KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

The current crises are caused by complex and multiple phenomena, such as the enduring climate changes and environmental threats, followed by economic challenges and global migration, health risks and the pandemic, Russian aggression and war in Ukraine and related geopolitical challenges to security in Europe. Most recently, there is a growing feeling of a rapidly approaching revolutionary epistemic shift that arises from accelerated digitalization and technological AI innovations.  

All these crises give rise to a myriad of social challenges, which in turn provide a new impetus for researchers from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) to address them. Focusing on complex issues and their implications also requires interdisciplinary efforts and collaborations with practitioners, policy makers, stakeholders, and citizens, creating new opportunities for researchers from different disciplinary fields.  

How do contemporary sciences view the changed overall social order? What role must universities, as cherishers of the ideals of the classical epistemic commons, play in the time of persisting and continuous uncertainty? Which classical concepts are employed from the previous academic repertoire, and which new metaphors are being anticipated to describe communication and everyday meaning-making specifics in high-choice, “fluid”, and manipulative media environments?  

I will begin my journey in search for answers by taking a broad view of epistemic commons, a concept that refers to the institutions of shared knowledge and information resources that are necessary for the health and resilience of society.  

In this talk, I interchangeably will refer to a few spheres – namely journalistic and scientific – since these refer to significance of verified sources and informed decision-making, namely processes which are critically affected by the current crisis of trust that has emerged in contemporary societies.  

Furthermore, I will use the example of tackling information disorders and disruptions such as disinformation and information manipulations. The concept of disinformation appears as a valid focus of analysis here since it resembles all the complexity, “fluidity”, and multi-levelness of the risks created in contemporary Europe. To keep things geographically focused, in media examples provided I will refer to experience from the Baltic countries’ region. 

In the perennial debate over the reasons societies may have to protect, cultivate and promote multilingualism, the idea of a positive relationship between multilingualism and economic benefits is often put forward. However, much of the public debate on the matter remains relatively unfocused, with occasional lapses from the “positive” to the “normative”—unfortunately, claiming that the virtues of multilingualism should be acknowledged is not the same as showing that they exist. This presentation proposes to do three things: first, to clarify some essential notions, in particular with reference to the concept of “value”; second, to typologize the ways in which linguistic diversity is related to value in the economic sense; third, to focus on the role of creativity as a conduit through which this relationship may emerge.  

Language education is poised to play a crucial role in our increasingly diverse societies characterized by ever evolving linguistic and cultural diversity. It is called upon to consider all the implications of concepts such as ‘life trajectory’ and ‘plurilingual repertoire’, including the idea that all languages are always active in our brain and that all cultures we encounter leave a mark on our linguistic and cultural identity. Both applied linguistics and psychology increasingly stress the dynamic nature of language learning with the increasing use of the term ‘languaging’ to capture a never-ending process which constantly requires individuals’ agency. Language learning and teaching is conceptualized as a complex phenomenon, which involves not only the individual but the whole community at the micro and macro level, requiring a continuous process of mediation, with diverse types of mediation – linguistic, cultural, interpersonal, textual, pedagogical – coming into play in different combinations at different times.

This vision calls for a new conceptualization of language education that recognizes the mediated nature of all language learning and use (Piccardo 2021; Larsen-Freeman & Todeva, 2021) and that provides space and ways for learners and teachers alike to embrace complexity rather than seeking simplification yet paradoxically expecting ‘native-speaker’-like perfection.

The talk will discuss innovative pedagogical practices that respond to the need for such complexity and provide the necessary scaffolding to deal with it. In particular, it will introduce the concept of action-oriented scenarios (Piccardo & North, 2019) and explain the way these scenarios support a shift from learning a language as an object to learning language as an activity implying mediation (Council of Europe, 2020) and plurilanguaging (Lüdi, 2015; Piccardo, 2017) to different degrees at different times. The talk will then report data from two studies conducted among primary and secondary school teachers: 85 teachers in the first study and 150 in the second. These teachers used in their English, French, German, Spanish and Italian classes – both in presence and online – action-oriented scenarios that were previously developed in the Linguistic and Cultural Diversity (LINCDIRE) research project (Piccardo et al., 2022). The talk will conclude with a reflection on the implications of aligning language education with the dynamic nature of languages themselves.

HE is a particularly important area of real or potential applications for inclusive and equitable multilingualism. These applications raise questions that range from fundamental issues related to the role of different languages in HE governance and internationalisation strategies up to some very practical organisational and pedagogical issues.  

Policies promoting multilingualism are not a commodity of immediate consumption, nor are they easy to develop: the wide-ranging benefits are measurable in terms of inclusiveness, respect for diversity, and understanding between peoples and cultures. This is the reason why the relation between multilingualism and both knowledge creation and knowledge transmission, and the role of HE institutions in society and their organisation should take into account institutional, cultural, and educational aspects of languages. Our contribution is aimed at highlighting the issues at stake in adopting inclusive and equitable multilingualism in HE. 

Multilingualism in HE is a multiple and complex challenge due to several factors, which will be illustrated and analysed as follows. Firstly, multilingualism is important in light of the increasingly frequent encounter between the many different languages characterising today's globalised world between mobility and integration, as well as the linguistic rights of minorities and majorities: the subtle investigation developed into the communicative practices among users in the multilingual interaction that takes place in a university setting, together with the associated implications for student integration and mobility, provides a very effective and clear descriptive framework. 

Secondly, multilingualism is fundamental to the transfer of knowledge and public engagement in knowledge: it is interesting to analyse the role of language – and the choice of language – in the creation and sharing of knowledge, along with a critical examination of practices in (international) scientific communication. Multilingualism enhances creativity; it respects scientific traditions and practices, disciplinary and cultural issues; it promotes equity by reducing the advantages between speakers of languages of power and speakers of other languages.  

Finally, it is important to underpin the role of multilingualism in the dynamics of translation and interpreting, so as the use of varieties of the lingua franca and the developmental competencies closely linked to one’s first language. The implications of the potential of machine translation and language technologies are also present today in the context in which our interconnected communities live. 

All these aspects highlight the fact that multilingualism can have an effective impact at all levels (from local to global) of HE activity: multilingual development in HE language policies is an asset in itself, and the promotion of multilingualism in HE can be a legitimate goal.