Linguistic hospitality: Thinking with language to reflect on positionality within more-than-human participatory design

Abstract

This text is a reflection on an ongoing PhD research on more-than-human hospitality, more particularly on how farmers live with water. Within my research, I will undertake an ethnographic study paired with participatory design, through which I will attempt to bring water home - shift mindsets towards water and build capacity for an environmental transition. In this contribution I will address a relatively under-discussed issue of multilingualism within participatory design and reflect on the process of entering a sensitive context without speaking the native language. Taking the form of a polyphonic essay, this text will explore paradoxes and possibilities lying in thinking with language(s). I will claim that embracing the uncertainty translation poses and taking a more quiet and humble approach may spark a more genuine connection between me and the participants and, in turn, form the basis for poetics of relation. (Glissant [1990] 1997)