Emergence Magazine’s Language issue explores the power, beauty, and consequences of a speaking world.
Our featured story, Language Keepers, is a six-part film and multimedia experience that follows four Indigenous communities in California who are working to overcome language loss and revitalize their cultures. Elizabeth Rush’s essay Atlas with Shifting Edges searches for words to convey an altered landscape; Paul Kingsnorth questions whether the written word has become a tool of ecocide in Language of the Master; Camille T. Dungy reflects on loneliness and extinction in Losing Language; David G. Haskell brings you on a sonic journey in The Voices of Birds and the Language of Belonging; and Charles Foster travels alongside killer whales to seek a Language of the Deep Blue.
Listen to our in-depth interview with Robert Macfarlane on Speaking the Anthropocene, paired with “Understory,” an excerpted chapter from his new acclaimed book Underland: A Deep Time Journey. Open artist Katie Holten’s notebook to explore transcriptions of deep time in her Stone Alphabet and enjoy Ellen Litwiller’s animated illustrations of the Dance of the Honey Bee.