[PUBLICATION] “Confluence of Research Worlds” podcast: Luca Ciucci

Linguist Luca Ciucci, a researcher at James Cook University in Australia, is in residence at the Collegium – Université de Lyon Institute of Advanced Studies for the 2023/24 academic year. His research focuses on the Zamuco language family, as well as other indigenous languages spoken in the Chaco Boreal region between Bolivia and Paraguay.

These so-called “indigenous” languages and the communities that speak them were decimated by Spanish colonization and are now threatened with extinction. This is largely due to the deforestation that accompanies the cultivation of soybeans to feed European livestock.

I found a correlation between the languages spoken by these populations and respect for the environment: in these languages, there is no way to express ownership of plants and animals. In traditional cosmovision, plants and animals are not considered the property of individuals.

In order to carry out this research, Luca Ciucci is working in collaboration with the Dynamique Du Langage (DDL) laboratory.