Even the number of words matter
D
o you ever get the sense that sometime the stars align and a whole bunch of threads in your life connect? I am not talking about the algorithm connections. You know, when you Google “I have sore feet” and then the next day your Facebook feed has 32,000 ads for in-soles (I exaggerate but you get my point).
No, I am talking about when you feel the impact of six degrees of separation not just through meeting people but through stories and narratives that are connected.
These past few weeks, those stars have aligned for me.
First, to understand my first degree of separation, you need to know that I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I don’t live in town so I have a good 20 minutes each way to listen and, at night, when I am exhausted from reading other stuff all day long it is nice to have someone read to me.
Anyway, my point is that audiobooks have something to do with my world aligning. Last year I bought The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir and the book’s delightful narration is done by a cast of readers. When I began listening I thought to myself, “My goodness that voice is familiar.” I went to the cast list and sure enough, the reader is my friend’s daughter. I found her voice so lovely and compelling that after I finished the novel I looked for others that she had read and I found The List.
Point two in six degrees of separation:
The List is a dystopic young adult fiction story. I promise that there will be no spoilers. It is the story of a post-apocalyptic world where the apocalypse is a climate event in which most of humanity is lost under rising sea levels. The last few people are led by John Noa who builds the city of Ark as the last refuge for humanity. Noa believes that the world came to ruin because of the strength of words to obfuscate and complicate the simple message that climate change was real. He is angry that words led to the destruction of humanity and decides that the people of Ark will only speak “list”: 500 words that are enough to communicate but not enough to obscure or muddy the truth. (Note that I used: obfuscate, complicate, obscure and muddy in this short paragraph to mean the small thing).
Some citizens of Ark get to have an extra list of words specific to their trade or profession, like a plumber has the word “pipes.” Of course, like all dystopic novels that make free speech the core of the story, The List’s protagonist, a young girl named Letta, comes to challenge the use of “list” and the diabolic methods that Noa employs to restrict speech.
Point three in six degrees of separation:
As a political scientist I was drawn to the core premise: that language can be used to manipulate citizens and thwart sound, evidence-based public policy. Of course it is interesting that the author of The List thought that it was because of too many words that such an outcome could prevail. Whether you like his politics or not, Donald Trump has shown that it is possible to work with a small list of words. I am not being facetious when I say that. He uses a small list of words. I defy anyone to find his use of language to be rich and varied yet somehow his language has become powerful.
Point four in six degrees of separation, which might have been caused by an algorithm, is that I came across an article published in The Atlantic in 2014 that demonstrates that children living in poverty are likely to have access to fewer words in their childhood than are children who live in better economic circumstances. By the age of five, “poor [children] will have heard 30 million fewer words than their wealthy peers.” The issue they say is that: “the word gap is not about access to income, but access to information.” The outcome of a limited vocabulary is long-term impacts on educational outcomes and economic security.
Point five in six degrees of separation:
Just a week or so ago the New York Times ran a story that said that: “Polish lawmakers approved a bill... t hat makes it a crime, punishable by up to three years in prison, to use statements suggesting Poland bears responsibility for crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany.” In this case Poland is making a list of words that one may not use.
I must admit that I am waiting for point six in my six degrees of separation but I expect I will not have to wait long. The key lesson for me is that it is not how many words we have but we how chose to use them.