In a simple non-academic online dictionary search of the word “words” (see what I did there?), words are defined as “a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning” (dictionary.com). The definition continues to break down the idea of words into units and phonological distinguishing features . Sounds pretty good, yes. In fact, that sounds seemingly straightforward. There is it then – the “world of words” that Chamberlain enters into in “If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories”, is summed up in one sentence. Well, not quite. This is a label, yes, and does very little to achieve something of a definition remotely close to Chamberlain’s explorations. How can you quantify something as tangible yet intangible as words themselves.
Words can kill – in the heart breaking examples of bullying. Words can change someone’s life forever in one simple sentence: “Will you marry me”, or “it’s a boy”. Words can and do provide the platform to navigate through life, to communicate, express, inform, exchange knowledge, bicker, fight, or hurt. We are surrounded by literary stimulation, whether on roadside signs, ingredient labels on food, song lyrics, or an actual book – words are often the only thing getting us from point A to point B, and onwards.
My grade 12 English class was assigned the task of walking from our high school to the elementary school next door and aiding a group of grade 4 students to write a story. Any story. No guidelines, no limits. I was in charge of two boys and within seconds of asking what we wanted our story to be about, a hand shot up in the air and yelled something along the lines of “a gloobery globbery green monster who eats people!”. Superb. Over the course of five weekly visits to the class, including negotiations and numerous edits, I am proud to say that we did manage to craft an illustrated and bound first edition of “The Super Six and the Grey Blob”. A small excerpt:
“Inside the castle, Incognito unlocked the door and freed Awesomess. They ran downstairs and joined the battle. Thinking of where Fire Boy could be located, Phyneaus then noticed that he was trapped in a crystal tomb. He further used his psychic powers to widen the inside of the tomb, allowing Fire Boy to use a burst of fire to break out. In doing so, Fire Boy used too much power and he was drained of any power for 15 minutes. After this time passed and Fire Boy had regained his power, all the members ganged up on the Grey Blob and were about to use their Super Six Mega Blow when suddenly the Grey Blob disappeared into thin air!!! They looked around for where he could have gone, but all they heard was his voice yell, “I’ll get you next time Super Six!” United at last, the Super Six returned home, for now….” Our illustrations looked a little something like this:
Words provide an endless path into both the imaginary and the real. To the boys with whom I wrote this story, this was their perfect imaginary world, and words allowed them to craft it into something tangible, readable, and let them share their world with fellow students, teachers, and family. The power of that! Chamberlain frames the world of words in his childhood memories of learning to read and write, of grasping the concept that we learn the “word’s the thing and that it is not the thing” (132). With this power, words do make us feel closer to the world we live in. “Stories give meaning and value to the places we call home; how they bring us close to the world we live in by taking us into a world of words; how they hold us together and at the same time keep us apart” (1). Words allow thorough expression of world we live in. To say a flower is beautiful gives that flower meaning. To say a flower is a flower gives it meaning. We develop comfort in the steadfastness of words, that they will always be here to give meaning to our life, to the world, and all that is around us.
Chamberlain comments on the feeling that we live in the stories and songs of popular culture, in “the secular and sacred myths that shape everything from our racial and national identities to our moral and spiritual responsibilities” (122). As the rampant growth of importance placed on social media presence and personalities continues to grow, as a culture we do appear to be caught in the need to showcase our life through tweets and Facebook status’ (some people more than others, of course). I have caught myself on multiple occasions in the middle of an adventure or task, and literally thinking “I cannot wait to Instagram this and send it to Twitter and Facebook”, a caption to go along with the picture carefully thought out well in advance. Weird? Yes. But perhaps not a negative thing. Social media allows us to share our words, for both the good and bad. Our words become accessible through a generic Google search, and within seconds can provide a peek into the life of an underpaid Chinese factory worker while sitting in the comfort of our home. As stated on most student blogs for this course, sharing our words in the realm of cyber space allows for the exchange of knowledge and thoughts from Whitehorse to Toronto.
If this post does nothing else, it at least adds a reinforcing meaning of further confusion and truth to Chamberlain’s idea that words are “Confusing . . . and clear as a bell” (119).
