Aloha! Where I live schools are already back in session, the quieter streets of summer feel like a distant memory. Of course beach reads and sandals are year-round necessities here, so it is not clear whether I am grumbling or gloating…and this week I do have some recommended reading for you (including and beyond this newsletter).
Two weeks ago I wrote about how I become a different person when I speak different languages - at least those in which I am also culturally fluent. Then I wrote about the implications of code-switching, whether required or desired. If you have not been reading along, you might catch up on those two essays before starting this one. If you like what you have been reading - or if you are so annoyed with it you have to keep reading to argue with me in your head - or if you have hope Iʻll get better at this down the road - you can sign up to get future weekly essays here:
I have been leading up to what I first thought I wanted to write about, which is the (to me) profoundly disturbing efforts to define and control what are allowable ways of thinking, even allowable identities, in part by eliminating allowable words from our written and spoken vocabularies.1 By banning books that contain forbidden concepts, and defunding the schools and universities and governmental programs that teach and research them. Sometimes by re-defining words entirely, often nonsensically, as if by fiat one can erase common meaning.
Although I know that over 90% of communication happens through body language and energy, I also recognize the communication that happens in words has power. So much power that the ‘ōlelo noeau says: I ka ʻolelo no ke ola, i ka ʻolelo no ka make. Speech can give life, speech can give death. The stories we tell can enliven us or they can entrap and defeat us. Words can heal us and our relationships or destroy us and our relationships. Sometimes the declaratory power of words spoken takes effect all at once (“I now pronounce you…”); sometimes the power of words spoken persists insidiously (the careless criticism by a parent that becomes an internalized belief about who I am and what I am capable of doing).
My practices of coaching, mentoring, leading (and leading my life) have been informed by this understanding for decades. In the early 2000s, I embraced Appreciative Inquiry as a basis for my organizational consulting because it fit with the other strands of positive approaches I was learning in training a new puppy and my rescued mare Zara. Focus on what works, what you want to grow, what you want to create. Get the positive affect and endorphins and energy going for you. At around the same time I encountered Bob Dunham and his management and leadership coaching built on a foundation of linguistics, of speech acts. Through language we build worlds, personal and collective worlds and futures.
Negative language, fear based language, language that creates winners and losers, language that excludes, language that reinforces the dominant and the dominated, is nothing new. I am finishing my seventh decade of existence, and part of the pain and disbelief I experience daily is in watching the loss of affirmative language that reflected progress in our collective care for human and non-human welfare. Progress that I had taken for granted.
Lost. Lost? At least visibly lost, ostensibly erased. But is it actually lost?
I have hope and belief that constructive language will not be lost. Because I feel certain that subversive language can still energize us, that empowering language will continue to flourish between us. I believe it always has.
My siblings and I exchange books for our birthdays. A couple of years ago my younger sister gifted me a novel called The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams.2 It is fiction, but based upon real events. The first Oxford English Dictionary was compiled at the turn of the twentieth century as an update of the 1755 Johnson dictionary. “New” words were submitted by the public, but vetted by a team of male lexicographers. In the novel, a young girl playing in the workroom finds a word on a slip of paper discarded by the men as unimportant for inclusion in the dictionary. The word, which in actual history had been submitted for inclusion but ignored, was “bondmaid” - a woman indentured for life. As the girl grows into womanhood, she continues collecting words and their meanings - words used by women and “common folk” to name and describe their realities and experiences.
Why were those words not considered important enough to be in the dictionary? Were their speakers not considered important enough that their reality mattered? Were those words also potentially threatening to structures of power? Were the words capable of giving ea, life and agency, to their owners, by firmly naming realities inconvenient to those in charge?
I recently watched Episode 3 of Chief of War. It ends with a scene in which Tony, the black sailor who has befriended Kaʻiana, is accosted by some white shipmates - and a single word uttered by the racist sailor Marley signals what is in store. “Boy,” he says, in a tone of voice full of menace. We understand the implications.3
That scene got me thinking of another book I read this year, James by Percival Everett4. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, this brilliant novel is a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Brilliant because it is both a commentary on the narrative of the original novel as a window into attitudes at the time of its events and at the time of its writing - and also a retelling through the unblinkered lens of the reality of slavery and racism as understood today. Brilliant in its flipping of its charactersʻ dialogue, illustrating the subversive power of language. James and his community are highly intelligent, well educated, literate people - in contrast with their enslavers. Enslaved children are taught to code switch for survival - speaking with incorrect grammar and limited vocabulary to appease white people, while expected to speak among themselves in language that today would be like code switching into standard White English.
Sixteen years ago when I joined the real estate brokerage Hawaiʻi Life, I did so in part because they had a blog platform where I could write5. And how I introduce myself there is “I believe in the power of place and I believe in the power of the written word and the stories we tell. Those are good reasons I found my ‘place’ on the Island of Hawaii, and they are also reasons why I blog.”
I guess I should add that those are also reasons why I keep writing essays here on They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir. Because it is important that we talk about what matters. It is important that we - all of us - continue to have agency to use and choose our words.
For all of you who are real estate professionals reading this, I would invite you to review Article 10 of our Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice…and recall that as a profession we have been in recent years actively addressing systemic racism in housing and that we commit to acknowledge the legitimacy of diverse sexual preferences and gender identities.
You can buy The Dictionary of Lost Words on Bookshop and support independent bookstores.
This scene is not historically accurate, nor is the language used. But it makes narrative sense to us with our modern understanding. If you are interested, here is a good review of historical accuracy versus literary license in Chief of War.
You can buy James on Bookshop as well. Or just head to your nearest Public Library - while they still exist.
I have over 600 blog posts and counting on HawaiiLife.com .