Early on, Veronika introduces the water metaphor: language is to its users what water is to fish – we are surrounded by it to an extent that we don't notice it anymore. The metaphor is explained further in this position paper: Darics, E., Staschen, O., Drury, M., Chojnicka, J., Mazzoli, M., Olthof, J., Serafis, D., & Wildfeuer, J. (2025). Critical language awareness as a future imperative: seeing the 'water'. Frontiers in Communication, 10, 1623193.
As a first example of language activism, Veronika talks about the #ReframeCovid project that started life in the spring of 2020. The team behind the it wrote about it in this article: Olza, I., Koller, V., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Pérez-Sobrino, P., & Semino, E. (2021). The# ReframeCovid initiative: From Twitter to society via metaphor. Metaphor and the Social World, 11(1), 98-120.
Our first interview guest, Zoë Papaikonomou. In her academic persona, our second interviewee, Kelly Vossen, has, among other topics, written about criticisms of the media coverage of the Covid pandemic – that global crisis was a prime case for critical language awareness: Lits, B., Patriarche, G., Tant, C., Vossen, K., & Wiard, V. (2021). Négocier des «choix de société» dans l'espace public: Les critiques publiques sur la couverture médiatique de la crise de la COVID-19. In Journées d'étude Du confinement au monde d'après. Quelles réponses des sciences humaines?. Brussels.Our third guest, Joanna Chojnicka, gives some insights into how to develop an online course on critical language awareness. The free three-week online course "Critical Language Awareness in Action: Change the World One Story at a Time" is available on FutureLearn. And finally, remember that Words & Actions is on both Bluesky and Facebook.
