Articulating Crisis: The Linguistics of Climate Change
Overly scientific language alienates the masses who, not understanding the problem, then feel no responsibility or engagement.
- Francesca, Italian Linguist
In a moment charged with crises at both local and global levels, how might we attempt to put living today into words? While this colossal question has tormented writers for ages, 2020 — the year in which the word “unprecedented” has been used an unprecedented number of times — has reminded us that sometimes the languages we speak are insufficient for grappling with the present and the future.
Alongside the pandemic, climate change presents another set of catastrophes affecting us worldwide. Though extreme weather and COVID-19 are far from equivalent, their international, scientific roots raise similar concerns in terms of how we speak and write about them. How can we communicate in a way that resonates on both local and global scales? How can we capture a sense of urgency that leads to action, as opposed to paralysis? How might linguistics help us broach these disasters? One biased response is that linguists’ intimacy with untranslatable terms, insights on new words in their markets, and knowledge of linguistic history prime them for such a task. Their reflections on how culturally informed approaches to language can help us confront global crises is particularly sharp. “Considering we are in a scientific territory, being able to translate and communicate to the widest audience possible is crucial,” says Francesca, an Italian copywriter who recently bore witness to wildfires from her current home in California, “We are still changing our language, trying to shift the topic from ‘climate change’ to ‘climate crisis.’”
Artists Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante have been trying to underscore this crisis linguistically since 2015, after consistently finding themselves at a loss for words to describe an enduring sense of climate-induced doom within the confines of the English language. This vexing lack of a vocabulary ultimately blossomed into the Bureau of Linguistical Reality — a public, participatory artwork that aims to disrupt the clinical abstraction that unfortunately shapes how we speak about climate change. “[U]ntil we have the language to describe the changing world around us, we will not be able to fully grasp what is happening,” Escott and Quante write. Through creating considered spaces to discuss how we feel about climate change — both online and in residencies at arts institutions — the Bureau’s contributors craft neologisms and portmanteaus that cultivate empathy for our planet while humanizing science. They harness the power of words by reimagining traditional linguistics to name collective feeling. One example that emerged from languages heard in Los Angeles is “Chuco헐sol,” which combines El Salvadorian slang for dirty (chuco), a Korean expression of surprise (헐), and Spanish for sun (sol), to describe, “the experience of seeing a brilliant red sunset blown up by manmade pollution and knowing you’re not supposed to enjoy it, but you do anyway because the colors are a brilliant bright orange red fire — intoxicating to the eyes.”
As each language contains rich troves of expressions and systems of meaning, gaining exposure to some pre-existing words in different languages can also shift how we view the planet. “There’s an interesting word for ‘soil’ in German that describes the top layer of fertile soil where plants grow: ‘Erdreich,’ which literally translates to ‘earth realm’ in English,” says German copywriter Sandra, “I like how it suggests that there is a whole other world right underneath our feet.” Treading along the same path, according to Simplified Chinese linguist Sim, the term for “Earth” in Mandarin (地球) directly translates to “land-sphere” in English.
These terms and idioms are becoming imbued with a fragility and volatility that captures the everyday wordiness of climate change. Describing someone who speaks uninterrupted as “fiume di parole” — a “river of words” in Italian — not only reflects the distinct ways our individual communities relate and tend to the earth, but also adopts sinister tones when considering the contextual reality of rising sea levels.
As scientists and public officials increasingly look towards Indigenous conservation and land maintenance practices, we as wordsmiths must turn to native languages, language revitalization initiatives, and the protection of languages in danger of extinction. Furthermore, the two are also inextricably linked: “Ethnobotanists and ethnobiologists recognize the importance of indigenous names, folk taxonomies and oral traditions to the success of initiatives related to the preservations of endangered species,” writes Sim on the Speak Hokkien website, an initiative that he founded to preserve Southern Chinese languages such as Hokkien and advocate for linguistic diversity.
As Sandra eloquently puts it, “Borrowing words allows us to tap into the wisdom of other cultures that see the world with different eyes.” While satiating your wanderlust in quarantine, “these borrowed words are magical keys that open the door to new perspectives.” An added bonus is that language allows you to cross borders without “Flugscham” — a German neologism adapted from Swedish, which would directly translate to “flight shame” in English, and describes the guilt one feels when polluting the atmosphere with CO2 emissions from traveling by plane.
