Towards an ecocritical and sustainable foreign language education through picturebooks

Abstract

Departing from the developing fields of ecocriticism and posthumanism, the present article is aimed at analysing the ecological and posthuman potential of picturebooks, and to show their potential in fostering ecological wisdom and awareness in the context of language education. In particular, the article will first describe and uncover the representation of the relationship between humans and natural non-humans, namely plants, animals, and the elements considered as belonging to nature in Western culture, in three picture books, written in Italian, English, and Spanish, through Multimodal Discourse Analysis. Then, it will briefly present the implications of this analysis in the design of a training course for foreign language teachers interested in teaching a language while educating for sustainability through the promotion of ecological thinking.