1.3.1 Colonialingualism, Epistemic Injustice, and Transepistemic Language Education

Building upon the previously mentioned ethical dilemma as SSL/SHL instructors, it is worth delving into what Meighan refers to as “the Western epistemological error” (Reference Meighan2022, Reference Meighan2023) – a worldview characterized by linguistic and cognitive imperialism, the belief in human superiority over nature, and white (epistemological) supremacy (Reference Meighan2022: 146) – which is all too often embedded in our classroom dynamics. To that regard, although Meighan refers to English language teaching, we agree with the proposal of an epistemic (un)learning of the Western epistemological error in SL/HL language classrooms to enable “equitable validation of all languages and knowledge systems, including those Indigenous and minoritized” (Meighan, Reference Meighan2023: 2). This type of linguistic and cognitive imperialism (Battiste, Reference Battiste2017) is what Meighan calls “colonialingualism,” which “upholds colonial legacies, imperial mindsets, and inequitable [pedagogical] practices” (Meighan, Reference Meighan2022: 146) and “is subtractive and detrimental to multilingual, multicultural learners’ identities and heritages; endangered, Indigenous languages and knowledges; minoritized communities; and our environment” (Reference Meighan2022: 146–147), since Indigenous languages and knowledges are closely interrelated to culture and land (Chiblow and Meighan, Reference Chiblow and Meighan2021). ‘Colonialingual’ languages such as English can be disconnected from the land and treated simply as a resource to generate profit within a Global North, neoliberal system that mainly serves powerful corporations and wealthy elites (Meighan, Reference Meighan2023: 4). Spanish, among others, also carries “a colonial, imperialist legacy and a eurocentric, human-centered worldview” (Meighan, Reference Meighan2022: 147).

Thus, SL/HL classrooms need to question this ‘colonialingual’ view of language(s) that normalizes and legitimizes environmental racism and injustice in times of climate crisis (McGregor et al., Reference McGregor, Whitaker and Sritharan2020; Meighan, Reference Meighan2023: 4). A specific way to do this is by problematizing ecologically destructive metaphors in English vis-à-vis the target language (Spanish in this case) and other Indigenous languages in contact. Some metaphors are deeply embedded in English and European philosophical traditions or have a direct and harmful impact on Indigenous voices. Fine et al. enumerate several of these (Reference Fine, Love-Nichols and Perley2023: 85–86), including (1) the terra nullius metaphor, which imagines newly colonized lands as ‘empty’ so they can be renamed and claimed (see also Saïd, Reference Saïd1979); (2) the framing of natural systems as inanimate ‘machines’ in colonial languages, contrasted with more animistic understandings in Indigenous languages (Rout and Reid, Reference Rout and Reid2020); and (3) the metaphor of biodiversity as a ‘library,’ suggesting it exists primarily for human benefit and extraction (Stibbe, Reference Stibbe, Döring, Penz and Trampe2008). In her proposal for metaphors that foster a mutualistic relationship between scientific and traditional ecological knowledge, Robin Wall Kimmerer argues that “Indigenous ways of framing and communicating concepts, through shared narratives and symbols, effectively engage the power of metaphors to encompass both material and spiritual dimensions of a matter” (Reference Kimmerer, Young and Longboat2013: 50). Why not give space to these voices in the language classroom, especially since they often coexist with the languages we teach?

By working with a variety of epistemic discourses, we can shape students’ understanding of how knowledge(s) on climate and the environment are constructed and validated. Quoting bell hooks on the English language and what the oppressors do with it (hooks, Reference hooks, Dingwaney and Maier1995: 296), Meighan states that “it is what speakers do with language – how language can inform worldviews, thinking, mindsets, behaviours, and relationships with peoples, environments, and lands – that matters” (Reference Meighan2023: 3). The scholar highlights that the unrelenting spread of English (episteme) worldwide, also in climate discourse we should add, has caused the disenfranchisement, minoritization, and forceful eradication of Indigenous and HLs in Western mainstream education through top-down, colonial medium-of-instruction policies, and, in what is at stake here, climate communication. On that note, Meighan proposes a transepistemic language education which enables learners and educators to engage in what Mignolo defines as a “decolonial and pluriversal” (Reference Mignolo2017) sharing of languages, knowledges, and worlds for more equitable and sustainable language teaching and learning (Meighan, Reference Meighan2023: 3).

1.3.2 Contextualizing the Languages We Teach: A Synchronic and Diachronic Inquiry

In our specific case, Spanish language(s) and discourse(s) reflect a relative position depending on the context. In the Spanish-speaking world, owing to language ideologies shaped by colonial history, the nation-building projects of the independent republics in the nineteenth century and current processes of mass migrations and globalization – all linked to questions of economy, social class, race, generation, and gender – Spanish holds a privileged position in relation to the original languages it is in contact with (for example, Quechua, Nahuatl, Aymara, Guaraní, Mayan, Zapotec, and Kawésqar in Latin America; or Galician, Catalan, and Euskera in Spain; or fa d’ambô and bantu languages in Equatorial Guinea; or hassaniya in Western Sahara). In the US, Spanish is the second most spoken language. It is not surprising, then, that the teaching of Spanish has become a highly institutionalized professional practice (del Valle, Reference del Valle, Mar-Molinero and Stewart2006).

While the Spanish language and its speakers are often marginalized, minoritized, and delegitimized in the US, Spanish is also perceived as “a valuable, standardized global language” (del Valle, Reference del Valle, Mar-Molinero and Stewart2006: 29), as both a local and global sociocultural commodity that facilitates an entrance to national and global marketplaces. Given its recognized instrumentality for professional growth, as well as its ability to connect learners to their linguistic heritage (Carreira and Kagan, Reference Carreira and Kagan2011: 57), Spanish is the language that the vast majority of students choose to fulfill the requirement at US universities (Lusin et al., Reference Lusin, Hor and Pylkkanen2022: 49).

That recognized instrumental perspective leads to the perception of this language as universal, non-ethnic, neutral, and objective (Woolard, Reference Woolard and del Valle2007). When taught from a purely instrumental viewpoint, accents are erased under the conception of ‘anonymity’ on which hegemonic (standard) languages base their authority, according to Kathryn A. Woolard. Like English, Spanish is positioned to become a global lingua franca that is presumed to be understood by everyone, at least in the Spanish-speaking world, including the US – ignoring the fact that competence in the language is closely tied to social class and access to formal education. Regional varieties of Spanish are thus viewed as ‘authentic’: They are seen as deeply rooted in specific social and geographical territories, marked as private and particular – languages that come from “somewhere” (Woolard, Reference Woolard and del Valle2007). Woolard argues that the ideological value of “authenticity” is typically assigned to minority languages and nonstandard varieties, which are perceived as situated and localized. In contrast, official languages and standard varieties are ideologically valued as “anonymous” and universal, representing a “view from nowhere.” Spanish, however, moves across both sides of this ideological dichotomy, and at times even blurs the line between them.

At the same time, through the also ideological process of fractal recursivity (Irvine and Gal, Reference Irvine, Gal and Duranti2009), the dichotomy between Spanish and originary languages is reproduced (in terms of identity and sociology) within the Spanish side of the original dichotomy – yielding a new opposition: English/Spanish, where English is dominant and Spanish is minoritized and racialized in the US. This notion may be extrapolated to the context of climate discourse, where English has dominated global discourse(s) and, with it, Western thought has shaped how we conceptualize and interact with the environment. That is why it is so important to talk about climate in languages other than English in order to diversify the mainstream discourse that often excludes the very communities who perhaps best understand the environment and suffer most from the climate crisis. At the same time, Spanish, as a (neo)colonial language, has been the linguistic medium in processes of land exploitation, resource extraction, and deforestation through activities such as mining, illegal logging, and infrastructure development, often carried out by white creoles. The goal is not to romanticize the idea that Indigenous peoples are the only stewards of the environment, as Luis de la Cruz, a specialist in environmental anthropology and president of the Fungir Foundation, emphasizes:

That said, these neocolonial practices are intrinsically connected to environmental racism and inequality suffered by marginalized communities such as women, racialized groups, and Indigenous peoples for whom, many times, Spanish is an imposed colonial language (consider the role of other languages that you may be teaching as well). Being aware of – even to a small extent – the diachronic and synchronic sociolinguistic perspectives of the language we teach/learn provides a richer understanding of the language’s evolution and current usage, revealing the dynamic nature of language within different communities.

2.2.1 Mainstream Metaphorical Discourse(s)

Through a thoughtful engagement with the decentralizing practices described earlier, we put forward the need to study metaphorical figures of speech as regards climate in the target language in comparison with figures of speech in English and Indigenous and/or minoritized languages in contact, problematizing ecologically destructive metaphors and proposing new, more effective ones is a possible path to follow. The comparison of geopolitical differences central to the climate debate through texts published in the US and in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world leads us to issues of diversity and inclusion by paying attention to rhetorical and aesthetic decisions. Students learn to infer the discursive features of the scientific and public spheres that are used to talk about climate, specifically distinguishing how metaphors and communicative standards in Indigenous, regional, and colonial languages and cultures shape our environmental beliefs and actions differently.

