Speaking of Place is a monthly Precipitate feature that explores the relationships between language, people, and place.
Phoenix Dust Storm. Image credit: Author.
On CBS’s popular sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” there’s a scene where one of the main characters, Leonard, brings home a bag of take out food and tells his roommate Sheldon, “Hope you’re hungry.” Sheldon turns from his computer and looks pensive for a moment before responding, “Interesting. A friendly sentiment in this country, a cruel taunt in the Sudan. It’s a lesson in context.”
While in graduate school, I spent at least a year trying to work this into a lesson in one of my English Composition classes. I often told my students they needed to assess the context of a particular essay, article, or advertisement to understand its full meaning, and they often responded with raised eyebrows, perhaps uncertain what I meant by context. And Sheldon explained it perfectly: time and place matter when assigning meaning. The same statement could have an entirely different sentiment attached to it on the other side of the planet or in another time period. But I always seemed to decide that bringing up a TV show I liked might be too off topic, too distracting. I brought in enough examples from my own life and hobbies. I didn’t need to bring in another.
As a recent transplant in the Southwest, the importance of context seems to have reasserted itself. A term I thought I understood in a Midwestern context does not necessarily carry the same meaning here. This problem is true of many words or concepts and is often a matter of degree. For example, I go for a walk around the neighborhood on a cloudy day, and a woman watering her yard complains about the excessive humidity. I smile and nod while thinking she knows nothing about humidity, since in other parts of the country the slightly sticky air wouldn’t even be noticed. In contrast, while reading about the heat wave in the Midwest this summer, people in Arizona shake their heads and point out that in Phoenix having a week of temperatures above 110 is not uncommon, that the “heat” everyone complains about elsewhere isn’t all that hot.
Phoenix Desert. Image Credit: Author.
But mostly, perhaps because of the news coverage of the Midwestern drought—the worst since the 1950s—I’ve thought about the term “drought.” The rain shortage affecting states like Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana is what I typically think of as a drought. There has been practically no rain during a season usually filled with thunderstorms.
Phoenix is also having a drought—according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources, it has been affected by a drought since the late nineties—which strikes me as surprising. It’s the desert; of course it’s dry. Obviously what constitutes a drought in Phoenix and what constitutes a drought in Des Moines are two very different things. I get that. But to live in a period of constant drought for so long, while sounding absurd, also sounds dangerous. How can people live in a dry land with even less than the “normal” amount of water?
Phoenix walk. Image credit: Author.
I often walk along a path in my neighborhood that ends at a manmade pond. The pond is filled with “gray water,” recycled wastewater that can otherwise only be used for watering lawns. Ducks paddle along the water’s edge where a line of palm trees has been planted. An assortment of native and nonnative birds perch in them—pigeons, owls, peach-faced love birds that escaped from an aviary in the nineties and have since multiplied.
To live in the desert, everything—especially plants not suited to arid climates—needs water. I wonder what will happen down the line if there is continually less of it falling from the sky. I picture the nightly chorus of sprinklers disappearing, the green space quickly turning brown. I envision more of the dust storms that have engulfed the valley over the past two summers, giant brown waves swallowing the streets and houses. I also wonder what will happen in the Midwest if droughts become more common. I imagine the blanket of corn that covers Iowa turning into a blanket of something else. Green might not be the dominant color anymore.
At some point, the contexts will change; what drought means in a particular place may have to shift to accommodate changing conditions, changing averages, changing “normals.”
Time and place matter. Without them—without context—language becomes fuzzy and imprecise. Without context, things like humidity, drought, and “hope you’re hungry” lose their meaning. Ultimately, learning about new places is always a lesson in context.
Katie Sukalich, Staff Blogger