and communities as a whole and societies on a global scale thrive and benefit. In my opinion, women and girls of all ages, are the key to effective and appropriate global communication successes.
With COVID-19 spreading everywhere, there are traps in the lives of many Chinese people that they may step into at any time, namely various forms of fraudulent activity. In recent years, with the spread of smartphones, online fraud has become a nightmare for many older people. As these older people are “beginners” to the new smartphone, they are less able to distinguish between the truth and falsity of the complex information available on the internet and can easily fall into the trap of fraudsters. In the past two years, many cities have started to download and install the “National Anti-Fraud Centre App”. This app was developed and launched by the Chinese State Council and the relevant departments of the Ministry of Public Security, and once users have allowed it to access their mobile phones, it can monitor fraudulent activity 24/7 and provide advance warning. It must be admitted that at first the public did not know much about the app, some were sceptical about its effectiveness and some even felt it was another scam. The government staff responsible for promoting it changed the way they communicated. Many local communities organized events to inform the community about the app by putting up banners and holding info sessions in the community. In order to encourage people to download the app, the staff have learned the mindset of many older Chinese people (who are attracted to practical giveaways), and at the sessions they give away daily necessities or food to the downloader to encourage them to take up their offer and download the app.
What an interesting example, Alicia! I feel we are like these elderly citizens – caught between fraudsters and surveillance …
Thanks for everyone’s sharing, I was so touched by the above saying that “language and communication are fundamental to both the problem and the solution of crises.” Language crisis definitely is a massive issue in Australia as where is a multicultural country but made a little effort for changing the condition of language crisis. The government seems to regard each resident as having certain English proficiency since most major documents are English-dominance, but the truth is the opposite. In doing so, some people with low English proficiency tend to assimilate into the society, who would pretend to be no troubles in conversation. Long-term ineffective communication between government and individuals can intensify conflicts and reduce trust. I believe that the solutions can be a lot even a small change, the most important thing is how to raise the public’s awareness.
Thanks, Milly! Like you, I am concerned about the long term effects of communication failure. Little misunderstandings may pile up to severely damage social trust.
I absolutely think that active and healthy communication helps us to solve the crisis that we are confronting in the Covid 19 situation. Particularly, there is ongoing debate as to whether the government of South Korea has good communication systems for tackling the issues of Covid. As the government has a robust and transparent system for disclosing the number of the people being infected by the virus daily and people’s movements among places where cases have developed, the public can have awareness of the severity of the crisis and avoid high risk areas. Unlike many other countries, the government is sending the updated messages about this information to individually every moment. There is also daily consultation with representatives where the concerns of the public can be discussed.
However, for the marginalized groups such as laborers from developing countries and multicultural families who do not understand Korean fully may have difficulty accessing this system. To resolve this problem, there should be more support from the government. I think Korean language instruction should be expanded as well as availability of more multilingual resources. Furthermore, noncommercial social platforms which can induce active communication needed to be established for the sharing of information among citizens and residents including expatriates in Korea, and between official bodies and the public. I hope the government especially create the social platform where the marginalized groups can communicate with each other in their languages to prevent them from having misunderstanding and confusion about the crisis.
Thanks, Suyeon! South Korea’s use of communication technologies has been really impressive. I wish there was a coordinated international effort so that countries could learn from each other!
Based on the communication crisis in the case of Indian rural areas, I think that educators and governments should pay more effort to increase literacy rate for people in rural/remote areas, especially females, and communication channels to them. Indian women are undereducated compared to men since they must take responsibilities to collect water and take care of their family resulting in missing schools. They face difficulties understanding or dealing with water savings. Also, in cases of Indonesia and Pakistan, these governments paid effort to provide information in multilingual texts to support multilingual people in rural areas. However, there was a lack of considering real situations and basic services in rural areas to suit with information provided or not. Thus, it is important to implement actions to increase literacy rate, develop more communication channels other than verbal texts for people in rural areas so that they can access, understand information, and behave in proper ways to deal with possible next periods of communication crisis more effective compared past events.
The response to the COVID pandemic in Australia serves as a stark example of the importance of the use of clearly expressed and easily digested rules and principles to keep people safe during a crisis. The multiplicity of regulations across jurisdictions and the opaque nature of official advice during this crisis has led to much harm and damage in the community. This serves to emphasise the importance of communication to all groups as highlighted in this article. Surely any action after a period of reflection needs to include the construction of clear and easily understood information channels in a multiplicity of languages and media that will help people already confused and under pressure.