As a pedagogical example, in class we work with the mainstream US film Don’t Look Up (Reference McKay2021) – a satire of the political, scientific, and societal responses to the climate crisis and its discourses. The movie serves as a powerful metaphor for the climate emergency. It illustrates how scientific warnings of imminent disaster are often met with denial, inaction, disinformation, economic profiteering, and public scorn or indifference by a wide range of stakeholders: the Ivy League scientific community, political authorities, mass media, social media users, the military, celebrities, religious and spiritual groups, corporate moguls and executives of major tech companies, the general population, and even wildlife. Students watch the movie dubbed in Latin American Spanish (it is also interesting to discuss the ideological implications of offering a ‘Latin American’ dubbing option alongside a Spanish-from-Spain version). They are assigned in advance one of the stakeholders in the climate crisis debate as portrayed in the film. Then, they come to class prepared to perform the role. They must negotiate arguments and discursive choices to advance the meaning conveyed by their assigned character. Through this role-play, students engage with complex scenarios and unfamiliar viewpoints. We also comment on selected quotes from the movie and work transversally on skills such as reported speech, resulting in a more comprehensive analysis of the diverse discourses of the movie as a whole.

A mainstream, big-budget production featuring Hollywood stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep serves as a type of meta-metaphor for climate discourse; that is, how climate discourse(s) in the Anglophone Global North (whether in science, politics, or the media) are released on major streaming platforms and theaters, which translates into global reach, and therefore further possibilities for influencing public perception, versus the lack of accessibility and outreach of alternative cultural productions.

2.2.2 War Metaphors

Other pedagogical work can be done with metaphorical discourse in the target language. Climate communication requires narrative resources and linguistic abstractions that help people visualize and conceptualize what is happening. Students learn about what metaphors and metaphorical frames are, that we live by them (Lakoff and Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1980), their importance, how they may call to action when they are performative, and how metaphorical cultural translation can be deceitful – which is why it’s so important to examine metaphors in their original languages.

That is why we analyze in class the most common metaphorical frames used to talk about the climate crisis in Spanish. From an inductive approach, students learn about the cognitive and persuasive role of metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1980) beyond their literary and poetic uses, and their part in the social and political construction of reality through discourse(s), shaping not only the way we speak, but also our thoughts and actions. In discourse(s), metaphors connect concepts to establish a frame of reference, helping us to know and conceptualize a new reality (target domain) from already known realities (source domain). For example, students reflect on the metaphorical framing of time as money. This notion is shared in both English and Spanish (el tiempo es oro and time is money) showing a modern, Western worldview in which time is seen as a limited and valuable resource in postindustrial and capitalist contexts where productivity and efficiency are highly valued. We will revisit this metaphor in Section 3.2.1, comparing it with other worldviews regarding the concept of time.

We activate the topic by showing authentic examples of metaphors and metonymies in Spanish-speaking media. For instance, it is extremely common to read and hear about metaphors of similarity that see global warming as the enemy: la lucha contra el calentamiento global (the fight against global warming). War metaphors are very much used to manage the climate crisis. Also, calentamiento global is sometimes explicitly referring to the gradual increase in the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere due to the greenhouse gases as we burn fossil fuels. However, it is often also used as a metonymy, where this specific aspect (i.e. the increased global temperature) represents the larger, more complex climate crisis, which involves other shifts in weather patterns, rainfall, and the intensity and/or frequency of extreme weather phenomena. We may infer the difference between these two rhetorical figures of speech in examples such as the headline “La Casa Blanca reclama unión bipartidista para combatir la crisis climática” (Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2021), in which The White House is a mentonym for the US president, the US administration, or the executive branch of the US government; whereas combatir belongs to a metaphorical frame that evokes a war, an enemy to combat in the battlefield.

Students in our intermediate course on climate topics understand or in some cases review the comparative aspect between two seemingly unrelated parts in a metaphor, versus the associative aspect of the metonymy, which involves replacing a word or phrase with another one with which it is closely related. From here, they do some research within Spanish-speaking mass media to detect what metaphors are most commonly used to talk about the climate crisis. The war metaphor is one of the most prevalent and striking frames used in the press in headlines such as “‘Gótico botánico’: bosques vengadores y hiedras invasoras.” (Lucendo, Reference Lucendo2025) and subheadings including: “Crisis climática sin tregua” (Planelles, Reference Planelles2024).

Through critical metaphor analysis, based in Charteris-Black (Reference Charteris-Black2004) and the STAVE (Systematic Tool for Behavioural Assumption, Validation and Exploration) method, Capdevila et al. critically analyze the metaphors used to define the phenomenon of the climate crisis and its political manifestations in the Spanish press (El Mundo, El País, and La Vanguardia). They observe how a qualitative sample of participants interpret and redefine those metaphors over a two-week period, from November 28 to December 11, 2015, the same year that the Climate Summit (COP-21) was held in Paris. The study identifies five target domains: climate change, environmental policies, the geopolitics of the climate crisis, the Paris Summit, and the countersummit (Reference Capdevila, Moragas-Fernández, Gómez-Puertas, Espluga Trenc, Prades and Espluga Trenc2020: 53–54). Among other results, they conclude that the source domains of “war–conflict–battle” and “path–movement–speed” were generally the most used among the five target domains. Our students also found some examples of the “path–movement–speed” frame: “en este momento tan crucial para la humanidad, estamos viendo a muchos gobiernos titubear. Frenar el paso cuando se necesita avanzar más rápido. O incluso negar la evidencia, darse la vuelta y caminar hacia atrás” (At this crucial moment for humanity, we are seeing many governments falter. Slowing their pace when they need to move faster. Or even denying the evidence, turning around, and walking backward) (President of Spain Pedro Sánchez’s speech before the plenary session. Piña, Reference 81Piña2024).

As a guest speaker, Prof. Khan presented to our class the metaphorical frame of incautación policial (police seizure frame) in Spanish to refer to the capture of CO₂ (Khan, Reference Khan2025), previously analyzed by Haddad and Montero-Martínez (Reference Haddad and Montero-Martínez2019) in English and Arabic: “Carbon Capture (CAPTURE) and Transportation (TRANSPORT) are carried out by scientists (POLICE), taking CO₂ (CRIMINAL) to deep sea-beds or underground (PRISON), by means of pipelines (POLICE CARS),” p. 7. They all examine how English, as the global lingua franca, affects the transfer of the neologism “carbon capture and sequestration” through translation, and how this contributes to the phenomenon of domain loss in the target language. And, we wonder, what effects does the influence of English in shaping metaphorical frames, such as “carbon capture and sequestration,” have on speakers from communities whose knowledge systems differ greatly from those of the Anglophone world? This mediation may standardize in the target language the conceptual constructions found in the English metaphorical source domain (Haddad and Montero-Martínez, Reference Haddad and Montero-Martínez2019: 11), but it also has broader consequences, such as the noncreation of new terms in languages other than English (Hultgren, Reference Hultgren2013); the impoverishment of conceptual systems; and the prevention of the cultural and conceptual growth of scientific languages (Bordet, Reference Bordet2016), all quoted in Haddad and Montero-Martínez (Reference Haddad and Montero-Martínez2019). Metaphorical translation and its scope and outcomes are topics we may also work on in class, in relation to the climate narratives we are consuming and sharing. Within this specific metaphorical frame of ‘police seizure,’ CO₂ is also portrayed as an enemy to be fought.

Interestingly, Lakoff and Johnson discuss a similar framework in the metaphor “argument is war” (ataque, defensa, contraataque, etc.), where the goal is to win the discussion (Reference Lakoff and Johnson1980: 40). They propose imagining a culture in which the frame of reference for an argument is a dance instead: Participants are dancers and the interaction is carried out in a balanced and aesthetically beautiful way. In such a culture, people would view, experience, conduct, and speak about arguments differently (Reference Lakoff and Johnson1980: 41). However, in our culture, where arguments are framed as war, we might not even recognize such an exchange as an argument. Lakoff and Johnson conclude that, although often unconsciously, metaphors shape not only the language we use but also, in this case, our very conceptualization of what an ‘argument’ is. Thus, we speak about arguments this way because we conceive of them this way, and consequently we act accordingly (Reference Lakoff and Johnson1980: 42).

This is eye-opening for students, who then start questioning what they see in public discourse: the use of a war frame to talk about the climate crisis. On the one hand, the war metaphor may make people perceive more urgency and risk surrounding the climate crisis and they may be urged to increase conservation behavior (Flusberg et al., Reference Flusberg, Matlock and Thibodeau2017). On the other hand, the fight against climate change may be perceived as David failing to defeat Goliath, which results in disappointment and frustration. Journalist Kate Yoder wonders: “by putting one group against another, do war metaphors undermine our ability to address the complex problem of climate change, the biggest global crisis we face? Are there other ways to frame our predicament and convey the sense of urgency that’s needed – without dividing us?” (Reference 84Yoder2018). Rather than portraying the climate crisis as a dichotomous choice (Johnstone and Stickles, Reference 77Johnstone and Stickles2024: 1) through the image of a divisive war we are destined to lose, Yoder proposes a more peaceful frame that unites us and offers solutions. We may think of metaphorical frames that do not focus on conflict and that evoke emotions other than hopelessness. If we feel that this ‘war’ is just too long and unwinnable, that leads to doomism, which at the same time produces “paralyzing eco-anxiety and subsequently inaction” (Johnstone and Stickles, Reference 77Johnstone and Stickles2024: 1). Which alternatives exist?

