Acquiring Resilience

 I have the honor to be participate in an International symposium about Foreign Language teaching and Learning Research in Japan (Link). The event is a real multilateral event, because it organized by organizations of six countries (Germany, China, France, Spain, South-Korea and of course Japan). I am an expert in a workshop-group  "Society and Multilingualism". There has been also presentations, before the symposium, which are accessible after a registration, but am unable to share them here publicly. My colleagues already started to discuss the topic "Multilingualism and Society" in an (closed) forum in an Moodle-environment provided by the Goethe-Institut. The chairman of our workshop-group has provided us with guidance topics for the discussion: 

1) How can we push Japanese companies (maybe the government also?) and make them accept students’ plurilingual ability properly?

2) How can we advocate pluralistic identities of plurilingual people (not just as a split identity) in a double-monolingual (only Japanese and English) society like Japan?

I will discuss these two topics and will add a third topic, which is the headline of the blog (Acquiring Resilience, WpE). 

I think it is very difficult to force (Japanese) companies towards Multilingualism. Japanese multinational companies, like Toyota or Rakuten are indeed multilingual, because they using Japanese and English. For German companies it is the same. And that is referring to the "elephant in the room", the big avoided topic until now and that is the role of English. Is English impeding Multilingualism or stimulating it? Of course this question is very difficult to answer in short, but the whole structure of this blog should make my opinion clear: English can be an important agent for Multilingualism, if used properly. And this is leading to the second topic: How can plurilingual people and their identities be promoted. And here schools have indeed an important role. But the problem here in Japan is that the basic tool for the promotion of Plurilingualism, the English language is not working smoothly here in Japan. Again a long discussion is needed for this topic, there no simple reasons for this. But it seems to me a good idea to invest in the English education in Japan. I would also like to help here and this is also one reason of this blog. But it is difficult for me to work for the English education in Japan, because I am not an English native speaker. A student of the Chukyo University did a survey on the JET program in Japan and it is indeed very difficult to get a position as a teaching assistant, if you not coming from an Inner circle English speaking country (UK, USA, Australia or Canada, see World Englishes (WpE) for background). With the exception of Canada (French) and the Republic of Ireland, which is still an English speaking country, officially English in multilingual contexts is then not recognized. Then the third point resilience. I had a surgery this year, not a big deal, but I had to go in a hospital for a few days. Everything was working fine and fortunately nobody tried to speak English (or even German) to me in the Hospital. Japanese worked fine for me and I did not have to learn English part of the body vocabulary for this medical treatment. Of course I had to learn some new words in Japanese and this is essential, because I also have to speak to my wife about my condition and for this I also needed the Japanese words. I am not saying that this the way for all residents with a non Japanese mother tongue. However, for resilience inside Japan, Japanese is needed. But there is more, because Japan is necessarily a very resilient country. Earthquakes are often here and what is seen as the Fukushima disaster worldwide is seen as the Tohuku earthquake and tsunami in Japan (Wp-link). For international cooperation in more and more difficult times English is needed, but that is not the English only of the inner circle countries. But what about other languages then? Of course there is more, the multilingual repertoire of the society, which is a world society. Here the Internet provides us with opportunities, but the opportunities of Wikipedia or Duolingo will be covered in another post.                    

burning Nationalism

 or Undetected echo-chambers! 

Since the latest media revolution, especially since it social media part, with the take off of Facebook, Twitter et al the echo chambers (Wp with backgrounds) is a topic, which is burning like the planet. Especially since the Trump Presidency this topic gained more attention, see as an e.g. this article in "The Conversation", which is also refering to Trump. But the topic has a longer history, even when referrerd to other key-words, like "Denialists", which is used by Naomi Klein (2014). The concept of "Denialism" (WpE) looks as it might psychological misconception of (some) individuals to face the truth:    "The facts are not getting through as Anne Applebaum is expressing this so eloquently in the "Atlantic". While I don't doubt that there a psycholigical factors contributing to this, I doubt that it should be reduced to psychological reasons alone. 

The thesis of the post (and the background research) is: These echo chambers have been there since the establishment of the public sphere (WpE, has also the link to the important book form Habermas (1962/1989). Habermas is making clear that the public sphere is an ideological construct, which is always giving a certain groups of members access to it. Whealthy white man had access to since the creation of this publich sphere, in the (respective) national-states. While the access has broadend since the 20 century, one essential restriction of access has not been eliminated and is contributing to existence of "burning nationalism", which is language. Without the sufficient knowledge of the national language a contribution to the publis sphere was not possible. One might argue, that it is the fact, that a member of the public sphere is born into the language. However, the relation is more complex, somewhat comparable to "gender" (WpE has some fact about the background of the concept)  as a social category, compared to the biological sex (McEhlinny 2012 gives backgounds to th comparision of gender and language): Language is a made a category made by certain types of societies, which are called national states. While "gender" and "race" (Kendi 2017 for more) has been researched lately, the research of  "language" a social construct is still in the initial stage. There are several reasons for the problems with this research, but they have to be adressed, because if they stay hidden, one of the most important hidden backgrounds of the dangerous "buring nationalism" keeps on smoldering.     