Lydia
What impressed me most in this article is the water crisis in India. This crisis reminds us of the importance of language communication and multilingualism. In terms of the current linguistic education in the world, I believe government should put efforts first. Firstly, establish a large number of bilingual public schools in marginalized areas and provide more educational opportunities for women. Secondly, declare important statements through official language and other language that local used. For example, the current situation of COVID-19, the measures for locals, and the importance of getting vaccinated against COVID-19. In addition, another point that intrigued me is the gap in literacy rate between men and women in rural areas. I think the government should provide equal opportunities for men and women in education.
Thanks, Lydia! I agree with you whole-heartedly but what do we do if the government fails to act, or is even part of the problem, as is the case in an ever-increasing number of countries?
I would like to elaborate on the crisis communication on the internet following my previous comment. As we assumed that the internet may be the most convenient and accessible instrument conveying information. Fake news and false messages are firstly recognized as obstacles in the way of delivering authentic and useful information. One thing that comes up to me in a debate event is that social media nowadays are serving as another main mediator which can also be efficiently used for communication, specifically, among young people. However, since some of its specific natures (as one of our debaters said) are nurturing young people in a toxic way, either optimizing it or cutting it off are the choices we can make. Still, as it is working on its heydays, and may go further in the future world, communication in the channel of social media may arise some other topics.
(*This one is for APPL8030)
Speaking of crisis communication in COVID-19, I may go back to the first article in relation to literacy events in this pandemic time.
In China, one thing happening around us is that our government is actually doing a good job on offline emergent communication in terms of linguistic repertoire, literacy ability, and communication channel. County and village broadcasts are provided to people who are at a lower level of literacy. Pamphlets, flyers, banners are offered for those who can not get access to the broadcast. The languages used are both in the local dialect and standardized mandarin.
However, online channels here are always undergoing impediments, although it is applicable to deliver information. Apart from linguistic and literal mismatches, fake news is another factor contributing to problematic communication. So, future improvements on information authenticity and authority are, in this context, what we could do.
Thanks, Anka! China has certainly done very well in terms of public health communication. How to combat fake news and misinformation without censorship is a really wicked problem …
I think it’s hard to have one unique form of communication for everybody. Due to different aspects, perspectives, language repertoires, and communicating platforms, it would be better if we communicate through groups of people. I would take my country Vietnam as a case in point. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vietnamese government has spread the news like other countries around the world, but how has the news been spreading should be considered. For our parents’ generation, they could receive new information through traditional news channels. As for young generations like me, we rarely watch news channels like our parents. Therefore, the government has used social media such as Facebook, Zalo (a Vietnamese communicating app) to communicate with young people. For people with a low level of literacy, we have a song about “ how you should wash hands, wear masks” and so on to spread the message. Surprisingly, the song went viral not only in Vietnam but also in some more countries. And for whom limited access to the media, we have this little van running around the town to inform the latest news. To each method of doing, the government can freely adjust the language to be suitable with the target audience to achieve efficient communication.
In the future, or let’s say in the time of my children’s generation, a brand new media platform would be born, and that would be the way to communicate with this generation.
Thanks, Tram! A number of my “Literacies” students last year did research projects about covid-19 communication in Vietnam, and they all confirmed your assessment that Vietnam ran one of the most inclusive and accessible public health communication campaigns of any country we looked at. And the hand-wash song was great 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Dear Ingrid,
As you mentioned in this article, communication is an essential way to resolve crises. Faced with problems such as a mismatch between the medium chosen for public communication and the literacy levels of the target audience, the government should improve the educational level of the public, encourage them to read more, pay attention to the news, and cultivate interests of young people in learning multiple languages. For example, schools offer minor languages training courses, so as to make adequate preparations for the advent of crises. Furthermore, people should establish a sense of crisis. Although we live in a relatively peaceful era, the occurrence of crises is inevitable, so we should learn some effective ways from predecessor to deal with crises.
In the past two years, COVID-19 has had a large impact on people. Therefore, people should realize the seriousness of the epidemic, fulfill their responsibilities and actively respond to the call of the country, such as wearing masks when going out and reducing gatherings. Countries also strengthen communication and cooperation to share positive measures to resolve the crisis together.