2.2.3 Health Metaphors

In the article “El cambio climático necesita nuevas metáforas,” Vidart-Delgado (Reference Vidart-Delgado2018) proposes that it’s not enough to talk about climate change based on its most catastrophic consequences. It’s also insufficient to think of it in terms of thermal sensations (like calentamiento global), as these metaphors and metonymies do not capture the severity of the geophysical and social consequences of global temperature rise, which disproportionately affects the bodies of those who have been historically marginalized.

The author makes the case with the sugarcane cutters in northern Nicaragua and how they suffer from chronic kidney diseases owing to prolonged exposure to heat. As an alternative, it is suggested we use metaphors that evoke these daily, personal experiences. Thus, framing the climate crisis with metaphors of perjuicio (harm) – such as injury, wound, and loss – may better capture the violence of its impacts, and imply that the planet needs care and healing. From elementary levels, students are encouraged to explore how the narratives that frame the climate crisis may be metaphorically shifting toward health metaphors such as “Un planeta enfermo: el ser humano ha traspasado todos los límites para su seguridad.” (Euronews Green, 2023), which may prompt proactive healing measures. For instance:

Referring to the 2020 Greenpeace manifesto entitled “A Green Recovery: How We Get There,” in her book Metaphor and Argumentation in Climate Crisis Discourse, Augé explains that:

Farré et al. (Reference Farré, Prades, Gonzalo, Capdevila, Moragas-Fernández, Gómez-Puertas, Espluga Trenc, Prades and Espluga Trenc2020) quote Roser-Renouf and Maibach (Reference Roser-Renouf and Maibach2010), who suggest that establishing connections between the effects of the climate crisis and questions of public health could help generate emotions that involve more positive responses. Extreme climate situations can have a toll on people’s mental health, as well as limiting access to medical assistance and food (Reference Roser-Renouf and Maibach2010: 46).

To make even more evident the fact that we constantly live by metaphors, and also to make students aware that the climate crisis intersects with other socio-economic problems we face today, we can also work with mental illness metaphors such as the one of ‘tourismphobia’. Students can watch this short TV news piece at home: “Turismofobia: ¿Por qué Europa está rechazando a los turistas?” (El País, 2025). With the help of a listening guide, or not depending on the students’ level, they can answer some comprehension questions at home before class, as well as grammar questions that may pose difficulty, and prompts that help them to interpret the metaphors used in the text (such as El turismo, la gran gallina de los huevos de oro). They can even start reflecting on the connection between such a problem and the climate crisis.

Then, in class, we expand this activity through the reading of a segment of the review “¿Es necesario viajar para acercarse al mundo? Reseña de Contra el turismo” (Elena Krause, Reference Krause2024). Arnau Sala Sallent proposes a didactic unit that offers a critical analysis of tourism based on the book Contra el turismo, while also integrating key linguistic practice (Sala Sallent, Reference Sala Sallent2024b). The text questions the notion of traveling as truly necessary to connect with the world and the common belief that travel leads to personal growth. It also questions the sustainability of mass tourism in the face of the climate emergency. Students examine the key takeaway of the book review: Tourism is a mass industry in the midst of consumerism and capitalist systems that more often than not results in economic inequality, cultural commodification, and environmental deterioration. We learn critical vocabulary on the subject matter (e.g. hipermovilidad, demanada hídrica, coste de la vida [hypermobility, water demand, cost of living]) and interpret metaphors (e.g. una gota en el océano del sector turístico [a drop in the ocean of the tourism sector]), as well as identify human contradictions we can all relate to. This improves both language comprehension and critical thinking.

The comprehension questions we pose encourage learners to evaluate bold claims and articulate their own informed opinions on the future of tourism using precise, argumentative language. This didactic unit can be enriched with an Instagram post that contains these five pieces of advice for sustainable and responsible tourism on World Tourism Day (ONU: Programa para el Medio Ambiente [UN Environment Programme], 2024), to review key words and ways to offer suggestions.

3.2.1 Climate Storytelling

When it comes to climate issues, scientific discourse doesn’t always reach all audiences. It is also perceived as inaccessible by many. As stated before, scholarly literature and activists alike have started to uphold new forms of communication about the climate crisis that help people redefine and contextualize their role into the nuanced complexity of such a multidimensional phenomenon. Mejía Cáceres et al. (Reference Mejía Cáceres, Araújo and Monteiro2024) propose to explore the “deep emotional implications of climate change” through “esthetic experiences, especially those involving introspection and emotional resonance,” integrating Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogies in response to the oppressive and dehumanizing effects of the climate crisis (Reference Mejía Cáceres, Araújo and Monteiro2024: 431–433). That perspective implies transforming traditional educational paradigms to engage with climate discourse. For that purpose, they refer to the Office for Climate Education and its contribution to the Latin American context through the Latin America for Climate Education project, “which aims to promote climate change education (CCE) from three key aspects: adapting pedagogical resources to the local context, professional development of teachers, and the creation of a community of practice” (Reference Mejía Cáceres, Araújo and Monteiro2024: 431). After acknowledging the lack of comprehensive strategies for teacher training in education on the climate crisis – which we highlighted as well specifically from the perspective of SL/HL teaching, the authors pose the following question: “How can we conceptualize a CCE program from a critical and humanizing perspective?” (Reference Mejía Cáceres, Araújo and Monteiro2024: 431). As the authors emphasize, “integrating emotions and holistic perspectives into education fosters deeper connections with oneself, others, and the environment” (Reference Mejía Cáceres, Araújo and Monteiro2024: 433).

Likewise, during the Primer Coloquio Internacional: La Humanidad Amenazada, ¿Quién se hace cargo del futuro?, held at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 2023, the Canadian Inuk activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier noted that emotional value is very important because it connects Indigenous people’s identity to family and ancestors, and to the spiritual strength of women. She added that humanizing climate issues is essential in the fight against the crisis (DGCS-UNAM, 2023). In language courses, where identity is a focus from the earliest stages of learning, the relationship between identity, culture, and nature is central.

In the short movie Ja chomobicho baneni (La última tinaja) (Reference Delgado Maldonado and Mahua Fasanando2019), Lola is an elderly Shipibo-Konibo woman in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest who has witnessed how the mestizo population has deforested the lands that traditionally belonged to her community. As a result, she can no longer access the materials she once found in the forest to make her ceramic jars (“Ya no hay mei,” she complains). In a deeply intimate way, Lola shares her daily reflections on witnessing the gradual loss of her culture across generations – with the younger generations being forced to leave to the city in search of job opportunities – and her struggle to preserve and transmit it: “Siento que estas son mis últimas palabras … el último mensaje que les dejo” (I feel these are my last words … the last message I leave behind), Lola mourns. The movie may be seen in the original Shipibo language with Spanish subtitles. Lola exclaims, “Cuando se pierdan nuestras costumbres, ¿qué pasará con mis nietos cuando yo ya no exista?” (When our traditions are lost, what will happen to my grandchildren when I cease to exist?). Here, grammatical items arise naturally in a meaningful context. In this case, the use of the subjunctive in relative clauses referring to a hypothetical or nonfactual future emerges as a lament for the loss of traditional means of survival in the face of an uncertain future – one that involves assimilation into a capitalist way of life at the expense of the community’s own identity, language, culture, and traditional barter-based economy.

This short movie can be contrasted with El tiempo es agua (2017). From a more activist perspective, the short film explains the struggles the Wampis are facing owing to the lack of water in their region. The Wampis are an Indigenous group made up of thousands of people whose ancestors have lived in the Amazon rainforest of northern Peru for centuries (Ministerio de Cultura, Perú, Reference Ministerio de Cultura2025b). The incursions of loggers, miners, and oil prospectors, along with policy changes favoring industrial exploitation, have left the Wampis increasingly concerned about the future of their home. To defend their people and ensure the survival of their forest against deforestation, they legally organized under the First Indigenous Autonomous Government of Peru. The movie is bilingual in Spanish and Wampi.

In class, we conduct a comparative analysis of content, form, language(s), and culture(s) in both movies. Students are asked to choose one of the two short movies to see at home. If they choose La última tinaja, they need to contextualize it through some research and reading on Shipibo-Konibo from Perú’s Base de Datos de Pueblos Indígenas u Originarios (Database of Indigenous or Native Peoples) (Ministerio de Cultura, Perú, Reference Ministerio de Cultura2025a). If they choose El tiempo es agua, they learn on the Wampis from the same source. Students can also bring articles they find in digital newspapers (for example, El País, 2017). All students prepare the same set of questions that they will answer according to the visualized short movie.

In the following class, students divide into two groups based on the movie they watched and share their answers to the questions, along with their critical analysis of the film, within their group. When they analyze the title El tiempo es agua, they return to the metaphor El tiempo es oro/Time is money and realize how the Wampis’ epistemic discourse differs from the capitalist, production-oriented discourse that emphasizes the economic value of time. For the Wampis, they can live without money, but they cannot live without water. This is an idea that Lola herself expresses: “Antes la plata no era necesaria para vivir” (In the past, money was not necessary to live). In the next class session, students watch the short film they did not see in the previous class. In a whole-class discussion, they can now compare and contrast both films, which convey similar messages through different visuals and cinematic narratives. The films’ stylistic elements reflect the intimate, personal storytelling of Lola and the more political, organized activism of the Wampis.