References:

• Kendi, Ibram X (2017), Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Nation books     
• Klein, Naomi (2014), This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate, Schuster & Schuster 
  
• McElhinny, Bonnie (2012), Silicon Valley Sociolinguistics? Analyzing Language, Gender and Communities of Practice in the New Knowledge Economy, in: Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit (Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism) ed by Duchêne, Alexandre    
  

After the Corona-Crisis: A New & Green Deal for the World?

Foto: Nuon/Jorrit Lousberg

While the Corona-Pandamic is indeed far from over, speculations about the future giving hope in these dark times. Even the large EU rescue plan, which also includes a strong green component seems to be not enough as Greta Thumberg point out (in the Guardian). Joe Biden announced a plan for Green Energy, which will nevertheless will be diffucult to implement. (both links Guardian) Are Greta Thumberg or Oliver Milman too strict or too pessimitic? No, that is not the problem, but hope alone is not enough for creating a change in the problem of climate change. There are real complexities involved. Recently Jeff Gibbs and Roger Moore tried to show some of the problems "Green Energy" is going to face (youtube-link to the film), but they really showed is that it is not easy to make a film about such a complex matter (as the critics of "debunked" showed, see also the Wikepedia-page for more backgronds). While there are films about climate change and environmental problems, e.g. "A Fierce Green Fire" or the "4.Revolution", about a shift in the energy production (in German), these matters are not easy to explain in a film. Wikipedia-pages (not one page alone) can convey a better picture, but for this several pages has to be combined. At first there is no page called "climate change", there is the page "climate variablity and change", if one searches for "climate change", there is a direction to "Global warming" (see the link), which is the effect of climate change globally, not locally. There might be place, which acutally get colder, an example could be Europe, if the North Atlantic Current would get weaker, not only because of Global warming, but also changes in ocean. In short: "Global warming" is only a headline of a much more complex process. The complexity is also affecting the discussion about climate change, which is indeed a very complex change, a much better conceptual tool is the Anthropocene debate. But how should the New & Green deal? For the reduction of complexity I have to concentrate one factor, which seems to of central importance: energy denisity (Wp). Solar power has, compared to coal or Gasoline, a low energy density. The means you need to create very big solar panels to create the energy, that is saved in a liter of fuel (Homer-Dixon 2006). And more problems:  1. solar power is difficult to save. Batteries are still expensive and their lifespan is not so long. 2. Intermittency: If it is cloudy the sun is weaker and there is not so much energy. 3. EROI (=Energy return on investment, Wp). Solar energy needs large investments and there is less money coming back, compared to fossil energy. Fossil energy is developed since over 150 years and EROI is still large. All these four reason are not strong enough to impede thenecessary transition from fossil energy to renewable energy, but they show the complexity of this transition. It can be seen in Germany, which was one of the first countries to start an Energy transition (an URL about some of the problems), but still a lot of problems are unsolved. But these arguments are largely not heard in public, specialists of course know some of the problems, but maybe it is difficult to find ONE specialist, who has the solution for all the problems, because there are not only technical, but also social (see social engineering) or political. It seems to be, that a more decentral energy supply would be helpful, for a transition to renewable energy, but here are massive economic interests involved, which make such transitions difficult (even in Sweden, see the case of the rafinery Lysekil). And an international deliberation is more needed than ever. Not only for specialists, but for the international public as well.                                               

Reference

Homer-Dixon, Thomas (2006), The upside of down, Resource and Conflict Analysis, (Souvenir press), London  

patterns of social engineering (not only masks...)

