Landguaging Imperialism through Teacher-Reflection Art: Land-Sensitizing Tools for Imperial Language Instructors

Land dispossession is key to imperialism as it enables settlers to deterritorialize from their homelands and reterritorialize onto foreign lands, displacing Indigenous inhabitants. In Canada, this settler colonial process not only imposed English and French as dominant languages but also contributed to a broader desensitization to land among their speakers. Ecolinguistics responds to this disconnection by fostering positive land/language relationships using plurilingual and land-sensitizing techniques (i.e., environmental attunement). Currently, many Canadian language teachers struggle to integrate these approaches into their pedagogies. Following teacher reflection research and arts-based inquiry, the Multimodal Autobiographical Landguaging Portrait (MALP) was developed to support imperial language teachers in connecting their language teaching and learning experiences to the land(s) upon which they occurred, attuning them to the role of land in language use. Qualitative analyses of eight MALPs from plurilingual pre-service ESL teachers in Quebec showed that land was understood anthropocentrically. However, those with knowledge of their Indigenous backgrounds or experience with Indigenous pedagogies demonstrated higher levels of environmental attunement. The MALP was useful for articulating land/language embodiment of heritage languages, Indigenous issues, and imperial expansionism, but it was less successful in making connections between English/French and their European homelands. Ecolinguistic activities are thus provided to support land-sensitizing pedagogies that promote positive environmental attunement.