A way of humanizing climate discourse(s) in the SL/HL classroom is indeed through storytelling. As Crymble points out, “Storytelling is crucial in the fight against climate change. Content creators need to find a way to create compelling stories or narratives to make people feel a sense of shared purpose and identity and pay attention to our global environmental issues” (Reference Crymble2022: 13). Here, we use ‘humanizing’ to mean making climate discourse more ‘human,’ relatable, and accessible through the lens of the ‘humanities.’ For example, the Colombian government created a story using scientific language that remains accessible to all audiences – titled Vientos de cambio: una historia de carbono neutralidad (Gobierno de Colombia, 2021) – to help children understand Colombia’s long-term climate strategy, E2050, developed to comply with the Paris Agreement and its commitment to becoming carbon neutral. In the story, the audience is addressed in this way: “Acompáñanos en este viaje que se desarrolla en el año 2050 en Colombia, el año en el que esperamos lograr la carbono neutralidad. A través de esta historia, escrita para ti, conocerás y aprenderás algunas de las grandes transformaciones que implica este gran reto para la humanidad y la protección del planeta” (Join us on this journey set in the year 2050 in Colombia, the year in which we hope to achieve carbon neutrality. Through this story, written just for you, you will discover and learn about some of the major transformations that this monumental challenge entails for humanity and the protection of the planet).

Told in simple terms as a first-person narration by Valeria, the story helps children understand and engage with the topic, which may also feel relatable since it takes the shape of a personal narrative. Valeria starts the narrative by introducing herself: “Hola, soy Valeria y estamos en el año 2050. Hoy les contaré del viaje que nos cambió la vida a mí y a mi familia” (Hi, I am Valeria and we are in 2050. Today I will tell the story of a trip that changed the lives of my family and me). It features a family made up of Valeria, Martín, Victoria, Tomás, and Rocío. They decide to follow in the footsteps of their grandfather Jorge in order to discover his favorite places and what he accomplished there. The journey shows how the city and countryside have gradually changed for the better and living conditions have significantly improved thanks to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Bringing this story into the classroom, we review key concepts and lexicon on climate and sustainability, such as ecoeficiente, gases de efecto invernadero (GEI), energía renovable, medios eléctricos de transporte masivo, refinería de petróleo, planta de hidrógeno, and biomasa (ecoefficient, greenhouse gases, renewable energy, electric mass transit systems, oil refinery, hydrogen plant, and biomass). These notions are integrated within the story and also compiled in a glossary at the end. Elementary levels can also review vocabulary related to professions (arquitecta, profesor, médica, agricultora, diseñadora [architect, professor, doctor, farmer, designer]) or animals (vacas, pájaros, ardillas, conejos, cucarrones, mariposas, abejas [cows, birds, squirrels, rabbits, large beetles, butterflies, bees]).

We also foster discussion with prompts that delve into the ways in which the climate crisis is humanized, focusing on rhetorical decisions and its impact on the expected audience. Through these discussion questions, students reflect on both the local (Colombia) and global (the Paris Agreement) contexts of the story; the intended audience and how it shapes the narrative; and the environmental goals presented in the plot. They discuss how the true power to confront the effects of global warming lies in education. Students also learn about possible solutions to the climate crisis – such as silvopastoral farms, electric transportation, or energy harnessing – that future generations can integrate in their personal and professional paths. They may share if some of these practices are already taking place in the towns they live in or in cities they have visited. From a utopian perspective, the climate crisis is humanized through a children’s story of a family that could be any of ours. However, students have demonstrated critical thinking by pointing out that the overly idealized future depicted in the story makes it less credible and relatable. We also revisit previously acquired metaphorical skills by analyzing the metaphor in the title Vientos de cambio (Winds of Change), which may refer to renewable wind energy but also to the need for a paradigmatic shift in how we interact with the environment. This metaphor also ties into the broader narrative theme of a journey in the story. The literal train journey mirrors a metaphorical one, in which each stop represents an environmental goal to be achieved by 2050.

The story also serves as an excellent example of how to narrate in the past in Spanish:

The conceptual differences in narration between the preterite (we see the action from the outside; we introduce and list completed actions that advance the story), the imperfect (we see the action from the inside, as happening at the time – the timeline stops to give context by describing people, things, or circumstances, as well as ongoing situations or developing actions), and the past perfect (we indicate earlier finished actions) are clearly noticed. As a production post-task, students can write their own story. The prompt may read as follows: “Mi viaje de cambio – Inspirada en la historia del abuelo, escribe en un párrafo o dos tu ‘viaje de cambio’ hacia una vida más ecológica y sostenible ambientada en el 2050 y narrando en el pasado cómo llegaste hasta ahí” (My Journey of Change – Inspired by the grandfather’s story, write a paragraph or two describing your own “journey of change” toward a more ecological and sustainable life, set in the year 2050 and narrated in the past tense to recount how you arrived at that point). In their responses, students organically mobilize the vocabulary and structures noticed in the short story Vientos de cambio to produce a follow-up story inspired by that of Valeria’s grandparents. They imagine an ecologically ideal future as the result of their generation’s efforts.

Children’s stories can also serve as a basis for collaborations within the community. After the summer, a Bolivian friend from New York City (NYC) gave the daughter of one of us the children’s book Abuela Grillo y la defensa del agua, by Denis Chapón and Claudia Michel (Reference Chapón and Michel2020). One particularly interesting feature of this edition is its quadrilingual format: Castilian, Guaraní, Quechua, and Catalan. We quickly saw the story’s potential for our class. The epigraph says: “El texto de este cuento, fruto de una coedición entre Bolivia y Catalunya, lo encontrarás escrito en cuatro idiomas: guaraní, quechua, castellano y catalán. El orden de los idiomas está elegido en relación a la proximidad con el mito original” (The text of this story, the result of a co-edition between Bolivia and Catalonia, appears in four languages: Guaraní, Quechua, Spanish, and Catalan. The order of the languages was chosen based on their proximity to the original myth). Guaraní appears first in the story because it is the language closest to the original myth. The story is an adaptation of the Bolivian animated short film under the same title (dir. Chapón, Reference Chapón2010) based on an Ayoreo myth about a grandmother cricket, Direjná, the guardian of water, whose songs bring rain. She settles in a village, but her grandchildren and other members of the community are afraid that too much rain will cause floods and ask her to leave. Once expelled, she falls into the hands of a greedy water cartel that exploits her gift for profit by privatizing water. This causes a drought and prompts the need for harmony between people and nature among villagers. The adaptation highlights the ongoing struggle of communities to defend water as a fundamental right against commercial exploitation and makes direct references to the Guerras del Agua in Bolivia.

Students watched the short film and read the story while paying attention to the four written languages. At first glance, they could already notice some differences among them, and especially vis-à-vis Spanish, or even English. For example, they observed that words seemed longer in Guaraní and Quechua, which led to a discussion of what an agglutinative language is; namely, a language in which grammatical categories are indicated by suffixes. They also noticed that Quechua has three vowels (compared with the five in Spanish), its more frequent use of the letter k, the special characters for nasality in Guaraní, and the grave accents in Catalan. This multilingual practice may even support their first language by fostering metalinguistic awareness and encouraging cross-linguistic transfer.

We also discussed the questions proposed by the referenced printed edition. For example: “¿Te imaginas vivir sin agua?” “¿Y si el agua costase mucho MUCHO más de lo que puedes pagar?” “¿Cómo beberías, te bañarías, lavarías, cocinarías?” and “¡El agua es de todas y todos!, gritaban en las Guerras de Agua en Bolivia. Esto es lo que llamamos bienes comunes, porque son para el bien común. ¿Qué otros bienes comunes conoces?” (Can you imagine living without water? What if water cost much MUCH more than you could afford? How would you drink, bathe, wash, or cook? and “Water belongs to everyone!” they shouted during the Water Wars in Bolivia. This is what we call common goods because they serve the common good. What other common goods do you know of?). Through these questions, we learned more about Bolivia, its geography, and its linguistic landscape. We realized that what may be a hypothetical situation for some is the reality for too many people. We engaged in a conversation about what constitutes a common good and how it is not always obvious, as it is a concept too often mediated by economics, law, and social structures. We discussed whether water and other assumed common goods are a right or a privilege. We even talked about songs and sayings from our other languages that are believed to bring rain (“Que llueva, que llueva”) or make it stop (“Rain, rain go away”). Finally, we discussed water businesses in NYC, as well as in the various places where the students come from, and how their water systems operate.

In collaboration with their Spanish teacher, all the eighth graders (last year of middle school in the US) in a neighboring affiliated school worked with the same story at the same time, and their science teacher dedicated a class to climate change in connection with the same didactic unit. Our intermediate class then worked in groups to prepare a mini-lesson on the story, which they taught to the fifty eighth graders who visited us at the university.

This collaboration trained our students in preparing an instructionally effective lesson plan and developing presentational skills in the target language. It required them to interact in Spanish with an audience of varying proficiency levels, and enabled them to spread the climate message beyond the confines of the classroom and university, reaching future generations. The eighth graders continued to think of the meanings of the story and connect it to their own water privileges and (ir)responsible uses, all while learning from university students who served as role models. The instructors at both institutions fostered a sense of community, shared pedagogical ideas, and collaborated transdisciplinarily in a meaningful way.