Thank you, Siyao! I appreciate your suggestion and I think it speaks to the importance of civic-mindedness and a certain level of collectivism, or dedication to the common good in confronting crisis – as has become apparent from the fact that the most individualistic societies have seen the highest death rates during the pandemic …
Thanks for sharing this informative post, and I can’t believe this is the last post for this semester! I really enjoyed these posts throughout the semester. I can think of an example of crisis communication, which was in the earlier period of COVID-19 in China. China was the first country in the world where the epidemic broke out, and we did not have vaccine or mature control mechanism for this virus. And the time it broke out was also in Chinese lunar New Year, there were a huge number of people flow. New cases emerged and some of them died everyday, and most of people gained information from the Internet, especially from social media where fear and anxiety was greatly amplified through these platforms because not all reports were objective or true. It was an example of communication failure because everyone gained negative feelings through ineffective communication, and that further threatened social order to some extent.
However, it is clear that the pandemic has completely changed the course of human history and we have entered a post-pandemic era. I think crisis will continue to exist in the future as the virus may not be eliminated in a short period, therefore, as the Internet has become the main place for people to communicate and gain information, platforms, especially social media, should be more strictly regulated to conduct effective communication to the public.
Thanks, Xiaowen! Social media have definitely turned out to be a double-edged sword. They will fundamentally change our lives in the same way the invention of printing changed human history. But will this change be driven by big tech, corporations, and state surveillance, or will we find ways to harness their potential to solve crises through more equitable and inclusive communication?
On a different note, I’m glad you enjoyed the posts and please keep reading the future! You can sign up to the “newsletter” in the bottom right corner of the site and that way you can keep in touch and you’ll never miss a post 🙂
As Ingrid mentioned in her lecturer regarding literacy and social justice, facing the Covid 19 pandemic without preparedness is considered a huge disadvantage since people tend to deal with pandemic-related issues unsystematically. I believe that linguistic injustice is one of the main factors that drives people to challenges. Researching this matter should be conducted in as many areas as possible and Covid-19 archives on Language on The Move have been done successfully. One thing I recommend is that the information on these blog posts should be published through more channels, including the media, in different ways namely either spoken or written forms and in various contexts. Many of the case studies in the archives best described the shortcomings in developing countries, and those people were yet to understand the core problems. Disseminating the findings of the archives can increase the awareness of the underlying issues in the communication processes in various contexts, thus enabling people in those contexts to improve and better prepare themselves for any unexpected crisis in the future.
Thanks, Zoe! We are always looking for volunteers to help spread the message 🙂
Thank you, Ingrid. I’ll be the first one to take this chance to share valuable results found in blog posts on Language on The Move, especially in Vietnam. I realize that my country is suffering from linguistic injustice, especially in the pandemic time, and these findings can help my country to improve its communication challenges and gain more experience for dealing with any unexpected crisis in the future.
Thank you, Zoe! And good luck! Hopefully, you’ll be able to share how it goes with our readership sometime in the future!
The topic of “Social and linguistic exclusion go hand in hand” reminds me of Chinese language branches in China.
In China today, minority language rights and language governance organisations are increasingly marginalised. The Chinese government has reduced the use of minority ethnic languages and promotes the use of Mandarin. Participating in, representing, or influencing decisions in minority languages is a form of using power. Many autonomous regions where minority languages are spoken are poor provinces. In such a social context, “a language loses its function once the stable, primitive, ‘place-of-origin’ link between language and place is broken” (Blommaert, 2009).
Reference:
Blommaert, J. (2009). Language, Asylum, and the National Order. Current Anthropology, 50(4), 415–441.
In the face of various disasters, our language is particularly important, because the languages that everyone masters are different, and the languages spoken by the people of each country are also different, so it is very difficult to achieve the ultimate goal of group action . Looking at the global spread of the COVID-19, the control situations in developed and developing countries are very different, especially in developing countries where the population is dense, the sanitary conditions are backward, and the modern information exchange equipment is lacking. People are not deeply aware of the coronavirus. If you can’t understand the prevention methods, the number of people infected with the virus will increase a lot. Language helps us to convey information in order to achieve in-depth exchanges among all races, nations, and countries.
Thankyou for sharing another insight and interesting article Ingrid. I have background of English literature and I always continue to explore contemporary website and articles with interesting poetry, excerpts and novels. I believe that literature is an interesting and intriguing method of communication and it interests people at a spiritual level. I am sharing a poem about covid-19, “My Corona” . This poem shows an intellectual way of addressing and communicating about Corona.
My favourite verse is,
I’ve grown antennae that detect
a six foot field around me.
I’ve developed a fly’s eyes
to see danger on surfaces.