Works Cited:
Dictionary.com. “Words”. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/words?s=t>. 2014.
Faure, Gaelle. “The Barbie blues: Workers describe ‘awful’ conditions at Mattel suppliers”. The Observers. <http://observers.france24.com/content/20131025-worker-conditions-mattel-suppliers-china>. 2013.
Grau, Deborah & Rybak, Judy. “Bullying: Words Can Kill”. CBS News. <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bullying-words-can-kill/>. 2013.
I really enjoyed your story about the two elementary-aged boys and your writing adventures with them. It brought back memories of childhood. How good it felt to legitimize the great wide imaginary realm I was so familiar with by setting it down into written words and then translating those words into illustrations. And it makes me interested in how we, as adults, treat storytelling.
Perhaps we aren’t as inclined to recount stories about Grey Blobs and incredible battle moves like the “Super Six Mega Blow” as adults. I think you touched on something really important about what social media and the internet do for adults. In a sense, social media allows us, as adults to tell more stories. It also legitimizes a different kind of grown-up storytelling in a way by offering people various ways of interpreting their realities. How often does the way someone frames their reality – their story – through social media irritate me or one of my friends. Especially in the acting world, fake it till you make it is sage advice. We are all told to promote, promote, promote. We announce on Facebook “so excited to work on the set of Motive today” without mentioning that we are glorified background. We allow people to fill in the blanks and to assume the best, that we are guest-starring on the show, working opposite the lead actors. Outside of the acting world, there are of course, many examples of such social media storytelling.
Relevant Magazine made waves and started conversation when they published the article “Instagram’s Envy Effect” [http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/tech/stop-instagramming-your-perfect-life]. They touch on the fact that social media is primarily used to highlight the positives in one’s life and thus causes community to erode and comparison to creep in. Yet what if rather than viewing the exaggeration of beauty in people’s lives on social media as a negative lie and root of evil, we viewed it as a kind of storytelling, a vision for oneself. Chamberlin discusses reality and imagination in relation to storytelling and how the boundary between truths and lies is often unclear (138-142). Perhaps social media allows adults to “finesse the line between the true and the untrue…with humour and exaggeration” (153). Perhaps the exaggeration is primarily skewed toward the positive but I have also seen a lot of “the end is nigh” type posts from my friends and acquaintances.
The stories we tell on social media allow us to connect to one another whether it be by giving others a glimpse into how we see the world through Instagram, an observation on Twitter, or the way we choose what to share on Facebook. Rather than fear-mongering about how social media is destroying our lives, perhaps we should be celebrating the new kinds of stories, and the new methods of storytelling that we have at our disposal.
Thanks for your exploration! Your words made me see social media in an entirely different light.
Hi Gill,
First of all let me say that I really enjoyed reading your blog, I am not going to pretend like you are a stranger to me because… we’re best friends! The world should know. I loved experiencing your writing style and learning things I didn’t know before about you. For instance, the story you shared about the elementary school boy’s creative writing masterpiece. I hope someday I can read the whole story, illustrations included! I think that story is amazing on a few different levels because it demonstrates the power of words to pull us into new dimensions of imagination, the unique creativity of children which should be protected and celebrated, and most vividly, the bridge that words can build between the generations. Some of my favourite experiences volunteering with kids has been playing trucks or dolls with them and hearing the story-lines they improvise on the spot to give life to the inanimate objects we’re playing with. It’s really not so different from what we do with stories of origin, fairytales, or popular fiction.
I also wanted to comment on a few other things that you mentioned, the first being the Chamberlain quote you highlighted: “Stories give meaning and value to the places we call home; how they bring us close to the world we live in by taking us into a world of words; how they hold us together and at the same time keep us apart” (1). This quote really struck a cord with me and I think the dichotomy of stories holding us closer to one another and simultaneously isolating us is an interesting one. You can pick any story and argue for the validity of this statement, but I’d like to relate this to the idea of home. On a macro-level we can say that our home is our country Canada and this knowledge can bring a sense of community between us and the people who physically surround us. Or…. the idea of common citizenship can make us wonder why, if we are surrounded by millions of people who share the same “home,” do we still feel so alone? Similarly on a micro-level, the idea of home can become even more complicated. Your sense of a shared family home may forge a deep bond with your select family members who grew up in that very same place of belonging. Home may be the glue that holds you together when forces of geography, time, and circumstance pull you apart. But if you have ever experienced that home being taken away from you, whether it be via natural disaster or a disaster of a personal nature, suddenly the idea of home becomes incredibly isolating. Suddenly your memory of the home you once had but can no longer return to becomes the epicentre of your grief and loneliness. I’d imagine that this isn’t drastically different than how the aboriginals felt when the settlers took their land, their home, and claimed that land as their own.