3.2.2 In Their Words: Testimonies

Also meaningful is to listen to testimonies of people narrating the changes that the climate crisis is bringing to their lives and surroundings. In line with the idea of humanizing climate discourse through storytelling and/by multiple voices, in class we may work with the campaign of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in El Salvador, “Voces por el clima,” which aims at promoting dialogue and intergenerational reflection on the climate crisis. Several participants, including farmers, students, and other members of the local communities between the ages of twenty-six and ninety, shared how the climate has changed over the years and how it has affected them. These testimonies offer first-person narratives from those who have experienced extreme weather events, as well as from those whose future will be heavily impacted by climate change.

Narrating in the past is most probably one of the most conceptually challenging aspects for Spanish SL/HL learners. The traditional academic approach – often characterized by decontextualization and oversimplified rules of thumb for the use of the Preterite (Simple Past), Imperfect, and Past Perfect in narration – makes it even more difficult. From the communicative approach emerging in the 1970s, more language curricula are increasingly offering a thematic organization of programs (e.g., technology, pastimes, travel) along with communicative functions and tasks (e.g., giving opinions, narrating a story, describing your family). More recently, we also find a project-based, content-focused approach (see Contreras et al., Reference Contreras, Pérez Zapatero and Rosales Varo2020). Projects are meaningful along with thematic contents, as they help students interpret the world they live in. But we feel that on many occasions grammar is still the true skeleton of SL/HL curricula organization and conceptualization, which follow formal features to articulate the pedagogical sequences in courses (e.g., first present tense, then past tenses, and then more complex syntactic structures). The conventional activities proposed in textbooks or other classroom materials often feel like an excuse to practice certain grammatical structures – presented as the learning goal and taking up most of the classroom time and textbook space – rather than treating them as tools for understanding, producing meaning, or completing a contextualized task or project.

For example, to practice the imperfect tense along with time markers to introduce a contrast with the present, such as ya no and todavía, the textbook Proyectos (Contreras et al., Reference Contreras, Pérez Zapatero and Rosales Varo2020) uses the well-suited theme of “generations.” One specific exercise compares what life was like in our grandparents’ time versus now. Another activity presents two pictures of the same man sitting on the couch in his living room; the one on the left represents ‘before,’ and the one on the right represents ‘after.’ Some changes have occurred. For example: “El hombre antes llevaba barba y el pelo largo, y ahora ya no or El hombre estaba casado, pero ya no lo está. Además, tenía un perro, pero parece que ya no lo tiene. Podría estar muerto” (The man used to have a beard and long hair, but he no longer does. Or: The man was married, but he isn’t anymore. Furthermore, he had a dog, but it seems he no longer has it. It could be dead). This is a fun and interactive exercise to practice the imperfect and specific time markers in order to talk about events that used to happen before and still do, or not anymore.

But, how is that different if we listen to Reyna, a seventy-two year old who has lived her entire life in Santa Tecla, near the city of San Salvador? She is concerned about the changes she has noticed in the climate over the years:

Students can infer the use of the imperfect tense in contrast with the present in Reyna’s testimony when she explains the environmental phenomena that used to occur but no longer do or, at least, not in the same way. Here, the structures used to express contrast between the past and the present we were practicing earlier become more meaningful when contextualized through climate changes that directly affect people. A post-task reflection may take place on environmental changes impacting students’ own local communities, allowing them to use these structures in ways that are relatable. This kind of inductive inference can be facilitated through a listening comprehension task to answer the following questions: ¿Qué solía pasar antes en Santa Tecla (El Salvador) que ya no ocurre? ¿Cómo ha cambiado el clima? ¿Qué efectos medioambientales concretos tienen estos cambios? Escucha y anota todos los verbos en pasado que entiendas. ¿En qué pasado están y por qué? “(What used to happen in Santa Tecla (El Salvador) that no longer occurs? How has the climate changed? What specific environmental effects do these changes have? Listen and note down all the verbs in the past tense that you understand. Which past tense are they in, and why?”).

Students are exposed to a Central American variety of Spanish and learn regional vocabulary, also specific to local species, such as zompopo de mayo. Zompopo is the Mayan word for ‘ant,’ and de mayo refers to the month in which they emerge from their nests, when the rainy season begins, and are sometimes harvested. Through this exercise, not only narrative structures naturally arise in a contextualized way, but bilingual discourse is also embraced, and Indigenous languages – such as Mayan – are acknowledged and highlighted in their natural interaction with Spanish.

Reyna continues: “Antes esta era una ciudad fresca, donde en la mitad del año se necesitaba un suéter, había que abrigarse porque desde las montañas bajaba una brisa fría, pero ahora ya nada de eso. Es bien raro que uno necesite abrigarse, es caluroso y los meses de calor no son como antes, el calor es demasiado y es agobiante” (This used to be a cool city; a place where, for half the year, you needed a sweater; you had to bundle up because a cold breeze would drift down from the mountains. But now, none of that remains. It is quite rare to need to bundle up anymore; it is hot, and the warm months are nothing like they used to be – the heat is excessive and stifling). Through the use of authentic materials such as these testimonies, students learn other structures that are in use to express the same notion, such as ahora ya nada de eso instead of the typical ya no that the textbooks present. Language is shown and learnt as contextualized, bilingual, diverse, and alive, and in clear connection to the environment.

And when language is alive and is learnt as it is, that is, in a descriptive more than a prescriptive fashion, we will find examples of forms that are used in oral, informal, social, and generational registers that do not necessarily correspond to normative and academic uses of the language corresponding to formal and written registers. For instance, in Lillian’s testimony, we can hear: “Nací en Apaneca, pero después dejé de ir mucho tiempo. Me crié cerca de San Marcos Lempa. Allí era el paraíso. Yo me acuerdo del Lempa, del Roldan. Habían bosques; teníamos monos, pero eran manadas de monos, solo miraba uno para arriba y habían monos; habían jabalíes; habían venados; habían toda esa clase de animales allí.”Along with a clear use of the preterite/imperfect contrast, and a varied lexicon for species, students can hear the use of habían, although the close captions insist in correcting it as había. It is precisely the merging/equivalence of register and correctness that feeds linguistic colonization. Forms like habían (the impersonal plural of haber with the meaning of existence) are normally taught to be ‘incorrect’ and are socially stigmatized or ridiculed. Real Academia Española’s (RAE) Diccionario panhispánico de dudas resolves this by saying: “aunque es uso muy extendido en el habla informal de muchos países de América y se da también en España, especialmente entre hablantes catalanes, se debe seguir utilizando este verbo como impersonal en la lengua culta formal, de acuerdo con el uso mayoritario entre los escritores de prestigio” (although it is a very widespread usage in the informal speech of many countries in the Americas and also occurs in Spain, particularly among Catalan speakers, this verb should continue to be used impersonally in formal, cultivated language, in accordance with the predominant usage among prestigious writers). According to the RAE itself, the form habían is widely used informally in certain regions of Latin America, as well as by bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish in Spain. It is clearly stated, then, that the preference for había is a matter of register, not correctness. Since había is used in formal and canonical registers, it is socially regarded as more prestigious. It would be interesting to know whom the RAE considers escritores de prestigio (prestigious writers) as opposed to those who are not deemed prestigious. In any case, rather than simply penalizing the use of habían in this context, it is far more enriching for students to learn that the standard form used in formal and written registers is había – when the verb refers to ‘existence’ and is, therefore, impersonal. At the same time, it’s important that they understand the notion of linguistic prestige is highly ideological; that habían represents a legitimate regional variety in Latin America within oral and informal registers, as well as in certain bilingual discourses in Spain. As sociolinguist Glenn Martínez asserts with the use of haiga versus haya in heritage speakers of Spanish,

As instructors, we need to encourage students to use forms such as había or haya in formal and academic contexts. However, as language educators, we also have the ethical responsibility to teach about registers and regional varieties that challenge a monocentric and centralist notion of nationhood – varieties that are bilingual, accented, racialized, and in which registers are distinctly marked.

To continue to work on storytelling and personal narratives, we can also address the notion of climate migrations. A source that links testimonies and the impact of climate migration in Latin America is an initiative by La data cuenta, an independent journalism platform based on data analysis and visualization of information about the climate crisis, migration, and human rights from a gender perspective. Shared for the first time in front of la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) in Washington DC, the testimonies that we find in the resource “Hogares inundados, raíces arrancadas” may be accompanied by episode 64 of the podcast Rumbo al Norte, both on migrations forced by the effects of climate change in Latin American and the Caribbean (Rumbo al Norte, 2024). From a similar perspective, the animated film Mariposas negras (Reference Baute2024) is inspired by three women – Tanit, Valeria, and Shaila – who lose everything owing to the effects of global warming and are forced to migrate from Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia toward an uncertain future.