Here’s the link to the website,
https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/poems-on-a-pandemic-coronavirus-inspired-words-from-bay-area-readers
🙂
Thanks for sharing an incredible amount of information relating to crises. We are indeed suffering from many crises and even in the future. Referring back to the Covid-19 crisis, I have to say that this ongoing global pandemic has dramatically affected our health, work, and life. We can not deny its influence on the post-pandemic future. Our mission now is how to cope with these kinds of crises. However, the communication we have been implicating to deal with this crisis management is ineffective. During the lockdown in NSW, I watched the Covid-19 Updates conducted by NSW Health. Surprisingly, many people were reacting ”angry” to the government’s strategies and what was expected to be done by the community. And severe protests were significant pieces of evidence of the failure in crisis management. The preparation for the next generation of crisis communicators would be a complex question because people have different mindsets and communications. However, the benefits of the whole community should be focused on, and specific needs and risks should be carefully reached out. This would make the communication to deal with the crises more effective. As others said, another reason for the failure of crisis management is the powerful tool of communication – the language. Australia is a dynamic multicultural society with a long history of multilingualism. However, why is the communication tool in this case limited? It is clear that we have to consider both the context and the language for communication to deal with these crises.
Thanks, Lynn! The anger we saw in some parts is partly fueled by communications, too: social media are designed to arouse strong emotions, particularly anger, as we recently learned from the Facebook leaks (in case anyone hadn’t noticed). Social media favor divisive messaging because what makes people angry keeps them glued to their screens for longer and thus is good for advertising metrics 🙁
This article actually encouraged me to brush my mind and take a deeper look into the importance of communication. As soon as I read this article and the comments of my lovely colleagues a quote by John Wayne (I am not sure about the actual writer, please excuse me for that) popped into my mind. He says that,
“I am only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand” and as a language student we can understand that communication and comprehension are inter-related and co-dependent. In addition to that, how a message is communicated also influence the effectivity of the message. So it is important to improve and establish better methods and solution to the modes of communication in order to deal with crisis and achieve desired result at personal and global level.
In terms of crisis communication of the present day, I believe that there are more to it than simply language. Despite having communicated in languages that are understandable by the public, the information delivered are often not understood as intended, leading to failure in crisis management. Some possible reasons behind this failure could be from the lack of sufficient information or because of the platform that communication occurs. Mentioning the current COVID-19 crisis, a lot of information were provided through newspapers or television news. Sometimes information lacked reasoning, leading to failure of effective communication (people denying or objecting to follow instructions). Also, with the prolongued crisis, some stopped watching news. In terms of looking to the future, I believe platform – or where communication happens – is very important. Having crisis communication where young generations are present, such as Instagram, Twitter, or other social media, could be more effective in delivering information in the “languages” that the young generation speak.
Thanks, Kim! You are absolutely right – we need to think about communication holistically. Language choice is just one variable in the mix of effective public communication!
Axiom attractive, Jay, but I wonder as to Mr. Wayne’s screen writer: “I am only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand”. Maybe it was penned by one of his publicists? “The greatest undertaking in the world today is to understand and to be understood” looks less and less hyperbolic as the plenitude of decrepitude descends upon this septuagenarian.
During the recent outbreak of COVID19 in NSW, I noticed how poor the communication between the government and different ethnicities in the state was. While English speakers had the opportunity to stay up to date on the number of cases and new restrictions on a daily basis, non English speakers were left not knowing what was going on. We can’t deny the role of community radio stations, newspapers and social media pages in keeping community members up to date, but that was not enough.
Although many brochures and fact sheets issued by governmental agencies were translated into different languages, but also many non-English speakers are illiterate or do not have access to information in their own languages.
During the prime minister daily press conference, there was an AUSLAN interpreter to communicate with people with hearing impairment. Likewise, interpreters for different languages can be used to assure that everyone is aware of any situation. This is to assure that all residents have access to the same information whatever the language they speak is.
Thank you, WAA! Sadly, as a society, we’ve failed the real-life test in inclusive communication!
Thank you for sharing the informative task of the group about Water literacy! I found the pamphlet, articles, and posters are impressive as they have shown how the media in India promote the water shortage crisis in conventional ways. Due to the factors that a variety of languages spoken and low literacy rates in rural areas, the rural residents inevitably are excluded from prompt water information. When considering using language to construct specific literacy for the crisis, it is essential to understand the needs and characteristics of listeners so that we can convey meaningful messages to achieve collective goals. The name of Covid-19 is an excellent example of when all global citizens needed to encounter risky situations. I remember I was required to complete the Covid-19 training module by my workplace and followed by the infection control training. The information about Covid-19 had quickly spread everywhere we went in the forms of posters, advertisements, and news articles. The Covid-19 literacy allows us to understand the importance of preventing it and makes us stay together as a team of protecting ourselves and others.