Social engineering (WpE), in "Applied"Social Sciences, is multidmensional concept see Disambiguation pages in Wikipedia. Here used as an attempt of institutions to change the culture, in the sense of the social behaviour of the cultural agents. This article will demonstrate dimensions of social engineering related to three aspects:

1. individual behavior, especially wearing masks
   
2. the new corona warn app
3. some findings on testing and vaccination    

1.Although the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, the numbers are showing clearly distinct cultural patterns: this was discussed briefly in a post before and more in depth analysis about France, Germany and Japan can be seen here (showing presentations from June 18., organized by the Maison Franco-Japanese and Deutsches Institut fuer Japanstudien, both in Tokyo). Discussing the previous post in my seminar, I learned that the wearing of face masks is in Japan introduced in school during the delivery of the school lunch meals, by the students. To prevent the spread of influenza germs the elementary school students are trained to wash their hand thoroughly and wear masks. This influenza protection hygiene in Japan seems to be one (cultural) factor very important for the relatively low death rate of Covid-19 in Japan.   

2.Corona Tracing Apps are one another important aspect, closely related to social engineering in the 21st century. But in this context an explicit definition of "social engineering" is needed, because searching (on Google) the terms "social engineering corona apps" is showing some interesting results: "What COVID-19 teaches us about social engineering?" (Blog "Dark reading"), but here "social engineering" is meant in the sense of information security, while this post is covering "social engineering" as a concept in the social sciences, which talks about possibility to change the social behaviours of people (= the culture) through technical measures. But is the Coronoa tracing app really social engineering? i.e. Is the Corona tracing app designed to change the behaviour of persons? The answer can only be: It depends on the app! There are various Covid-19 apps (Wp) around. Some countries are using the Covid-19 pandemic to expand mass surveillance (Guardian) on their own population. The Norway example (tech-crunch) shows that in this country the warnings of Data protection Agency is this country is taken seriously. And other Apps are specially designed not to be violate the privacy of its users. The swiss developted app (BBC, see also, in German, Spiegel online and the NZZ about the app-development) designed in cooperation with Apple and Google is built to avoid data-storage at a central place. The App can therefore only used to inform about the possibility of a Covid-19 infection. In the case of this app, the level of social engineering is deliberately low. The app called COCOA (see Mainichi-article 28/6/2020) in Japan (The Verge, 19/6/2020) developed in cooperation with Microsoft follows the same principles. Not all countries developed an own app in the UK (Guardian) the Google and Apple will be used directly. But in countries, where the decentral Bluetooth-approach is applied the social engineering aspect of the apps is (in the moment) very small, the users only have to install the new app, but they do not have to change their behaviour in other ways.

3. Testing and vaccination is not all aspects linked to individual behaviour. Only when a person decides to go to doctor and get a vaccination (e.g. against Influenza), this would be a relation to individual behaviour. But epidemic outbreaks shape social behaviour, as one can see in Covid-19 pandemic, therefore the prevention of pandemics also has great influences. And the prevention of pandemics was after the 19 century: vaccination. Vaccination policies (Wp) were rolled out to prevent epidemics and create immunity in the population ("herd immunity"). But mandatory vaccination has also be a controversial issue, as the history of anti-vaccination shows. (History of vaccines, Blog). In a lot of countries the population does not trust their governments, because of the history of oppression and it not surprising that the trust of population to their governments is in some african countries very low.  (Médecins Sans Frontières = MSF, see also the Interview of Karline Kleijer of MSF in Spiegel online, in German).       

 

The masks of culture (in the Corona-world = Introduction)

Corona (Covid-19) has been a topic of this blog since March 19. with subsequent posts. This crisis exposes important facts, that are normally not covered in the pictures of a normal life. Climate Change is very abstract, this is also the fact for other changes since the late 20th century, like the ongoing loss of biodiversity. The Covid-19 crisis, however, is affecting the daily outcome of most of the people of this planet directly or indirectly.  

This graph from the John Hopkins University illustrates the global situation, especially, when compared to the graph at the post from the situation of 20/3/2020. However, the data also point to a problem: Why are the number of the cases develop so differently between different countries?  Of course the most obvious short answer, refers to the actions (or not actions) taken by the national governments. But the interesting background of an pandemic is that the number of cases really reflect the situation on the ground. If the government is advising the people to stay at home, but they are not following this request or order the number of cases is going up. And in this respect the situation in Japan is interesting, because if you look at the government`s actions, especially testing (the Guardian article from 2.April 2020). The data is a bit old, but it shows clearly the tendency: Japan was not very strict, in the beginning, later the country also moved into a lock down and testing regime got more strict. But compared to Germany, where the testing was quite strict from the beginning, test number of cases are considerably lower in Japan. And here come one factor, which can be named the factor "culture", which sounds of course in the beginning quite abstract and complex. In this very case "culture" is showing through the use of masks. The difference between high context and low context cultures (Wp) is still quite abstract. But a look at the history provided by the book (Horii 2012) shows that the Japanese custom of using masks can be traced back to Influenza pandemic 1918 (Wp gives an overview). The historical background provided shows one aspect of the "culture", the willingness to wear masks. 

