Purpose Statement

We understand that words and language have been used to control personal and institutional narratives and contribute to miscommunication at best and harm and violence at worst. Our methodology is to use language without generality and to try to form collective agreements on definitions and usage. It takes time, labor and repetition to come to a collective understanding as to how a word is used and what is meant in it’s usage.

A “lexicon” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge. This list (not exhaustive) is a compilation of words that the RTM cohort named in the process of its convening as terms that deserved specific attention in our particular work. The methodology for generating this particular lexicon is specific to the cohort of RTM’s process. It is derived from the evolving questions that arose during our working retreats and sub group meetings, and each word is defined through our conversations and our continual retracing, reframing, and relating to these terms. We found many glossaries related to socially engaged work on academic and nonprofit websites, but we wondered how these lists had come about. We do not merely suggest organizations adopt this lexicon necessarily, but more importantly, that they construct a process for creating and defining lexicons for themselves.

Each individual, group, cohort, museum, and institution must do its own labor to create a lexicon by navigating and struggling with individual words and language collectively and with specificity to the environment they are working in.