Empowering communities by enhancing their environmental literacy in English, the Language of Wider Communication, to facilitate their future interactions with international civil society

Abstract

This paper will report on a dictionary project that sets out to facilitate the development of shared understandings, not only of the environmental jargon, but also of the ways in which 'ordinary' words are used with subtle changes of meaning which can influence perceptions and manipulate responses. It will explore the challenges of selecting which words need to be defined and of presenting the information in a way which breaks through conventional alphabetical order to show the inter-connectedness of environment issues. It will be based on the Environment Words dictionary, published in 2002 for people on the Thai – Burma border, and work on a second edition for the Mekong region.