ICS Seminar Series
UPCOMING
Language, water and decolonial currents
Presenter: Alastair Pennycook
Discussant: Greg Noble
Chair: Robert Mailhammer
Date & Time: 1 October 2026 | 11:30am - 1:00pm
Room: EB.G.38 Parramatta South Campus
Abstract
This talk explores language, water and decoloniality. While the decolonial imperative in relation to language and language education remains important, much of this work fails to engage with colonial history, material relations or anti-colonial politics. Rather than promoting contemporary liberal pluralist solutions to perceived forms of coloniality, a decolonial politics needs to engage with deeper questions. The relational entanglements of language, time, and water can rejuvenate decolonial projects by developing an alternative politics and imagination. Drawing on water epistemologies, I make the case for critical hydrosocial and hydrocolonial approaches to language. Decolonial currents suggest alternative, fluid modes of engagement – embodied and spiritual – with language, water and power and suggest different ways to pursue decolonial agendas.
Biography
Alastair Pennycook is Professor Emeritus at the University of Technology Sydney. His work over several decades has focused on the global spread of English, critical applied linguistics, urban multilingualism (metrolingualism) and decolonial or Southern approaches to language. Recent work has focused on language entanglements and assemblages (Language Assemblages, Cambridge University Press) and relations between language, water, power and history (Language, Water, Power, Cambridge Elements, and Language and Decolonial Currents, Routledge).
If you have any accessibility requirements, please email Denise at: d.rezk@westernsydney.edu.au
Semester 2 Program
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