Reference:

Horii, Mitsutoshi (堀井光俊, 2012), masks and Japanese,マスクと日本人、出版社shi

what can we do?

Some Reflections in times of the Corona-Pandemic (updated version)
In these times it difficult not feel helpless and vulnerable. But what could one possibly do about this? Of course the situation is the same everywhere, so these reflections should be seen as optional, more about this later. Because of Social Distancing (Wp), which means in most of the cases means staying home, a lot of human being having now more time than before. How can this time be used?

1. Watching/Reading the news. I am telling this "my" students, the students, who study Intercultural Communication with me. 
2. Taking action. Blogging  is my of doing it. There are other possibilities: Global citizens (HP in English for further explanations), supporting the UN (R. Falk Blog 3/4/2020) or Friday for Future Japan (of course in Japanese)   
3. Learning a new language or using English for better understanding of global facts, like global warming, loss of biodiversity or other elements of the ecological crisis (Wp) or waching Planet of the Humans (Youtube)     
4. Learning about mankind's quite desperate situation on earth in non fiction: "Loosing Earth" (Wp, soon on Apple TV), but more fatalistic, than political criticizes Naomi Klein (in the Interzept)     
5. The Guardian tells that there no fictions about climate change but I I have my doubt about this. I think that some anime like 'Children of the Sea' (海獣の子供 in Japanese) or "weathering with you" (in Japanese: 天気の子) are reflecting about ecological changes, in poetic way. But these films are of course no active reflection of the topic.       
6.  Using our money from the stimulus package (Guardian 7/4/2020). 10000 Yen is indeed not so much, it is better than nothing, but for a lot of people, who lost their jobs or working less, it is only a small help. Will it help the economy in Japan? There have packages before (2013, Guardian), but their effects has been limited. 

This is of course my personal point of view. Although I am no professional politician and also no (political) Journalist, I think that reacting politically is very important in this pandemic. The pandemic will cause enormous economic problems, which could also slow down our reaction to the climate crisis. A lot of people are already arguing, that we have to return to the normal economic situation and then (after a few years maybe) we can do something against the ecological crisis. But then it is too late. I am convinced that the Covid-19 crisis could also be used as chance for changing our economic system and enlarging our resilience capacity, because the climate crisis is not over. IF mankind would reform its economical system to more sustainability, which is also taking some years, the CO2 blown into the atmosphere for several years will still impact the climate for years to come. So even we act now, the challenge is very big, but this Covid-19 crisis could be a change for a change to the better. What do you think?

Zooming in

The new normal of the Corona Pandemic is Videoconferencing. While Video in the form of Youtube or Netflix has been around for a while, but is getting more important in the times of lock-down, Zoom was not very popular before the Pandemic. The Wikipedia (Wp)-Article about Zoom, which I checked as a first research step showed that the Company was founded 2011 and is a public Company (Wp) since 2019. Both is my eyes very recent, although the structures in the online business are changing very fast. But what make Zoom interesting for Applied Linguistics and Language Policy? There are several reasons:

1. Language teaching
2. Knowledge production, in different settings 
3. Research about Interaction 

Language teaching only briefly here, although language teaching is still an important part of my Job at the Chukyo University. Teaching German in Japan, which is a bit remote language in Japan, is much more efficient by using the internet. Though there are already a lot platforms for internet learning, platforms for online interaction are still in short supply. I am using Skype (Wp) for language learning (and very occasionally for teaching).
Knowledge production is maybe more related to writing (research articles or books), but speaking and spoken interaction is of course also included, that is what Seminars are (more or less) all about. The concept of a Seminar (Wp) is related various different learning cultures (as can be seen in the article), but the core concept evolved form University teaching and means an exchange of knowledge and options for advanced students and researchers. Normally Seminars are of course `offline` i.g. the participants are gathering for discussion at one place, very often an university, but also Institutions are playing an important role here. But online seminars have very important features, which are useful for teaching and research. Modern Seminars are very often an integration of conventional and digital features. Conventional features would be talking or writing on a white board. Digital features would audio or video reception. In an online Seminars all features are now digital, also the former conventional ones. There is for example are Whiteboard features in Zoom, which is of course a simulation of the conventional feature. And the whole interaction process in the seminar, which is by the way going on two channels in Zoom (but also in Skype) is now digital. The two channels are the transmission of a live video, which also can include other materials (like a text or a power point) and the chat channel of Zoom or Skype. And having the recorded features (as a Video) means all participants can see the Video once more. Only them, no other can see this, because there is a password protection for seeing the Video. This Video can`t be downloaded so easy (it is not impossible but you would need special software for this). I will give my students some time to see the Video again and after a time I will block it and only if a students wants, she or he could see the Video again. The content of the Video can also be used for further research (the same as written texts). But that means only the content not the Video in itself. For using the content, a transcription is created and then the content will be used as an anonymized text. Then parts of this text will analyzed. The same happens, with written content, where some features of the text will be analyzed.
Summing up, Zoom enables teachers (and researchers) to analyze communication more thoroughly. But also for students slower communication means more knowledge, if they are willing to invest the time to analyze their communication after the seminar.