Thanks, Rhonda! How much we’ve all learned about viruses, contagious disease, lockdown, etc. must be the greatest mass communication challenge in human history. Even the term itself didn’t exist until February 2020 and today it is a universal word that probably all 8 billion humans know …
Sorry about that, I pasted the wrong link! Here is the link to the real-life “Pad Man” (and the movie about him is fantastic!): https://www.thehindu.com/society/the-real-pad-man-muruganantham-before-the-release-of-pad-man/article22658314.ece
Thanks, Brynn! This is a great example (although I’m a bit put off by the fact that it’s yet another man who gets the credit and that a man comes out as the hero of a story about menstruation …)
Here are some links to women-led projects to address period poverty: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/period-poverty-everything-you-need-to-know/
I love the example of the water crisis in India because it shows how powerful grass roots verbal communication is. It’s necessary for governments to attempt to communicate with as many language populations as possible, but as demonstrated above that is often through written mediums. However, as we continue to grapple with the climate crisis (and other crises, including COVID 19), we need to follow the leads of groups who have bypassed official government (usually written) messages and take verbal information and knowledge straight to marginalised communities. The above video about water in India reminded me of this amazing story of the real life “Pad Man” who took sanitary products and health knowledge straight to marginalised communities of women in India: https://www.languageonthemove.com/language-and-communication-in-crisis/
I agree with Monica’s comment, that the best way to do this is to teach children (especially monolingual English-speaking children) more than one language at school so that they can grow up to effectively communicate with other groups of people.
Oh that’s fabulous, thank you!!
I think COVID has shown how badly prepared we were to deal with crisis communication in Australia. A good example was the confusion and distress caused by lockdown at the Flemington public housing towers in Melbourne in 2020. The multiethnic demographic of the residents of these towers, many of whom had had traumatic experiences in the countries they had fled, would have needed sensitive, multilingual communication to explain the necessity of this specific lockdown. Instead, residents initially faced a heavy police presence. They were provided with little information in their own native languages or communication from representatives of their communities. The result was fear and tension. Crisis communication in multilingual communities would require governments to actively and continuously foster relationships with community leaders. Government agencies need to understand these communities, their specific needs and the risks they face in order to provide a more inclusive crisis response. In Australia, it also means moving away from an assumption that everyone can sufficiently understand English. This means making language learning in schools a priority in the same way that we place value on English and maths – this requires more than one or two language lessons a week. Moving away from a monolingual mindset is certainly the first step to effective crisis communication.
Thank you, Monica! Couldn’t agree more about the need for long-term strategies and efforts!
Regarding the Flemington Towers experience, it was so disheartening to see that Sydney went down exactly the same path of a punitive approach a year later in its hotspots in western Sydney …
No comments? Again!
Ingrid has just penned for linguists, intellectuals and academics a secular version of Armageddon!
‘The jig is up’, as Herman Goering ejaculated to Herr Hitler on sighting the first one thousand bomber air-raid over Deutschland.
Boris Johnson sees the writing on the wall.
Crisis upon crisis befell the Roman empire and enervated it in the decades prior to its demise and then – eventually – a new and superior civilization arose in Arabia that provided the impetus for the Renaissance; Mecca (or if you like, Bagdad) and Florence have lost the plot.
Recognition and disseminating of the principle of the oneness of humanity is the first step on the road to recovery.
Thanks, Paul, for taking the lead with your comment! Appreciate it! Do check back in a week or two for follow-up comments – I trust there will be more by then 🙂
Hi Paul
I wholeheartedly agree with your comment and have discussed a version of this in many conversations before. However, people tend to look at me like I am totally mad! However if we look at the evolution of world history it is obvious this is a natural and continual, I would say inevitable process. It is also very obvious for those paying attention that the world order as it exists now is in crisis and on the brink of significant tumultuous change. I hope the next era provides more holistic, systematic equity and social justice in all levels of our multilingual, multicultural societies. I truly hope that we don’t blow ourselves up, and can preserve and protect our planet with all its natural, cultural and lingusitic diversity, in the process, before it’s too late. I truly believe that if all global, environmental, cultural and linguistic communities for all people of all genders, ages, social status and education levels are included, supported and empowered ,the whole world would thrive and we would all be much better off rather than just a privileged few who are successful mostly by the luck of their circumstance. The tapestry of life is so much richer when the beauty of diversity is celebrated, accepted and intricately woven into its’ fabric.