A linguistic common ground is not something that can be simply assumed. Rather than a fixed foundation, it emerges through continuous negotiation and shared practice. Beyond proficiency tests, language rights, or international aspirations, the common language of a school is, above all, a site of ongoing negotiations. If each language sustains a distinct model of the world, we draw in this issue on the metaphor of lava—to consider language in its transitional state, between fluidity and solidity, as a burning substance of renewal.

This contribution emerges from the workshop “The Unknown Language” (with Vici Schwab, Charlot Schuemann, Edona Ibrahimi, Rosa Deutsch, Isabella Panigada, Paolo Caffoni) developed within the block seminar “Hochschule für (Mit-)Gestaltung” during the summer semester 2025. The seminar was dedicated to collectively imagining, shaping, and mediating care tools oriented toward well-being and social safety at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG Karlsruhe). The workshop sought to expand upon and discuss the notes on language present in HfG’s current “Code of Conduct.” It began with a collective reading of bell hooks’ essay “Language: Teaching New Worlds/New Words.” Following her proposal to “listen without mastery,” participants were invited to place themselves in situations where they would listen to a partially or entirely unfamiliar language—where what counted as “unknown” was defined subjectively. Reflections and reactions to this activity were then shared within the group and edited into the short text that follows. This fragment was conceived as a contribution to, or proposed amendment within, the school’s “Code of Conduct.”

Language at HfG is not only about comprehension—it is embodied, affective, and relational. Encountering a language we don’t completely master—or that feels distant—can suspend us in a kind of breathless listening, where meaning hovers just out of reach. Can we train ourselves—and the structures around us—to recognise when someone is holding their breath?

In classes, workshops, and informal exchanges, we’ve found ourselves nodding along while not quite following—not to deceive, but to stay connected, to avoid interrupting. The hesitation to ask, the fear of being the only one lost, often makes it easier to drift. Yet even in those moments, we continue to listen: to rhythm, tone, gesture, melody.

These small performances of comprehension often hide the anxiety of being the only one not following, the quiet fear of interrupting a flow that seems to belong to others. What if a visible question mark could hover over our heads, growing or shrinking with our comprehension?

Communication is never just words; it is also the feeling of being included or left behind. It matters that we feel comfortable showing that we don’t understand. This is not a personal weakness but a shared condition—one that deserves visibility rather than silence or shame.

We propose to cultivate linguistic practices rooted in awareness and rhythm. Borrowing from the idea of “listening without mastery,” we invite a collective sensitivity to different breathing patterns—the need to pause, to rephrase, to ask again.

Code-switching is not inherently exclusive, but like dancing, it depends on rhythm: a quick shift may offer texture and play; an extended switch may unintentionally exclude. We ask each other to notice this timing, not to censor spontaneity, but to foster shared ground. Speaking from our own places—in broken or blended languages, through gesture, images, or translation tools—can be acts of generosity.

Language carries not only information, but power, memory, and relation. Let us make space for our many vernaculars, and hold the complexities of understanding not as obstacles, but as part of how we learn together. Let us acknowledge that confusion, pauses, and partial understandings are not failures but conditions of collective learning in a multilingual, multi-disciplinary space.

What does it mean to speak from a place—a linguistic, cultural, or embodied place—that might not align with others? Should our conversations strive toward a common ground, or can we allow for the coexistence of different grounds, different logics, different timings? HfG vernacular suggests not a unified language, but a shifting field of relations and at times tensions—where listening, questioning, translating, and hesitating are not disruptions but forms of participation.