How can museums use language to end visitor alienation and increase engagement?
Changing or evolving language use in museums can help to stop alienation of visitors. It is important to create a broader insider group through the way we speak to our visitors. Currently there is a major gap in how museums communicate their visitors and how visitors and the general public communicate with each other. This includes the languages that are prominent in the museum, as well as the different slang and pop culture level words that we use regularly. If visitors don't feel welcome in our institutions, or can't understand what we're trying to say then we need to reevaluate how we communicate.
Recently, the International Council of Museums held a contentious vote on changing the definition of the museum; the results of this vote were to postpone the conversation. The word "colonizer" proved too much for the conference attendees to bear and they did not look beyond the word into the meaning and message that the shift in definition would mean for the field. It is worthwhile to see how the language we use can help shift meaning for the visitors. I will be looking at how language use in society creates inside groups and establishes a social hierarchy and how this is reflected in museums. Many other types of organizations are already doing this, museums can too. AAM's LGBTQ+ Alliance is already making efforts to make museum language more inclusive for all people, I'm hoping to use this as a case study and expand on it beyond gender and family related language.
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