Finally, your honesty about the attractive pull of social media forums that drive us to share our experiences with one another is something I’ve often thought about. In my personal blog I once complained that university students had turned travelling into an excuse to re-invigorate their Instagram accounts and had lost touch with the visceral experience of being in another country and experiencing something for the first time. I now look back on those judgements and I feel like I was a little harsh. I also imagine what I’d like to Instagram about a month before I do so, and when I do I enjoy sharing it with my friends. Why? Because it’s a beautiful way to communicate to those people you love (and maybe to some you don’t) images of things you love to do. I now see that you can have both the bodily experience and the visual memory that comes with it without sacrificing the beauty of the moment. Thanks for writing such a think-piece Gill!
Hi Gillian,
I really enjoyed reading your post. Particularly, I appreciate the focus on the ability of words to translate what we envision in our minds into something that can be shared and understood by others. In a creative writing class I took, we had the author Carrie Mac as a guest speaker. One of the things she said that resonated with me the most is that the hardest part of writing is making the words fit the world. As someone who has a very visual mind, I certainly struggle to find the words to describe exactly what it is I see in my head so that someone else could read those words and have a mental image of something similar. I think it’s really cool that, when you were working with those two boys, you acted as a sort of translator. It sounds like you helped them to describe exactly what they imagined and put it on the page. And by putting it a language that I can understand, now I too am able to imagine The Super Six. I think that’s the coolest thing about words – that by utilizing them properly, we are able to communicate in ways much deeper than just ink on a page.
Hi Gillian,
What a great little excerpt from the boys’ story! You make some fascinating insights when it comes to “words” and how they add meaning. What really grabbed my attention were the word and name choices in the story. The boys assigned names like “Awesomeness” and “Fire Boy” to their characters; these names are often reflective upon themselves and their own personality — what a great way of expressing individuality and creativity!
I often underestimate the ability of young minds. Creative writing and storytelling through the eyes of a child offers an entirely new perspective. Children will often draw pictures and caption them like a story. To an adult, we see scribbles and doodling; when the child explains their drawing, you can see how observant and detail-oriented they are about their emotions and their surroundings.
Thank you for sharing!
– Deanna
Hi Gillian,
Like our classmates, I like how you phrased the “power of words” as a “platform to navigate through life” and your emphasis on Chamberlin’s definition of words as “confusing… and clear”. I read this right before I sat down to have dinner with my family, and thought I would provide an example as to how others (particularly non-university students) view word choice. My sister mentioned that she purposefully ate all my favourite food earlier so that I could not have any later (yeah, it’s going to be a silly anecdote). I responded “you’re such a dick!” and in response my mother said “watch your words”. I thought it was rather serendipitous the way she said “words” rather than language, mouth, etc. I decided to share that my decision to say (rather crassly) “dick” to fully express my lack of appreciation for her actions, and that by selecting that word, I was accurately expressing my feelings. While not life changing by any stance, I thought it was interesting that I was criticized by my accurate word choice and when I brought up the fact that word choice is important, my family waved off my “defense” as condescending English major babble. My family simply did not want to accept that a) there is an accurate word choice for every scenario and b) that words have power when used correctly because not everyone has the same knowledge of words.
Thanks for your post about the power of words and inspiring me to (win) a dinner table battle! Real life scenarios and all that.
Also the excerpt about the kids’ story (with illustration) was entertaining and nostalgic, and made me think about just how much our perceptions of what makes a good story change!
– Jessica
Than you Gillian 🙂