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.