Chapter 10 E-concept – Lingua Echofranca
Lingua Echofranca
... And this our life, exempt form public haunt,
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.
As You Like It, II i 14-17. Shakespeare
I read with interest Clair’s short article titled “Dismantling the idea of the subject.” It posits an interesting notion that the normal poetic tradition of anthropomorphising non-human entities can be subverted by the de-anthropomorphising of humans into non-human objects. Clair gives the example of de-anthropomorphising women and turn them into water in waterpipes, hence marginalising them to the periphery of the room or the house, placing them in a background of servitude against the foreground dominated by men.
This kind of wilful de-anthropomorphism, when extended to a whole race of people to marginalise them into non-existence, reminds me of terra nullius. Terra nullius was a legal concept used by Cook to justify the colonisation of Australia for George III, citing that the Aboriginal people were uncivilised and therefore not human (nla.gov.au). This pretext, however, was in direct contradiction to the instruction given by James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton and President of the Royal Society which funded Cook's expedition: “[The Aboriginal people] are the natural [natives], and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit.” Here Douglas refused to let Cook to objectify the natives, acknowledging them as humans rather than as part of nature, like trees or rocks. But Cook saw it fit to do the latter in order to please the King. It is obvious, then, that Douglas's definition of nature is quite different to Cook's.
In order to avoid such miscommunication from happening again, I propose to introduce another e-concept, a meaningful dialogue, called Lingua eco-homo-franca – lingua echofranca for short – to facilitate communications between man and the natural world. At present, both Morton's ecomimesis and Boes and Marshall's ecodiegeis are not dialogues; they are monologues. Ecomimesis is a human construction to mimic nature; it talks to fellow humans like how Wordsworth talks to us. It does not talk to nature. Likewise, ecodiegesis is a language constructed by nature, but man often chooses to ignore it. What we need now is a two way communication system, a dialogue, to address our ecological exigency. Although "echo" connotes passivity, it is perfectly suitable if it delivers the desirable result. I will use the Australian Regent Honeyeater as an example to show how lingua echofranca works.
Australian Regent Honeyeater is an endangered species. There were only a few hundred sightings in the Blue Mountains and the Northern Tablelands. They are so rare that many males fail to sing their species-specific expressive songs to attract females. They are learning wacky songs of others' instead. Such a loss of song culture may be a precursor of extinction; a prelude to their requiem. But luckily, help is at hand. Conservationists at Toranga Zoo are teaching young chicks to sing by playing their songs through loudspeakers. This epitomises lingua echofranca at work: Honeyeaters inform us of their trouble; we respond in action to reteach them their own songs (click here for video). This, then, is a dialogue. May they thrive and have many children back in the wild! Other researches are also happening, including eavesdropping on the sounds of forests. One day, a meaningful dialogue between man and forests may come out of such researches; we action according to what they need.
Another mode to dialogue with nature is through phenomenology – intersubjectivity – to connect human consciousness with that of the other-than-human world (Abram, 1996). Oppermann also believes that there are many signs through which the natural world communicates its mind. "If we consider the structural relations between organisms and the environment, we find communication everywhere, from flora to fauna, from genes to cells" (2019). Lingua echofranca, then, is a common dialogue between man and the natural world, and between fellow humans, including law-makers. Together, we aim to reshape our perceptions of the environment and our relationships with it.
Work Cited
Boes, Tobia and Kate Marshall. “Writing the Anthropocene: An Introduction.” The Minnesota Review, issue 83, 2014, pp. 60–72. doi: https://doi- org.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/10.1215/00265667-2782243. Accessed 24 March 2021.
Crates, Ross et al. “Loss of vocal culture and fitness in a critically endangered songbird.”Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 288, issue 1947, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0225. Accessed 9 April 2021.Oppermann, Serpil. "How the Material World Communicates." Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication. Routledge, 2019. pp. 108-117. https://www-routledgehandbooks-com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/doi/10.4324/9781315167343-10.
Accessed 9 April 2021