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Sunday 25 October marks the 2026 edition of the Festalingwi annual language festival, organised by the European Commission Office in Valletta and featuring a constant strong participation by the University of Malta.

Within Festalingwi 2026, Prof. Anne-Marie Bezzina Busuttil of the Faculty of Arts’ French Department, will present a public lecture titled: "Voices on the Climate: (De-)Humanisation, Animalisation and the Politics of Nature in Maltese and French Online Discourse — A Corpus- Based Study of Metaphors, Standpoints and Lay Beliefs about Environment and Climate Change".

Basing herself of online newspaper readers’ comments following articles related to the environment, she will endeavour to answer questions such as: What does the average person think about the management of the environment? How do people express their appreciation, anger, frustration about this vital issue? In what ways do the preoccupations of residents in Malta differ from those of a mainland European country like France? How does metaphor strength distinguish the environment-related online writings of lay people in these two contexts? To what or to whom are agency / responsibility discursively attributed in these two settings?

The public lecture will be taking place on Sunday 25 October 2026 at the Library of the Old University Campus in St. Paul Street, Valletta, at 13:30.