At a loss for words? Join the Bureau of Linguistical Reality
The participatory artwork is looking for new words to “express what people are feeling and experiencing as our world changes”
CASAPERDIDA, noun: A feeling of anxiety that your house will be lost as a result of a torrential storm or event related to climate change. You might say, for instance, “I am unable to sleep at night as I am overwhelmed by a nagging sense of casaperdida.” This was an example provided by the Florida resident who submitted the word to The Bureau of Linguistical Reality (BLR). The word was approved and thus “created”.
Founded in 2014 by Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott, the BLR is a participatory dictionary and conceptual art project. The artists, who are based in San Francisco, see it as addressing what they consider an absence of language—“a linguistical void”—that accurately reflects the modern world. In their mission statement, they write that: “Our species (Homo Sapiens) is experiencing a collective ‘loss of words’ as our lexicon fails to represent the emotions and experiences we are undergoing as our habitat (earth) rapidly changes due to climate change and other unprecedented events.” They invite submissions on their website, and sometimes ask contributors to come up with a word for an unnamed concept.
This sentiment seems apposite, perhaps especially in San Francisco. There is a widespread sense that technology, access to water, rent prices and the planet are changing at a pace that defies comprehension. Yet the idea of a “loss of words”, and of words failing to adequately capture the state of things, is as old as language itself. In Old Norse and Old English, kennings—compound words such as “bone-house” or “whale-road”—provided a metaphorical, poetic alternative to nouns. Shakespeare and Milton coined new terms. Robert Hass and Wendell Berry wrote popular poems that dealt with the gap between language and life. (From Mr Berry’s “Words”: “Is there a world beyond words? / There is.”). Maggie Nelson opens her dazzling memoir “The Argonauts” with a dispute. She believes words are “good enough”; her lover thinks they are “corrosive to all that is good, all that is real”. Their argument over language animates the early days of their love, in all its inexpressibility.
If wishing for words that might finally allow people to say what they mean is a long-standing phenomenon, the BLR is still a fascinating index of modern ideas that feel ineffable. For the uneasy combination of gradually unfurling disasters like climate change and the 24-hour cycle of breaking news, there is ennuipocalypse. For the proliferation of new technologies aimed at solving problems “which will in turn eventually produce their own unintended by-products and problems”, there is teuchnikskreis. For the choice between letting your plants die and overusing water in the midst of a drought, there is gwilt. If you weary of doomsday language, the word epoquetude describes the sometimes comforting certainty that although “humanity may succeed in destroying itself, the Earth will certainly survive us as it has survived many cataclysms”.
Many words borrow parts from other languages. Two German words, smashed together. A French prefix married to an English suffix. One word even combines a Korean character with Salvadorean slang. These words are unlikely to go into wide circulation: popularity and usage generally spring from the bottom-up rather than the top-down. Each year, in any case, official dictionaries grow and adapt to reflect changes in language. Merriam-Webster added 850 new words and definitions in March alone. What is the modern world without “cryptocurrency” or “self-care”, after all?
But this project has a different purpose to that of a standard dictionary. The BLR has revealed contemporary fears—mostly submitted, it’s worth noting, by people in California—and they mostly revolve around water, technology and the planet. The most moving of all of the entries is NonnaPaura. The definition is a kind of lament-in-advance. It expresses the strong “longing and wishing for one’s children to have their own children”, coupled with the sense that one’s grandchildren will inherit a world “radically different from the present one, and perhaps filled with untold suffering as climate change accelerates and drastically alters the Earth”. NonnaPaura touches on the much-discussed idea that progress isn’t what it used to be. Things may get worse for future generations, and in fact almost certainly will. But the word also hints at primal desires and dreams: to have children, for our children to have children, and that they might live in a better world than ours. At once elemental and new, NonnaPauralingers.
Founded in 2014 by Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott, the BLR is a participatory dictionary and conceptual art project. The artists, who are based in San Francisco, see it as addressing what they consider an absence of language—“a linguistical void”—that accurately reflects the modern world. In their mission statement, they write that: “Our species (Homo Sapiens) is experiencing a collective ‘loss of words’ as our lexicon fails to represent the emotions and experiences we are undergoing as our habitat (earth) rapidly changes due to climate change and other unprecedented events.” They invite submissions on their website, and sometimes ask contributors to come up with a word for an unnamed concept.
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If wishing for words that might finally allow people to say what they mean is a long-standing phenomenon, the BLR is still a fascinating index of modern ideas that feel ineffable. For the uneasy combination of gradually unfurling disasters like climate change and the 24-hour cycle of breaking news, there is ennuipocalypse. For the proliferation of new technologies aimed at solving problems “which will in turn eventually produce their own unintended by-products and problems”, there is teuchnikskreis. For the choice between letting your plants die and overusing water in the midst of a drought, there is gwilt. If you weary of doomsday language, the word epoquetude describes the sometimes comforting certainty that although “humanity may succeed in destroying itself, the Earth will certainly survive us as it has survived many cataclysms”.
Many words borrow parts from other languages. Two German words, smashed together. A French prefix married to an English suffix. One word even combines a Korean character with Salvadorean slang. These words are unlikely to go into wide circulation: popularity and usage generally spring from the bottom-up rather than the top-down. Each year, in any case, official dictionaries grow and adapt to reflect changes in language. Merriam-Webster added 850 new words and definitions in March alone. What is the modern world without “cryptocurrency” or “self-care”, after all?
But this project has a different purpose to that of a standard dictionary. The BLR has revealed contemporary fears—mostly submitted, it’s worth noting, by people in California—and they mostly revolve around water, technology and the planet. The most moving of all of the entries is NonnaPaura. The definition is a kind of lament-in-advance. It expresses the strong “longing and wishing for one’s children to have their own children”, coupled with the sense that one’s grandchildren will inherit a world “radically different from the present one, and perhaps filled with untold suffering as climate change accelerates and drastically alters the Earth”. NonnaPaura touches on the much-discussed idea that progress isn’t what it used to be. Things may get worse for future generations, and in fact almost certainly will. But the word also hints at primal desires and dreams: to have children, for our children to have children, and that they might live in a better world than ours. At once elemental and new, NonnaPauralingers.
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