References:
Baraldi, Claudio & Giancarlo Corsi (2017), Niklas Luhmann: Education as a social system, Springer 
Filipi, Anna & Numa Markee (2018), From research to applications, Pedagogical considerations in language alternation practices, in: Conversation Analysis and Language Alternation, Ed. by Anna Filipi & Numa Markee, John Benjamins Publishing Company  
Gardner, Rod (2013): Conversation Analysis in the Classroom, in: The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, Sidnell, Jack /Stivers, Tanya (eds), Blackwell Publishing

   

Why Language Policy for Fighting Climate Change等?

There is very famous scene in Film Spirited away (千と千尋の神隠し, Wp has more), where the main Chihiro looses her name and is from now on called Sen, which is one of the reason Chihiro is afterwards a slave of the witch Yubaba. Naming something and also re-naming is power. This applies to all languages, but especially English is very important, being the language of the American Empire (the OECD states) and the major language for Global exchange. The Global Fight for Climate Justice needs English as a tool for Global Exchange. But other countries with other National languages than English can and should contribute. I will argue here specially for German in Japan, which is still part of Job (teaching German as Foreign Language in a University in Japan, among other Subjects). The German "Energiewende" (energy transition, Wp has more) is far from perfect, but other countries (including Japan) can contribute from experiences in Germany. This Meme (Wp for more) used here is related to a character is used here in Nagoya, by the local electricity provider  (here is a Link, to Google the character can't desplayed here). Actually the Memes in this drawing (thank you Shinko)

are related to three political spheres, first to the EU, especially to Germany, where the population is still reluctant to create Corona-bonds (Politico has more, reading the article thoroughly shows, that Merkel is not for Corona bonds). The second political sphere is the US, with the notion of the new Green New Deal (Klein 2019). And the third space is of course Japan being able to create important Memes for the future of this planet. 

References

Klein, Naomi (2019), On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal    

Politics on Earth day

Happy Earth day to everyone! In fact Judith asked me to show her a Zoom side for the discussion of the earth day and I only can say there are a lot, but there no side for the the earth as a whole. There are many discussions going on in many parts of this Earth.This is the central page of the Earth day (Link), the Wikipedia-page (Earth day) shows the history of the celebration. But this article shows also that the branding "Earth day" originated in the USA. Because of the worldwide impact of the English language and the cultural soft power (Wp) of the USA, the Earth day on 22.April is now known internationally. But what has the international environment movement and especially the US environment movement really reached after 50 years? The US has a President, who denials Global warming and is not taking part in Paris agreement of climate protection. The global warming is accelerating and CO2 in atmosphere has reached an overcritical level since several years. While there are several opinions on the fact, when there was a window of opportunity to really overcome, a lot of observers think it already to late to fight global in the boundaries of 1.5°1.5 Celsius, as the Paris agreement from 2016 (Wp) recommends (see Klein 2014, McKibben 2019 for an overview of this discussion). A global warming exceeding 1.5° would hit countries in the Global south especially hard. Especially Africa is affected and of course also all coastal regions are also to hit. This are facts, they are proven by several scientific analysis. But why are some people, like Trump, are denying these facts? Giving them not the benefit of the doubt, because this is no trial, but a political analysis, they are about to enforce the Social Darwinist slogan from the survival of the fittest on the whole earth (see Hobsbawm 2012 for Nationalism and Social Darwinism). This is actually not particularity new. The 19. century was affected by this ideology and until the 20th century this ideology was very dominant. Only a short time of history is marked by a different ideology, the ideology of cooperation and mutual assistance. How successful was (and is) this ideology? This is still not decided, but what is sure, that the earth day is part of this bright ideology of mutual assistance and deserves a celebration. And in times of Covid-19 Pandemic this celebration is course different, because big gatherings of people are dangerous. And of course there are a lot of virtual gatherings, I yesterday went, the biggest maybe "Earth day live", from the central page. But we need more, we need a worldwide political force, giving legitimacy for the Earth. And that could only be the General Assembly of the United Nations. The UNPA campaign shows Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Link), who did only serve one term as Secretary-General of the UN. Does this ring a bell? Trumps decision to cut funding of the WHO should be seen in this background (CNN). While the US has been important for the environmental movement of the planet the movement should be acting more international and find allies outside the US-Empire. Happy earth day for the whole planet! 
References: 
Hobsbawm, E. J. (2012), Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Canto Classics), second edition
Klein, Naomi (2014), This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate, Schuster & Schuster, auf Deutsch: Die Entscheidung: Kapitalismus vs. Klima  (2015, Fischer)
McKibben, Bill (2019), Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, Wildfire