By getting to know real first-person stories on the climate crisis by other voices that are not mainstream, scientific concepts blend with emotional dimensions, because learning is not merely cognitive but intertwined with affective, contextual, and cultural experiences (Mejía Cáceres et al., Reference Mejía Cáceres, Araújo and Monteiro2024: 433). More empathetic educational practices may lead to a bigger climate resilience. As Freire stated, “If we have any serious regard for what it means to be human, the teaching of contents cannot be separated from the moral formation of the learners” (Reference Freire2000: 17). When learners gain a critical understanding of their reality, that moral formation may lead to a transformation of themselves and their environment; a transformation relies on the understanding that meaning is not pre-given, but rather emerges through human interaction with the world, i.e. through context(s). Hand in hand is the previously mentioned idea that identity, culture, and nature are intrinsically interconnected. The view of people as separate from the natural world only perpetuates colonial hierarchies that legitimize ecological degradation. Mejía Cáceres et al. point at the term “ecogenoethnocide,” that is, the combined destruction of ecosystems, cultures, and identities, which captures the historical and ongoing injustices experienced in Latin America (Reference Mejía Cáceres, Araújo and Monteiro2024: 442). This lens calls for educational practices that not only resist extractivist and colonial paradigms but also actively support cultural survival, environmental restoration, and a diversity of voices and cosmovisions.

3.3.1 La Milpa

Learning languages, especially those with a colonial history, also involves revealing the languages and cultures they have come into contact with; almost as an act of preservation. There is no need to mention that Indigenous knowledge(s) is/are key in the climate debate (PNUD, 2023). However, not all Indigenous voices feel they are heard or included in the conversation. At the last COP 30, on the edge of the Amazon in Brazil, Cacique Glison, leader of the Tupinambá de Baixo, called for the freedom of their territories from logging, mining, and oil exploitation (El País, 2025 “Una protesta”). Ailton Krenak, an influential Indigenous thinker in Brazil, denounces the mercantilization of the UN’s climate conference: “La COP30 fue secuestrada por una perspectiva económica. El clima pasó a ser un mercado. La COP dejó de lado la ecología y adoptó la perspectiva de servicios ambientales” (COP30 was hijacked by an economic perspective. The climate became a market. The COP left behind ecology and adopted the perspective of environmental services), affirms Krenak (El País, 2025 “Ailton”).

Parallel to this still prevailing ideology, Spanish is a language that blends with co-official languages in Spain and Indigenous epistemes in Africa and Latin America, among others. Therefore, in a way, it is a transepistemic language, but we rarely learn it or think of it this way. Many Spanish speakers never see the need to learn the languages they share a territory with, which they feel are foreign although they are not.

This is not the case for PhD candidate Renata Ruiz Figueroa, whom we welcomed in class. She told us that she started studying Nahuatl – a language spoken in the part of México she is from – at the same time she began to teach Spanish. This parallel experience as a learner and instructor, gave her the chance to observe how each language structures a distinct way of perceiving the world. Her Nahuatl classes would center on agricultural cycles, the numerous names for maize, local markets, myths, and histories of discrimination – subjects largely absent from the conventional Spanish language curricula (covering fashion, travel, advertising, job interviews, etc.). This contrast underscored a broader principle: One cannot learn a language without engaging with the world it names, or the one it has named. She argued that language learning cannot be separated from history, since every language encodes narratives that function as natural histories, which, at the same time, have shaped the world we live in and will continue to shape the world that follows. Ruiz Figueroa noted that even what we imagine as ‘nonnatural’ linguistic themes remain tied to nature because humans are part of ecological systems. Is a building not as much a part of some people’s environment as an anthill or a beehive is for others? If language represents the world we know, she affirmed, we now require linguistic lenses that help us describe the world we are creating and interpret the one we are leaving behind. Understanding the histories of lost and emerging wor(l)ds is essential, as linguistic change can preserve but also damage ecosystems. Thus, learning multiple languages and knowledge systems, especially those connected to the spaces we inhabit, is not purely enriching but a collective responsibility, she claimed.

Accordingly, in class we study the ancient Mayan agricultural system known as la milpa, which is more than just a way to grow food, as expressed in the epigraph. It is rather a cosmovision based on a sustainable agricultural system that has helped preserve the forests of the Yucatán Peninsula for over 3,500 years. The milpa consists of the rotation of crops such as corn, beans, squash, and other vegetables in forested areas for the purpose of natural land rest and regeneration. This mixture of farmland and forest supports biodiversity and maintains the fertility of the soil. Students watch and listen about this millenary agricultural system through a UNDP project (UNDP, 2025). They pay attention to how certain terms related to farming and the environment are pronounced in Spanish (to sow, to harvest, landscape, self-consumption, and agrarian rights). The video and reading also highlight the social and economic challenges the milperas face today. Younger generations have migrated to the cities, and with them, traditional knowledge is being lost. Women are now the main caretakers of the milpa, but have no agrarian rights, even though they depend on this system as a means of subsistence. Additionally, the availability of the necessary forest land for the milpa to function properly is decreasing owing to pressures from industrial agricultural methods, the tourism industry, and urban development.

The milpa symbolizes a broader Indigenous worldview that situates humans in close relation to maize and the wider agro-ecosystem that sustains Nahua and Mayan communities. Humans are understood as integral components of the natural world, together with plants. This relational perspective becomes evident when studying Nahuatl or Mayan languages, which contain an abundance of terms for each stage of maize’s growth, every part of the plant, its diverse uses, and the rituals associated with it. The absence of comparable nuances in contemporary Spanish reveals an erosion of rural vocabulary and the knowledge it once carried. Some of these ancient terms survive only in the speech of elders at local markets, vague traces of linguistic worlds tied to agricultural practices now endangered (Ruiz Figueroa, Reference Ruiz Figueroa2024). Works such as María Sánchez’s Almáciga: un vivero de palabras de nuestro medio rural attempt to document these lexical remnants, in an act of beauty and ethical responsibility (Sánchez, Reference Sánchez2020).

In Mexico, the importance of educating about these ancestral practices is gradually being recognized; not only in rural areas but, more importantly, in urban ones. This growing awareness has given rise to educational projects aimed at creating didactic materials that highlight essential aspects of Mexican culture such as, precisely, la milpa. Sabores y saberes de la milpa, published as open access in both Spanish and Nahuatl, is the result of an extensive process of exchange, collaboration, and care between Casa Gallina and Calpulli Tecalco (Casa Gallina and Calpulli Tecalco, 2023). Its pages document an educational journey developed jointly by both organizations, including a series of workshops and field visits designed to explore and better understand key elements of milpa culture: its products, their culinary uses, and traditional recipes. The project has now taken shape as a publication that seeks to foster dialogue between the residents of Malacachtepec Momoxco, Milpa Alta, and neighbors from the Santa María la Ribera neighborhood around a shared cultural interest. Typical milpa products – such as tlaolli (corn) in its many varieties, yetl (beans), and both wild and cultivated plants such as quelites, chilacayohotl, and metl (maguey) – are featured along with vital practices of the regional food culture, such as nixtamalization, a process for the preparation of maize (corn), among other grains (Cerda Campero and Ruiz Figueroa, Reference Cerda Campero and Ruiz Figueroan.d.).

Somos maíz is a book addressed to the children from the Santa María la Ribera neighborhood in Mexico City and those from Maya, Zapotec, and Nahua communities. The goal is to celebrate and encourage the consumption of corn in Mexico, where sixty-four different types of corn are grown, of which fifty-nine are native. Students learn that this rich biodiversity is closely tied to a deep cultural complexity that forms an important part of their local identity. Somos maíz was published in four languages. The Spanish editions were distributed among residents of Santa María la Ribera, both individually and through community spaces for gathering and exchange such as libraries, public schools, cafés, and more. The Nahuatl, Maya, and Zapotec editions were distributed through partner initiatives of Casa Gallina in regions where each language is spoken. Students in our classes can engage with these educational materials in a meta-educational way, that is, by reflecting on the project as a way of educating the younger generations on their own heritage. Or they can simply complete the myriad of activities featuring recipes, sayings, myths and legends, and interesting facts related to la milpa (Cerda Campero and Ruiz Figueroa, Reference Cerda Campero and Ruiz Figueroan.d.). Students can explore which aspects of Mexican heritage are considered important to recover, and reflect on what might be meaningful to preserve and study in schools within their own region. Additionally, they can observe how the diverse languages spoken in Mexico are represented and applied in these materials, depending on the audiences they seek to reach. All in all, the goal is that students learn the milpa cosmovision in its complexity: as tradition, heritage, cultural expression, a way of healthcare, and as a whole ecosystem in which humans and nature inextricably coexist.

3.3.2 Nature and Humans: Challenging the Subject–Object and Urban–Rural Dualisms

NYC most probably represents the quintessential urban imaginary. Alicia Keys described the city as a “concrete jungle” in her song with rapper Jay-Z “Empire State of Mind.” In a kind of oxymoron, this image of a jungle made of concrete connects the two parts of a dualism that has been imagined as separate for a long time. Starting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the birth of Western scientific and industrial revolutions, also following fifteenth-century colonial religious practices, and throughout modernity, nature was perceived as an inert and passive state, subject to human domination. But this new conception did not apply to all humans equally. Only certain groups (namely white, Western, male) were imagined as ‘modern’ and, therefore, having transcended nature; while others, including Indigenous peoples, racialized groups, colonized populations, and women, were positioned as closer to the natural world and therefore considered inferior, irrational, primitive, or subhuman (see Mbembe Reference Mbembe2017; Merchant, Reference Merchant1980; Wynter, Reference Wynter2020) with attributed traits of purity, femininity, or an idealized natural purity (see Saïd Reference Saïd1979). Fortunately, the ‘human’ category is now more inclusive. However, this underlying dualism persists in predominant ideas of civilization, modernity, and progress, or, as per today, ‘development.’

