The introduction sets out the dual purpose of the book: to present the editors’ research on the residual presence of the Mother tongue in second language learning, and to showcase a selection of essays by Francophone authors whose thinking on the Mother tongue has influenced their own. They wish to introduce the concept of the langue mat-rangère, or ‘(M)other tongue’. This term conveys the way the second language comprises an in-matrie dimension that underlies speech in a foreign language. By presenting the foreign language as an act involving the body, they highlight the place that should be given to the mother tongue in second language learning. Thanks to the multidisciplinary creative pedagogy they promote, the forgotten or repressed mother tongue finds its place again, making it easier to learn the foreign language. Two second language learning situations are described: the foreign language started at school, usually at about eleven years old, and the second language that is grafted onto the original language in a context such as migration. Both situations reveal a common denominator between them: the central role played in second language learning by the original Mother tongue, in its most archaically emotional, sensory, and bodily dimension.

This handbook provides a highly interdisciplinary overview of the wide spectrum of current international research and professional practice in intercultural communication. It discusses key examples of contrastive, interactive, imagological and interlingual approaches as well as the impact of cultural, economic and sociopolitical power hierarchies in cultural encounters, which are essential for contemporary research in critical intercultural communication and postcolonial studies. The handbook explores the spectrum of professional applications of that research and introduces the theories step-by-step using ordinary-language explanations and examples. This makes the theory accessible to readers without specialized training in intercultural communication. The handbook will be a key reference text for advanced undergraduate, postgraduate and research students, lecturers and professionals in intercultural communication and related fields, including cultural studies, linguistics, anthropology, media studies, postcolonial studies, languages, sociology, history and affiliated sub-disciplines.

Liisa Salo-Lee highlights the need to transform academic and professional work in intercultural communication, which is still largely shaped by the multidisciplinary coexistence of different approaches. Her chapter presents ‘integrative intercultural communication’ as a proposal for an interdisciplinary approach to research and practice, which places intercultural dialogue at its core and stresses intercultural communication as an ongoing process of learning in exchange. This approach aims to provide researchers with supporting concepts and tools, e.g. the use of the rhizome as a metaphor for culture and nexus analysis as a method for cultural analysis, to tackle the complexities of the field.

This overview of the book introduces the Human System as an open, historical, and adaptive system, formed 70,000 years ago by a founding human community as its members created syntactic language. The system grew to the point where it is now in trouble because of excessive growth and painful social inequality. Analysis relies on Darwinian assumptions of evolutionary growth – biological, cultural, and social – as these processes coevolve with each other and with Gaia, a model of the natural world of living things. The discipline of world history is introduced to provide the framework for the narrative and the underlying analysis: world history combines concepts, data, and perspectives from multiple disciplines in natural and social sciences. It gives special attention to behavior of human groups as well as individuals. The chapter concludes by reviewing the book’s argument, presenting two or three historical and analytical hypotheses for each chapter: these hypotheses are to be documented, tested, and debated in the details of each chapter.

This final chapter assesses the feasibility of the ideas proposed in this book. It concludes that many parts of the project are feasible because the scientific knowledge exists and in many cases databases have already been produced. Also, the split into system and quality accounts allows for structured multidisciplinarity to be implemented. A practical problem is organisation and implementation of this programme.

The previous chapters have shown that there is one powerful community (“the GDP multinational") which is being challenged by a heterogeneous and weakly organised community (“the Beyond-GDP cottage industry). The ever-expanding range of Beyond-GDP initiatives will not lead to success however. A new strategy is based on the GDP success story and aims to create an institutionalised community with a clear goal and coherent structure based on a common language. The chapter argues that the community should not be based on the SDGs, green accounting or the SEEA. It also argues that the community should not be based on economic terminology and theory but rather on multidisciplinary building blocks such as stock/flow accounting, networks and limits. The aim of the community is to enhance well-being and sustainability and one of its most important features is its common language: the System of Global and National Accounts (SGNA). The SGNA has four system accounts (environment, society, economy and distribution), which describe how the systems are developing. However, this does not yet tell people whether the developments are good or bad. This is left to the quality accounts.