“L'homme est condamné à être libre!”: Freedom as a rhizomatic affordance ecology in project-based language learning

Abstract

Project-based language learning is frequently praised for giving learners choice, voice, collaboration, and authentic language use. While this commendation is not without merit, it remains epistemologically incomplete. A project can decentralize classroom activity while leaving deeper conditions of freedom untouched: who is allowed to define relevance, which language practices become legitimate, which resources can be combined, whose purposes survive assessment, and when a communicative product is ready to be released. This article, therefore, argues that freedom in project-based language learning cannot be reduced to learner autonomy, self-regulated learning, co-regulation, socially shared regulation, or reduced teacher control. These concepts remain necessary, but they do not by themselves explain how learners gain authority over the conditions of meaningful language action. Drawing on ecological affordance theory, critical applied linguistics, rhizomatic learning, research on self-regulated and socially regulated learning, and the five-dimensional affordance framework, the article develops freedom as a rhizomatic affordance ecology organized through five interacting regions: perceptibility, learning valence, compositionality, normativity, and intentionality. The argument is also extended to AI-mediated language learning, where generative tools can expand opportunity while relocating judgment, standardizing voice, and weakening responsibility for purpose. The article contributes a critical account of project freedom that is language-specific, power-sensitive, and empirically traceable.