This idea of ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’ extends to the assumed superiority of the city. In many of the texts we interact with we are told that many men – women in many cases stay to work the land – have migrated to cities in search of employment, education, or, more broadly, in pursuit of ‘development,’ and in some cases to escape discriminatory narratives and situations. This movement increases the obstacles to land preservation and to maintaining ancestral, organic agricultural systems. Ailton Krenak argues that the market-driven logic of the cities is contaminating everything: “Existe una tendencia colonialista de la ciudad. Es como si (la ciudad) intentara resolver los problemas de un lugar que en realidad tiene otras demandas y no quiere que el mercado se infiltre en la vida cotidiana de sus comunidades. La ciudad envenena las relaciones” (There is a colonialist tendency within the city. It is as if [the city] was attempting to solve the problems of a place that, in reality, has different demands and does not want the market to infiltrate the daily life of its communities. The city poisons relationships) (El País, 2025 “Ailton”). The writer, philosopher, journalist, environmentalist, and Indigenous activist affirms the city carries a colonial impulse, imposing profit-oriented solutions on places with different needs and poisoning the fabric of community life.

These hierarchies extend to language. The language and varieties spoken by populations placed in the ‘less developed’ and ‘closer to nature’ categories are often socially diminished, reinforcing long-standing racial and linguistic inequalities (Irvine and Gal, Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000, Reference Irvine, Gal and Duranti2009). This claim is of course problematic when treated as an inherent trait, but it is true that many Indigenous languages contain lexicons that emerge from land-based, preindustrial forms of life. However, and in order to avoid essentialist claims, are not all languages fundamentally place-based? For example, let’s go back to NYC, aka “the city of skyscrapers,” and let’s consider this same word: Rascacielos, which literally means ‘sky-scraper’ or ‘scrapes the sky.’ It describes a very specific urban, industrial, and architectural phenomenon: tall buildings that dominate the cityscape. Like Indigenous ecological terms, it arises from the relationship between humans and their environment, but in this case, the ‘environment’ is man-built and urban rather than ‘natural.’ In Section 3.3.1, we saw that Indigenous words for maize growth stages encode ecological, agricultural, or cosmological relationships. Similarly, rascacielos encodes a modern, industrialized human–environment relationship. Both examples illustrate that vocabulary reflects the world humans inhabit, whether natural or built, rural or industrial.

The article “There Is No Word for ‘Nature’ in our language” (Reed et al., Reference Reed, Brunet, McGregor, Scurr, Sadik, Lavigne and Longboat2024) explains that the idea of ‘nature’ as a separate domain makes no sense in certain Indigenous’ worldviews that perceive the land, water, animals, humans, and spirits all part of the same whole:

When we ‘other’ nature, we reduce it to an object, which we can exploit, and the resources of which we can extract. The documentary Maya Land: Listening to the Bees (Reference Beilin and Weinstein2022) contradicts this idea, showing how Indigenous Maya communities understand humans as part of the ecological web, with a warning of the consequences of disregarding this relational worldview:

This implies another disruption of dualism; not only the hierarchical dominance of humans over nature, or the urban over the rural, but also the binary opposition of subject and object, or even the questioning of what a ‘subject’ is. Krevak proposes a notion to escape the colonial weight of these hierarchical binary oppositions, and of the city in particular: that of florestanía: “La floresta era considerado un no lugar. Necesitabas derribar la floresta, abrir un claro, producir ciudad, una villa para poder tener ciudadanía” (The forest was considered a non-place. You had to cut down the forest, clear a space, produce the city, a place where to obtain citizenship), states the member of the Academia Brasileña de las Letras. Krevak suggests a mutually beneficial exchange between the forest and the city: “Quien vive en la floresta [en la selva], reclama un tipo de ciudadanía que es la florestanía. Quien vive en la ciudad, ya exhausto, reclama una floresta” (Those who live in the forest claim for a kind of citizenship that is called florestanía. Those who live in the city, exhausted, reclaim a florestanía) (El País, 2025 “Ailton”).

Along the same lines we find the documentary Sembradoras de vida (Reference Sarmiento Pagán and Sarmiento Pagán2019). Directed by the Sarmiento brothers, it is a bilingual Spanish-Quechua film that centers on five women from the Andean highlands and their efforts to sustain a traditional, organic approach to agriculture, guided by an Andean cosmovision in which women and the earth are deeply interconnected. The film highlights the horizontal, reciprocal relationships between the protagonists and the land. The title itself emphasizes the intrinsic bond between land and life. These sembradoras cultivate the soil but are also, in their role of mothers, in charge of transmitting their culture and traditions to future female generations. The documentary draws a comparison between the land and the role of women: From a biological perspective, the women describe planting seeds as giving life, paralleling their everyday roles as sembradoras. This comparison, however, is not presented in an essentialist way that frames women as passive caregivers. Instead, the film portrays an egalitarian relationship with the land, of mutual respect; women are described as “delicate” like the land and the harvest, but not weak, as they perform physically and mentally demanding roles: “en el mundo andino he aprendido de ellos, de mis abuelos, te van ubicando un poco que la mujer es más delicada. No en un sentido de delicadeza, que no, en un sentido del rol que debes cumplir como mujer” (In the Andean world, I have learned from them, from my grandparents, they gradually instil in you the idea that a woman is more delicate. Not in the sense of physical fragility, but rather in terms of the role you are expected to fulfill as a woman) (Reference Sarmiento Pagán and Sarmiento Pagán2019: 1:05’–2:18’).

This egalitarian connection is further reflected in the idea that “we are what we eat.” The women express concern about how the climate crisis will affect their seguridad alimentaria (food security), that is, their lives, through its impact on the food they cultivate (32’–35’). The semillas (seeds) are described as “hijitos” (babies) (1:03’), which must be cared for to ensure the planet’s future. At the end of the documentary, we see them depositing seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, an underground facility in Norway that safeguards the world’s crop diversity. In this way, they maintain local traditions and ‘seeds’ of knowledge while contributing to global sustainability efforts.

If we see ourselves as separate from or above nature, we risk adopting a dominating, colonial mindset. This perspective also overlooks the fact that we are inherently social beings, whose ways of relating to the natural world are shaped by cultural context. Culture, then, is not just an expression of human life; it is a means through which communities interact with and adapt to their environment, offering alternatives to purely economic or extractive relationships with nature (Ángel-Maya, Reference Ángel-Maya1997; Mejía Cáceres et al. Reference Mejía Cáceres, Araújo and Monteiro2024: 441).

In class, we have the kinds of conceptual and philosophical conversations described here, far from the oftentimes infantilized conception of language classes, where we sometimes forget that our students are mature thinkers in their own language and can be just as sophisticated in the target language. Learners at all levels and through different types of pedagogical scaffolding are fully capable of engaging with complex, abstract, and philosophical ideas, even if their proficiency in the target language is still at an initial stage. Challenging conversations actually support enduring language acquisition. The goal is for them to develop nuanced arguments while cultivating a sophisticated understanding of themselves and the world around them, encouraging critical self-reflection and thoughtful questioning of their own assumptions.

With these pedagogical practices, we move beyond colonialingual ideologies and pedagogies. In line with what Meighan claims (Reference Meighan2023: 4), this approach moves away from monolingual and monocultural classroom settings that typically center ethnocentric, white ‘native-speaker’ norms and materials – resources that often ignore or erase the knowledge and voices of local speaker communities and their relationships with land. It also challenges the idea of language as a detached, neutral system to be mastered through disconnected grammar drills or simplistic comprehension exercises. Instead, language is recognized as diverse and culturally grounded. The dominance of the Western literary canon and so-called standard language forms is questioned, making room for alternative voices, nonstandard varieties, and local ways of speaking. Within this framework, place-based learning, community-rooted language practices, and visual literacies are not only accepted but deeply valued.

4.2.1 Mapping Indigenous Traces and Climate Impact in NYC

NYC is said to be a melting pot, where many cultures and languages are in contact with each other and even coexist. More than just an expression, NYC shows a history of attracting and integrating vast and diverse migrant populations. However, not all languages – and their respective cultures – are equally legitimate in institutional terms and not all of them occupy the same spaces. We want to acknowledge NYC as a multilingual city where a very diverse range of Spanish(es) is/are used, spoken, and lived, and we want to incorporate our land into our classroom practices. Above all, we want to emphasize if the practices that the city, from a governmental perspective, puts forward are sustainable and what kind of daily routines are considered to be more valid or valuable than others. For each of the assignments outlined here, we are going to provide maps of different sorts, along with audiovisual media that can help students understand the linguistic landscape around them and problematize the contextualized use of the language and the knowledge it encompasses. A set of guiding principles and questions will accompany each map, attending to different levels of instruction, with the goal of critically assessing linguistic diversity from a perspective of climate and linguistic justice. These assignments show our intention to exploit NYC as our common ground, as what students and ourselves share in the classroom. That does not mean that this model should be imitated, but the ideas and principles of this land-based approach can be replicated across different places worldwide and adapted to the needs of every classroom.