                

Texts in the VUCA-World

A Report about an Transdisciplinary Project about Mediation (1)
Do know the VUCA-World? (Wp has more) The features of this world are:

• volatility
• uncertainty
• complexity
• ambiguity

in short, the world of the Covid-19 Pandemic. What can do be done for going in a better world? My answer is quite simple: Writing texts! Texts, which are creating meaning can express complexity and they also able to map ambiguity, because ambiguity is a pattern of multicultural situations. Writing in English about the VUCA-world, with lot's of different cultures, needs methods to handle ambiguity. One keyword in this context, is mediation; it is not a method, it more a strategic inventory to negotiate meaning and to frame it in a text. Obviously this is also done in this blog. However, the report (see subtitle) is about ways to get others to write meaningful texts. 
Up to know there have been official documents (application for a research grand = Kaken) and presentations about the project in front of stakeholders: students and researchers of various disciplines (as shown in this webside). However, this it is the first text to deliver a progress report. It was planned to present initial findings of the project at the international AILA conference 2020 in Groningen, Netherlands. Because of Covid-19 Pandemic the conference is postponed to the year 2021. Therefore it seems to be a good idea to use this blog and post about the research, focusing on different aspects of the research.
The initial idea of the research was to collect data about teaching in a World Englishes context. The notion of 'World Englishes' (Wp has more, not only for the Japanese situation, see: D'Angelo 2011) has been a reference in several articles here, in our context it means the writing of texts (final thesis) in English, in the content of Liberal arts. That means the students are on purpose free to choose their own topics. The scientific texts are following scientific standards for Essay and they can be called a written deliberation on a choosen topic. So, how can the students escaping the VUCA-world with their text? Of course they can't, but they can, they address the VUCA world, they reduce some of the complexity in a certain self-chosen frame and they learn about ambiguity, because they writing in English and thinking in Japanese. These 'stress conditions' produce highly interesting results.
Reference:
D'Angelo, James (2011), Japanese English? Refocusing the discussion, in:
Asian English Studies (Journal of the Japan Association For Asian Englishes-JAFAE) Vol. 15: 99-124.          

European Unity: Languages & Money

Blogging about language policy can't ignore Europe. Several reasons:

• the European language policy Multilingualism with Plurilingualism
• several World languages originated in Europe
• Europe (esp. the EU) is a key player in the Globalization (Bradford 2020)
• the concept of a monolingual state was carried out first in Europe (Heinrich 2012 is showing the french beginnings of monolingual language policy)

But how to proceed in the contemporary situation? The Covid-19 Pandemic is characterized by strong considerations about the 'public sector' (see Louis Meuleman in his IISD-article) especially seen in relation to the 'failure of Europe' (Politco & SChMP). But has there really be a failure of Europe? Some European countries i.e. some EU-member countries have reacted differently and here clearly visiable that the EU countries do not form a common society (see Lingua Policy of 20/3/2020). The health policy has been in the responsibility of the national governments and of course it is always easy to scapegoat Europe, but in my Europe as European Union did not fail in the Covid-19 Pandemic, at least up to now. But there other issues: Money and Languages and they are linked. In the Euro financial crisis after 2008 imposed Austerity mechanism especially on Greece, but also other countries are involved and even Germany has a strong austerity fincial policy, which is however not imposed by other countries, but by there own government. Also other countries are enforcing Austerity policy, which they call 'fiscal discipline' (the ECB has more) and there has also been strong objectives against this policy (Euroobserver). Actually there a strong North/South division on this issue. But has this to do with languages? There is only a small common public space in Europe, the different languages are effectively blocking a common European deliberation about financial affairs. While it is relatively easy to describe the situation, it quite complex to show an easy exit strategy. A common European language seems to be necessary for deliberation and observing the language situation on the ground (eg. with Eurobarometer an EU-Link, about the statistics, see also languageknowledge.eu) and that common language can only be English now. It seems to be an abstract and distant discussion during the pandemic, but in progressive Internationalists should keep in mind that the compromise the EU reached yesterday (Guardian has more) is only a first step and also letting a lot of questions open. This is the time for a discussion about an European Green deals, in various languages.       
References: 
Bradford, Anu (2020), The Brussels Effects. How the European Union Rules the World, Oxford University Press 
Heinrich, Patrick (2012),  The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology and Japanese Modernity, Multilingual Matters, Bristol     

