Expanding the Communicative Field

Abstract

How do we do ecointerculturality, and what does it feel like to experience it? Part Two introduces ecotranslanguaging as the embodied practice through which ecointerculturality comes alive: a way of languaging that extends beyond human speech into the sensory, relational, and spiritual dimensions of a living, interrelated, communicative world. Drawing on nine interconnected theoretical traditions—including Indigenous relational ontologies, translanguaging theory, phenomenology, sacred feminine principles, actor-network theory, mycology and systems thinking, deep ecology, ecopsychology, and the neuroscience of trauma and attunement—this part offers both a rigorous conceptual framework and an invitation to experience communication differently. Significant to ecotranslanguaging are the practices of attuning, intuitive sensing, and non-dual awareness: capacities through which humans may (re)discover their participation in conversations that have always already included plants, animals, fungi, water, and land. Ecotranslanguaging is offered as a transdisciplinary, reflexive, and multidimensional orientation, rather than a prescriptive method—one that simultaneously represents an act of decolonization, a form of grief work, and a practice of relational healing. Part Two closes with a mock interview and contemplative exercise, grounding the work in lived encounter and honest reflection.