Design’s Mother Tongue: What Language Shapes in Design

Design’s Mother Tongue examines how English has become the default operating system of global design, shaping not just how we speak about design, but how we think, prioritise and build. Drawing on African Life-Centric Design and lived experience in post-Apartheid South Africa, this talk reveals how language functions as invisible infrastructure that encodes worldview, power and possibility.

Through the challenge of translating design principles into African and First Nations languages, the talk exposes a deeper issue than vocabulary alone. It shows that what is missing is not words, but worldviews, and that designing through Global Minority language reinforces extractive logic even when intentions are progressive. Language is not a wrapper for ideas, it is the source code that determines what futures can be imagined.

This talk reframes design language as an ethical and structural decision, challenging audiences to recognise how inherited linguistic defaults quietly limit imagination and outcomes. The argument introduced here is extended through a corresponding workshop that translates this critique into a practical method for re-rooting design practice.