Language, Water, Power

This Element is about language, water and power. It challenges the terracentric bias of much scholarship in language studies, suggesting instead that oceans and rivers should be central in investigations of language, history, culture, society and politics. Working through different engagements with water – swimming, surfing, sailing and diving – this Element explores how thinking in and with water can transform our understandings of justice, power and language. By taking water seriously as both a social and material category, hydrosocial perspectives draw attention to the ways modern water and language are controlled, restricted, standardized and contained. A hydrocolonial lens focuses on the centrality of water in colonial regimes, the oceanic origins of creoles and the need to decolonize control and conceptions of water. For critical hydrosocial language studies language is entangled in an inequitable watery world, and language study from below is a form of spiritual, material and embodied engagement.

• Publication date: 18 June 2026
• Page count: 78
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781009736503