First of all, the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA), a nonprofit organization “dedicated to documenting Indigenous, minority, and endangered languages, supporting linguistic diversity in New York City and beyond” (as stated on their website), has put together a language map that showcases 700 language varieties at over 1,200 significant sites in NYC, the world’s so-called most linguistically diverse city (ELA, 2025). A quick look at the map shows that, in the neighborhoods surrounding our own campuses – clustered in Morningside Heights and Washington Heights – at least four varieties of Spanish are spoken: Dominican, Puerto Rican, Castilian, and Spanglish, and even an Indigenous language from the Caribbean, Taíno. Just by taking a look at the whole map and exploring different boroughs, one can get a very clear idea of the diversity of Spanish(es) spoken across the city, of the languages in contact with these varieties beyond English, and of the original languages of this area.

We may ask: What kind of Spanish are we teaching in our classroom? What is the point of teaching a standard or normative (meaning prescriptive) version of the language that barely no one speaks in the communities that surround our own workplaces? Having access to a resource like this allows us, in the first place, to question the standardization of the language and to challenge the conventions under which such a process has happened. In lower levels, students can explore the neighborhoods where these varieties are spoken, delving into the linguistic landscape around them: They can go on a trip off campus and pay attention to posts and signals written in Spanish, observing the needs and queries of the community. When back in class, students can present their findings, show pictures, and we can all discuss the nationalities and the demographics of the neighborhood that they visited.

This map can also be supplemented by looking at another one that classifies the languages by world region and gives a brief overview of the history of how the language – and its speakers – arrived in NYC, and in which neighborhood(s) it is spoken now (Perlin et al., Reference Perlin, Daniel, Jason, Maya, Mark and Craign.d.). There is also census data that includes the number of speakers of different languages – Spanish among them – and their varieties, and some of the varieties also include links to audio and video files with authentic pieces of the language in question.Footnote ² For higher levels of instruction, students can read over the information in English and translate it into Spanish, creating a sort of equivalent digital/analog mapping of Spanishes spoken across the city. As a linguistic landscape project, students can also analyze in situ and through research the ethnolinguistic identities and regional varieties that are more present in these neighborhoods; what kind of businesses flourish in these areas; which languages are visually occupying public spaces and which aboriginal languages are not; how this relates to processes of gentrification; and so on.

The question of diversity also includes Indigenous languages (Taíno has already come up). And the reality is that many of the communities where Spanish is spoken in NYC are migrant communities, whose mother language might be – or not, or not only – Spanish. Ross Perlin, the Columbia University professor behind the previous initiative, has also put together a blog that showcases speakers of Indigenous languages across the Americas (Perlin, Reference Perlin2022). This blog includes information about the community organizing efforts of some participants and, most importantly, videos featuring testimonials of their stories. These videos include captions in English and talk about the struggles these speakers go through when speaking a marginalized language. Working with testimonials, as we have explained before, is also a way of incorporating an affective component into discourse analysis and, at the same time, humanizing discourse, making it more accessible. They can be used in our classes at all levels because, when listening carefully, students can detect the use of Spanish words to either convey ideas or concepts that cannot be translated, as well as words that have been incorporated into their own languages. With lower levels, the identification of Spanish words is already an advantage that helps to see Spanish from the other side – that is to say, Spanish as the auxiliary language but still exercising its colonial power; with higher levels, students can explore the meaning behind the words used and the need for it, working with the concept of untranslatability.

While it is true that these maps are not strictly related to climate, they still help lay the foundation for the work that is coming up in the next proposed activity. In addition, all of these assignments are thought of as group activities, where students share the labor and combine their own expertise and knowledge to build a transdisciplinary understanding of the language. We have also dealt with the potential of using testimonials to humanize discourse in Section 3.2, and that should be also noted here. In any case, these maps help enrich and problematize the nature of Spanish as it could be presented in a textbook. What we are proposing here is a land- and place-based education that helps contextualize language; that is to say, that helps students learn Spanish in context and in contact with other languages that are equally and rightfully sharing the same space.

Aside from the linguistic diversity just explored, when it comes to climate, it is worth mentioning that the NYC Mayor’s Office has been running an Office of Climate & Environmental Justice since Bill DeBlasio was mayor (2014–2021) (New York City Mayor’s Office, 2025). Their website, roughly translatable into Spanish via Google, includes information about the working team, what they do specifically in the city, the hazards that the city faces, plus maps of green areas and what have been called “cool zones” in all five boroughs – public spaces where one can head to during a heatwave. In our understanding, in courses that are increasingly diverse in terms of social background and origins, approaching the city we all live in from this perspective is indeed a way of understanding the connection between climate discourses and climate actions, as well as the connection between neighborhoods, their demographics, and socioeconomic status (for the original iteration of this assignment, see Aguiló Mora and Marín Cobos, Reference Aguiló Mora and Marín Cobos2025).

If we consider the kind of students we have in our classroom, we will find a diverse range of prospective majors and concentrations. Our goal is that students perform a mediating role between official climate discourse and daily lives, unpacking its impact in their own routines. With that objective in mind, we can divide the class into groups – in our case, one group per borough up to a total of five. Each group can have a poster-sized blank paper to draw and add the information that they will share with the class, or a blank digital poster to fill – depending on the instructor’s preference for the use of digital versus analog devices. The main task, which can be applied at the elementary level in its most basic format, is to identify the areas where NYC has (or has not) taken action with respect to the climate crisis, and describe those areas: what kind of people live there, what is their socioeconomic status, poverty/wealth index, and so on (all of this information is easily searchable online). Once students have compiled this data, there can be a collective sharing of information in an interactive round of presentations. The instructor might facilitate a conversation about the findings, asking about the possible relation between the city’s interventions and the specific areas’ living conditions.

We envision the classroom as a space for action and experimentation, exchanges, and, above all, multidirectional cooperation. This horizontal environment is possible when there exists a nurtured collaboration between students and instructor. The instructor’s role is, therefore, centering students’ voices as well as channeling their queries. In this way, we can talk about ‘shared expertise’ in the sense that the class builds on each one’s participation and input, where all the contributions are necessary in order to gain a common understanding of the subject matter. The idea of shared expertise goes beyond content itself and builds on a concept coined by James Engell – that of “co-mentorship,” that encourages us to consider our work in the classroom alongside students. Engell argues that, in order to engage with the climate crisis, “we must act as mutual, reciprocally subservient co-mentors” in a sort of multiple mentorship (Reference Engell, Siperstein, Hall and LeMenager2016: 25). In this model, he underlines the importance of connection, suggesting: “we become a community of mutual, reciprocal mentors, collaborators, when we listen to – and teach, and teach with – those outside our own training and bailiwick” (Reference Engell, Siperstein, Hall and LeMenager2016: 27). This kind of co-mentoring is feasible if we take into serious consideration the knowledge and ideas that everyone brings into the classroom, where everyone is willing to listen to others and build on each other’s ideas, while raising awareness of the challenges faced when we position ourselves outside our communities of scholarly practice.

With an assignment like this one, we aim not to cover grammatical structures as isolated units (in this case, describing places and reading maps), but to merge linguistic understanding of keywords with the context where those words gain meaning. Moreover, we want to bring into the language classroom the various expertises of our students and ourselves in order to learn together how to challenge climate discourses following a place-based approach that also explores the surrounding land’s linguistic histories.

4.3.1 Using Our Imagination and Looking at Both Maps Simultaneously

Hence, we may wonder: What if we use the maps referred to here as layers of the same holistic map? What if we were to look at more complex maps putting together information about Indigenous languages, linguistic diversity, and climate impact? What kind of language(s) are prioritized when it comes to official channels of communication? What other languages or varieties are left behind? Issues of climate justice, race, social class, and linguistic background come into play for sure. How can we incorporate and discuss all this knowledge in our language classes?

The questions and guidance that follow can be adapted to different levels, depending on the students’ competence and on the instructor’s willingness. The main goal is to analyze the impact of the climate crisis in the areas where we can find greater linguistic diversity. First, we can compare the findings of Section 4.2, related to the facilities that the government has provided for certain areas, with the languages/varieties spoken in those areas. Second, we can identify the kind of language that the city has used to communicate its measures with the language that is actually spoken in the area. How do these registers differ? Are there any specific idioms or collocations used by the community incorporated into official discourse? If the answer is positive, then we can discuss in class what terms are chosen and infer what the intention is. If the answer is no, then we can devise ways of making the information accessible to the actual community.

Beyond these discussions, which undoubtedly elicit students’ critical thinking skills in addition to strengthening their competence in the target language, we can propose that students at different levels create maps like the ones reviewed here applied to diverse areas, depending on where we are working. This kind of place- and land-based project would be a collective endeavor and should be scaffolded throughout the semester, so that students would have time and space to gather data and information, to organize that information, and to be able to make it useful and digestible to a wider audience. All in all, a complex assignment like this one emphasizes a transepistemic approach that challenges us to unlearn the Western gaze and to valorize diverse and Indigenous (or nonmainstream) epistemologies to be critically assessed from a perspective that joins climate and linguistic justice. Such a point of view, encompassing a student-centered environment, the incorporation of guest voices to our classroom discussions, along with transdisciplinarity as a backbone principle to our teaching practices, allows us to maintain and fortify that critical perspective and work with all materials as equally legitimate and valid. This is what the climate turn is about.