climate Justice: economy in focus

Acting against Climate chance can't be done without a clear roadmap for climate justice. This is not a tivial ambition, because the struggle for distribituve justice (Wp has more about it) has been in the twentieth century a matter of the national state. But now we have to look on a transnational focus and that in a situation, the globalization process is slowing down, now even faster because of the covid-19 crisis. In some ways the Covid-19 crisis is already fostering environmental considerations, one example would be the slow down of the Oil-production (Guardian has backgrounds). But this only sign of a worldwide economic depression, with no substantial changes in the course of the economy, this is not 'degrowth'! (the correspondent blog-post explains the concept with backgrounds). This economic depreesion is indeed worisome: the gigantic Covid-19 rescue package from the US government could lead to more injustice in the US. (see the report on Democracy now, for this). Matt Stoller, research director of the American economics liberty project could have a point here, but would could be done to promote climate justice? Bloomberg opinion is arguing Dumping Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet (Noah Smith) and is pledging for eco-industrialism. There are obviously other views on this: John Molyneux is arguing in the blog-post "Socialism is the only realtic solution to climate change", in the blog climatecapitalism that an essential change is inevitable. I personally also think that fundamental economical changes are necessary, but how to organize such changes? In the Covid-19 pandemic several societies change radically seeing them under health-pressure, in some cases the government providing basic financial security (Guardian Australia). But how long will these changes last? And, what happens to world if mankind would disrupt the capitalistic economy? Capitalism is not without success: Green energy is now cheapter, as Ramez Naam argues, but the transformation is far from done. But transnationals changes are indispensable, without them climate justice, which means a sustainable transition in economy can't happen. This diagram from based in general of the work of the World Inequality Database and this diagram (pdf-download) it is used in the book of Thomas Piketty (2020, see reference). It clearly shows the problem, if only the US would go to more equality, without the other countries. And because of the Covid-19 pandemic it seems very unlikely that the US is getting a more equal society, right the opposite is likely to happen, which leads to the obvious conclusion that the ongoing crisis not only dangerous for the live of some many people, it is also not a crisis helping to address the problems of climate change. There two reasons for this: This crisis is not helping with (climate) justice and the answer on the complex problem of climate change has to come in a systematic way. I think only organizations would be able to address this, in the way that only organizations are able to address the problems of the Covid-19 pandemic.                        


Reference:
Piketty, Thomas (2020), Capital and ideology, Harvard University Press, URL for all Graphs (in English, opens a new window)   

systemic basics: Covid-19 & Climate Chance

Maybe in the year 2100, when large parts of the earth are inhabitable (D. Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, annotated version) future generations will ask: Why didn't you prevent this from happening? One possible answer would be: Some did do something, but they were not successful in the end. Why? Of course ignorance and
greed are also part of the picture, but it is not that simple. Like the Covid-19 crisis, climate change needs systemic thinking, that is observing and describing complex structures of relations. Zeynep Tufeci is pointing out in her excellent analysis, the problems of systemic thinking ("The Atlantic"), which is goes beyond "simple reductionism". Covid-19 cases accumulate exponentially and not additionally. These growth rates are difficult to imagine, as also Kate Raworth (2017) illustrate in her book (see References), especially in her chapters 4 (Systems) and 7 (growth). But there is a big difference between the climate crisis and the Covid-19 crisis. A failure in dealing with the Covid-19 Pandemic show immediate results: people are dying. Of course there are also strong indicators for a climate crisis: the earth temperature is rising (global warming, Wp) and the CO2-concentration is also gonig up (NOOA climate gov. has this good graph with backgrounds). But what does it mean, that there are now more than 400ppt CO2 in the atmosphere? This is an abstract figure in the first place. Probably not for the organization 350.org, which rational was (and is more than ever) to point out, what you could do even in country like China (Story telling, thank you Liangyi Chang).           
But back to systemics: the new Cornoa-Virus and Global warming have the same cause as Laura Spinney (in the Guardian) explains. The systemic background is older, as Barnes (2005, see References) shows in her monograph: The development of agriculture (sendentariness) and the spread of diseases have been closely linked, this is historically evident. And also another aspect of this monograph is interesting: Although published 2005, after the first SARS-crisis, the author states that another SARS related outbreak seems to be likely. But then it could be argued: Marx was right, it is the economy that is deciding about the human world, because we are part of the material world (as George Monbiot, Guardian writes in his concluding sentence). Thought the economical explantions are quite decisive it is not the economy alone, it is rather several factors or related to society several functions, which have to been interdependly in an analysis of a  complex society. Here in this blogpost I tried to convince the readers, that two functional systems are related to each other: the economy and the medical functional system. But of course without language these functional systems can't be described or as Niklas Luhmann puts it, they can't be observed. The difference between observation and description has be explained at length in another post. Only one concluding hint here: Luhmann did describe several functional systems among them the Medical (Luhmann 1990) and the economical (Luhmann 1988), but this part of his (large) work. His main theory (theory of society, Luhmann 2012/2013), however is translated (and has been referenced several times in this blog). The German references are also to be find in the reference-list at the end. For some readers they might be difficult to read.        
References
Barnes, Ethne (2006), Diseases and Human Evolution, University of New Mexico Press
Luhmann, Niklas (2012/2013), Theory of Society, 2 Volumes, Translated by Rhodes Berrett, Stanford University Press
idem (1990), Der medizinische Code, in: Soziologische Auklärung, Band 5, Westdeutscher Verlag, Seite 183ff
idem (1988), Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft, Suhrkamp
Raworth, Kate (2017), Doughnut economics : seven ways to think like a 21st century economist. Vermont: White River Junction
 

