Présentation en anglais : www.utc.fr/~bouchard/works/…

« According to the latest United Nations report on biodiversity, the world will lose one million species in the upcoming years. In parallel, it has been demonstrated that the degradation of biological diversity has a negative effect on cultural and linguistic diversity, as declared by UNESCO. » (Manifesto on Biocultural Diversity, 2019). Indeed biodiversity and cultural diversity are closely interconnected, as languages are themselves to be understood as constantly moving and evolving systems in a living environment, in constant evolution, as sociolinguistics invites us to (Bulot and Blanchet, 2013).In order to preserve and revitalize linguistic and biocultural diversity and to overcome the language barriers, literature is obviously a privileged place of action. Electronic literature can also play a key role in this mediation and promotion. 

BⱯBEL RËVOLUㅏION is an online participatory work in favour of diversity from an ecological, linguistic and cultural point of view. The storyline, which provides a narrative framework to the contributions, presents a dystopian world inspired by Orwell’s 1984 and Damasio’s Hauts® Parleurs®. A resistance movement is developing against a political regime that applies a monolingual policy impoverishing both language and the natural world, contributing to the disappearance of words and the reality they shape and reflect. In this scenario, rebels seek to overthrow a dictatorship in which profit has prevailed over ecology, and in which a single way of thinking and speaking imprison citizens more than jails, since « the limits of my language mean the limits of my world », as Wittgenstein (1922) observed. Everyone can react by supporting or resisting the measures taken. These messages instantly interconnect into a network, creating an organic and dynamic graph. Will this polyphonic collective of dissidents succeed in overturning monoculture and monolingualism? It depends on you!

Languages can dialogue with each other in a variety of ways, ranging from translation to « translanguaging » (a linguistic phenomenon in which « rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems […] bilinguals, multilinguals, and indeed all language users, select and deploy particular features from a unitary language repertoire to produce meaning and negotiate communicative contexts » (Vogel & García, 2017), and the invention of new words, alphabets, or even languages.

BⱯBEL RËVOLUㅏION can be used through specific sessions in workshops or in language and literature courses (an administrator interface allows users to create scenarios and sessions).