What's In A Word

 By Marilyn Moore

In a word, power.  That is what’s in a word.  The power to convey meaning, either orally or in writing.  Organizing thought, conveying meaning, to others who understand that meaning…that’s power.  And wherever there is power, there is someone, or several someones, making a decision…about who has it, who can access it, who benefits, and who is left out.

A book from my summer reading remains lodged in my mind.  The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams is a story embedded in the history of the Oxford English Dictionary, the OED.  I’ve seen copies of the OED in libraries, in offices, and in at least one living room.  It is a gigantic dictionary; in its own words, it is “an unsurpassed guide for researchers in any discipline to the meaning, history, and usage of over 500,000 words and phrases across the English-speaking world.”  

The first edition, which took more 70 years to compile, and was finally completely published in the 1920’s, had 414,825 words.  It’s still a work in progress, of course, because our language is a work in progress.  According to the OED website, recent additions include, among others, speech-to-text, anti-terrorism, gummy, and final frontier.  Among the list of updates words are bedlam, lardon, six-pack, and bitter.  A glimpse into our world….

The question that lingers in my mind is the one that is at the heart of Pip Williams’ book: who decides what words will, or will not, be in the OED, or any other dictionary?  The original OED is described as a massive crowd-sourced document; scholars and readers and researchers and members of the public from English-speaking countries across the world submitted words, and citations using those words, to the editor and his assistants, who would verify the words, and their citations, and resolve differing definitions, and decide if the word would be included.  

Ah, the power of deciding…which words to include, and which words to exclude.  To be included, a word had to have a citation; in other words, it had to have been used in some written source that could be verified.  Think about that for a moment…this decision rule meant that words that may have been in the common spoken language at that time, but that had not been set down in writing in some verifiable text, would not be included.  And whose words might those be? Words used by persons whose language was not typically set in writing…. women, immigrants, those who had not had the opportunity to learn to read and write.  

All this is not to disparage the OED; it is a massive undertaking, and it continues to be a source of not only the meaning, but the history, of words.  It’s just that, as in so many other efforts, decisions about what to include, and what to exclude, meant that decisions were made not only about words, but about people, groups of people. 

If words that describe your history, your language, your culture, your people, are in the dictionary, you’re in the in group, with the power that comes from inclusion and recognition and affirmation.  If words that describe your history, your language, your culture, your people, are not in the dictionary, you are not in the in group, and you lack the power that comes from inclusion and recognition and affirmation.  

And if this is true of words, it is even more true of stories.  Because stories have power.  When we read a story, we may be learning about someone or some setting or some culture quite different from our own…and that knowledge is powerful.  Or, it may be that when we’re reading a story, we’re reading our own story, perhaps in a depth or from a perspective we had not previously known…and that self-knowledge is powerful. 

The very real power of that knowledge, the power that comes from stories, is what drives many of the challenges to books in school curriculum, school libraries, and public libraries.  We are just completing the acknowledgement of Banned Books Week.  A display at one of Lincoln’s public libraries informs the public (data from the American Library Association) that there were 2571 challenges to books in 2022, compared to 1858 in the prior year, a 38% increase.  (Historical context:  there were 339 challenges in 2012.)

Not surprisingly, given the political climate in which we live, the most commonly challenged books are those that are about persons from the LGBTQ+ community or by authors from that community.  Books about race, or racism, or prejudice, are also challenged.  Sometimes the challengers will say that such books conflict with their religious beliefs.  Sometimes they will say that they don’t want their children to know about gay families, or multiracial families.  Sometimes they will say that books about racism or prejudice will make their children uncomfortable.  And because they don’t want these stories for their children, or for their family, they don’t want them available to anyone else.  

It is deeply disturbing to me when a book is challenged by someone who wants the book to be banned from a library collection – a story that is not told, not honored, not made visible.  It is even more disturbing to me when elected officials propose banning books, because that action, if taken, becomes the official stance of the school district, or the state, or the nation.  And using the power of the state to squelch the story, whether in a work of fiction, a graphic novel, or a history book, is essentially saying to those whose stories have been banned that their story, and they, do not belong – this in a country whose founding documents, with a boost from subsequent acts of Congress and Supreme Court decisions,  purport to affirm the value of every person.  It is even more troubling when this position is taken by those running for office, a position that is calculated to win votes, a position that invites voters to affirm that the stories of some are not to be heard, are not valued, and do not belong.

Banning words, banning stories, banning books, has been attempted and done across centuries and across cultures and nations.  Enslaved children in the US were not allowed to learn to read and write; the enslavers knew the power of the written word.  The Germans burned books in the lead-up to WWII amidst the rise of fascism and the Nazi party.  The United States banned words and language and culture, as native children were forbidden to use their tribal language in the residential boarding schools.  Popular sentiment in the United States tried the same during WWI, as German immigrants and German-speaking US citizens were pressured to not speak German.  (The US Supreme Court ruled that Nebraska schools could not be prevented from teaching German, however; it is a landmark decision that affirms the value of the power of words.)   And today, some words must not be uttered in classrooms in Florida, and an Oklahoma leader has made the preposterous suggestion that the Tulsa race riots could be taught without bringing race into the lesson.  These actions reflect the power of words and stories, and the extreme measures which some will take to squelch that power. 

There are heroes in this struggle.  Librarians are on the front line, and they are strong in their commitment to the freedom to read.  Boards of Education in Kearney and in Papillion-LaVista have taken action in the past few months to retain books that have been challenged in their school libraries.  As the popular Facebook meme notes, the book burners have never been seen by history as the good guys. 

Let’s tell the stories, then, and listen to the stories, and keep the stories in libraries.  Stories of girls who become astronauts and boys who become dancers.  Stories of gay kids and straight kids.  Stories of families of many configurations.  Stories of the wise and the foolish, the engineers and artists, the dreamers and the doers.  Stories of generous hearts and stories of scammers. Stories from cultures from around the world, and stories from our own neighborhoods.  Stories that cause us to cheer, and stories that cause us to weep.  Stories that hurt, and stories that heal.  And then, let’s talk about the stories, and learn from another’s perspective.  

Words have power, stories have power; this is a cause for celebration, a cause to defend.  I will do both.