Blog Post 3: Language is Power

Research Question:
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. 

Blog Post 2 - The age old question; is this cool enough?

Hello!

As I've been thinking about my thesis I found myself in a weird "is this idea cool enough" feedback loop that wasn't productive at all. I spent the last 3 weeks trying to get away from that to really focus on the things that I know I love and am interested in. So far I have three main ideas separated into three major topics, music, food and language.

Music and its impact on people has been something I've been interested in my whole life and i'm always trying to figure out ways to incorporate music into my life and my work. I feel like my idea for music is my weakest but here it goes anyway! If i were to choose this research area i'd like to research how music can be incorporated into museum engagement to enhance the visitor experience and expand their knowledge.

Food is obviously an important part of being alive and every culture has their own food traditions. Personal food traditions, intangible heritage, and how cultures can be embraced and maintained through food traditions is something I have done research on for my own culture and I'd love to expand on that and figure out how food can be incorporated into the museum/public history experience to preserve cultural heritage.

Language is also major and nearly everyone on Earth has language unless you've quite literally been raised by wolves. If I were to do this topic I would focus on how language use can impact visitor experience and I would try to explore ways that museums and other cultural institutions can adjust their language use so that they can be accepting and welcoming of the broadest swath of visitors. This would not only include educating staff on speaking to visitors but also expanding the languages offered in museum interpretation.

I really like all three of these ideas and would happily spend a year researching and writing about them but its almost decision time! I'm sure I'll be confident about my choice when I finally make it, but ask me again in a few weeks.