Ecologies of Multilingual Writing
For many today, our world appears fragmented, fractured, endangered. Even our digital technologies, with their revolutionary power to bring us together, often seem to be driving us apart. At this critical juncture, the concept of ecology is more relevant than ever. Ecology means relationality, connections—its first principle is: “Everything is connected to everything else” (Commoner, 1973).
The theme of SSLW 2024 is “Ecologies of Multilingual Writing,” and we hope that it encourages participants to consider the many connections that impact and shape multilingual writing. For example, the theme highlights:
- The implications of our work in multilingual writing for what else is happening in the world.
- The connections of our work in multilingual writing to the work of others in and beyond our field, including ways we may not have recognized.
- The values that connect us as a research community, as well as the differences that help us create, think, and together change the world.
- The ecology of languages—that they dynamically vary and develop in relation to their environments, and like other ecological organisms, require our respect and care.
- The “multi” in multilingualism, which represents not a numerical value but a moral one: That sustainable human life depends on the world’s multiple language users using those languages together to survive and thrive.
- The ways in which thinking, feeling, cooperatively acting, and writing are part of the same larger process: Writing is never simply “writing”—a technology, tool, or system that stands alone. Writing, like language, is ecological;
- Our oneness with our natural world, without which we cannot exist, and how to repair, respect, and sustain that badly damaged world;
- Our connectedness to each other, without which we cannot exist, and how to work together and treat each other in loving, sustainable ways;
- Our connections to those who predated us in the ecologies we inhabit, and whose continuing stewardship of those ecologies sustain us and require our loving respect and cooperation.