Language-Making for Nature

By Timothy Beatley

There is a common belief that language is something passed down to us to use, and use correctly. There are rules of grammar, protocols of expression, and a stock of words, phrases, and idioms. Veering from accepted practices — especially spelling — is frowned upon (and policed from an early age).

But there is another way to think of language, one that empowers us to be more creative. This is the argument David Lukas, a naturalist, guide, and writer, makes in his new book, Language Making Nature. He views language as dynamic and malleable, and challenges us to be active in its creation, with the idea that the words we attach to places and important features in our environments are essential to forming emotional commitments to them, as well as conveying their magic and intrigue to others.

The idea of developing new language for speaking of nature is not new. Lukas tells me that many nature writers have called for it, but no one has followed through. "You read Thoreau from 150 years ago, and it's basically the same words that we use now," he says. "So I started realizing, no wonder young kids aren't excited about the natural world. You're up against hip-hop, and really cool, vibrant language like that, and the language of nature is boring, and stuck in time."

How do we actually go about language-making? Lukas has many ideas, and his book sets out a set of linguistic opportunities, such as the practices of affixation (attaching prefixes and suffixes to words); compounding (putting two or more words together); and blending (a classic environmental example is the word smog, created by combining smoke and fog). We can also engage in clipping (shortening words) and reintroducing forgotten words.

Officially dubbed Mount McKinley in 1917, America's tallest mountain was renamed Denali in 2015 by the Obama administration in recognition of the mountain's sacred status within native Alaskan culture. Photo by Flickr user Madeleine Deaton (CC BY 2.0).

From shallow to deep

Lukas is especially critical of the "shallow" forms of naming we have used for the natural world. We have scientific names for species, of course, but common names like winter ant or Canada goose are uncreative and, as in the case of Stellar's jay, frequently named after men (he notes that only three out of 900 North American species of birds are named after women).

As a positive example, Lukas holds up the naming traditions of the Western Apache (and the work of the late anthropologist Keith Basso, who documented them). The Western Apache have elaborate place names that carried history and meaning and even moral lessons. Another example of a place-specific language is Newfoundland English. I was so intrigued by the notion that residents of this Canadian province have words specific to their environment that I spent part of an afternoon with a Newfoundland Dictionary. Many of their words are other-worldly and meet Lukas's criteria of playfulness. Multiple words describe icicles, including ice candles and — my favorite — conkerbells. There are several words for marine ice conditions: a blue drop is an area of open water in the middle of sea ice, while sish refers to an area of granulated floating ice. One might encounter a rough shop (a channel difficult for a mariner to navigate), a landwash (the area of a shoreline that floods between low and high tides), or a leading tickle (a wetland cut off from the sea at low tide).

Whether engaging in active languagemaking will help protect the natural places in our lives remains a question. I am convinced it would. Unlike native peoples like the Apache, the rest of us tend to be fine with a more superficial naming culture. But we could enlist language-making to create playful words that draw attention to and convey the meaning of places.

Some recent high-profile efforts at renaming mountains and parks demonstrate the importance of deeper place names. The name of North America's highest mountain was changed by the Obama administration in 2015 from Mount McKinley (a president who never actually saw the mountain) to Denali, the native Koyukon Athabascan word for "the tall one." In 2014, Taos, New Mexico, changed the name of its Kit Carson Park (named after an individual with a history of cruelty toward Native Americans) to Red Willow Park, which comes from the Tiwa word for Taos. At once these new names are more respectful and more inclusive of these places' deeper histories.

Putting it into practice

Especially relevant to planners, Lukas feels we must also do better in how we name the many elements of cities. Too often our planning documents fail to capture our imaginations and don't adequately convey how special, unique, and beautiful our places are and how important they are to our collective well-being. We have scant language to describe the three-dimensional nature of the spaces within cities and the complexity of their vertical realms.

After my conversation with Lukas, I ponder what my first instance of language-making will be. There is a small grove of trees just outside my office, which includes a large old white oak tree. It is the most significant natural feature and space around. Students and faculty walk by it every day, and though there are several benches there, they are often ignored.

Is part of the problem, I wonder, that we have no language to talk about this small grove or indicate our intentions toward it? So I begin to experiment with words the way Lukas does. Drawing from the name of the architectural historian that our School of Architecture was named after and from Quericus alba, the scientific name for white oaks, my first suggestion is AlbaFiske.

This sounds to me like an enchanting place. I imagine alerting my colleagues and students when I am about to go albafisking and asking them to join me. I haven't gotten much further than this, but as Lukas argues, language-making takes practice. Choosing words must also be a collective process, one that allows others to react to, modify, and ultimately embrace (or not) the words chosen.

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Biophilic Cities Project.