Transformations: Corona Culture & Climate Change

The whole process of Modernization was a rapid process of social change(s). The not entirely foreseeable effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are also belong here. Unfortunately it is very likely that the resilience of (world-)society will be further strained and therefore will further jeopardize collective efforts to prevent further climate change. Some possible counter-measures are discussed.
While "tectonic stress" on word wide level follows seldom a serious discussion, a notable counter example is the monograph by Homer-Dixon (2006), which thoroughly examines the parallels of shrinking Energy investments and sudden disruptions of the Energy supply (called "tectonic stresses", 2006: 103). The whole discussion in the Energy-sector needs further examination, which can't be done here. Important here is the notion of "tectonic stress", which is also visible in the Corona-Crisis. That the medical sector is highly stressed by a global pandemic goes without saying, also the disastrous economic effects are obvious. Other effects are less obvious, only for the direct involved stakeholders. Local culture and local media is threatened by the Pandemic.              
Mike Rispoli, director of News Voices, a not-for-profit local news advocacy group, says in the Guardian, Article: "We were living on borrowed time": 
“The possibility of newspapers closing is incredibly worrisome right now, especially because the information we need around the corona virus are things at the local and municipal level,” said Mike Rispoli, director of News Voices, a not-for-profit local news advocacy group (see also the HP of "New Voices" (about local Journalism, "Free Press" network). The existence-threatening situation of Community Journalism (WpE), the situation local newspapers in UK (Guardian) is not not a new phenomenon, as the articles clearly show, but the Pandemic is marking the end. But what the relation to resilience on climate change? If local information-systems are lost, communities can lose their narratives and their are easier to manipulate by simple populist slogans.    
In general climate action is slowed down through Covid-19 (Guardian) and mankind wasn't making enough progress to save the planet from Global warming bevor Covid 19. But how do we know? We know, that global warming (WpE) is real, but it very difficult to judge, weather the already taken measures to prevent further global warming are effective and if they are ineffective, why they are not effective (enough). Climate is not just a global process, there is also Microclimate (in some areas, see the Wikepedia-article). And the most important parmeter used to evaluate measures on a global scale is money, especially in a cost-benefit analysis (WpE has more). According to the OECD (Development Assistance Commitee), there was gap of 2.5 Trillion dollar (SDG-K=HUB an OECD Post). And that was before Covid-19! Now this gap will be even bigger, if first the normal situation is restored (back to Climate Change Culture!) and then the fight against global warming will start again. Only IF (a big IF!) the measures for economic recovery will be combined with the establishment of a new Culture, the culture of sustainability and resilience only then mankind has a change to escape the most severe effects of climate change (because of course global warming is already happening). There are only few possibilities, that the crisis is used to turn the tide, there are more indicators for the opposite (Matt Stoller reports for the Guardian about the situation in the US, 22/3/2020). The Covid-19 crisis is not over, but the discussion for a post Covid-19 economy should start now.           

Reference:
Homer-Dixon, Thomas (2006), The upside of down, Resource and Conflict Analysis, (Souvenir press), London