An Awful Lot of this and an Awful Lot of That: Symbolic, Poetic and Permacultural Competences for a Maximal Multilingual World

Taking Kramsch’s characterization of language pedagogy (1993, p.12) as its point of departure, this article offers symbolic, poetic and permaculture design principles as an ideologically restorative way of transforming a “little bit of this and a little bit of that” into a holistic, ethical framework which begins from the frameworks established by Indigenous cultivation of the land and codified into permaculture design principles by Holmgren and Mollison (Holmgren, 2017; Mollison, 1988; Whitefield, 2004). In addition, the article offers a view of UNESCO’s Languages Matter: Global Guidance on Multilingual Education, for which I have been a key author and from which the connections to the multilingual and ecological fields have been set. Drawing extensively on project work in the global majority world (aka Global South and Indigenous Peoples as well as those forcibly displaced) and from work with people seeking refuge through languages and arts, the article will demonstrate the enduring power of Kramsch’s tonal style and conceptual traction. As such the article contributes to discussions of multilingual activism and Indigenous reconciliation.