Glossary

Inspired by the ongoing controversy around the definition of antisemitism, the “Contested Glossary” offers multiple definitions for a selection of the most important terms we use when we talk about hate and prejudice. These definitions can be sorted into a number of categories based on the source from which they were drawn, including….

Our hope is that, by looking at these definitions side by side, you will have an opportunity to identify patterns ¾ commonalities and differences, changes over time, variations in language between academic, popular, and legal sources, across regions, and shaped by ideological concerns and/or political agendas ¾ and in so doing gain a better understanding of the ongoing discourse around these very powerful words.

Even beyond the terms themselves, though, the Contested Glossary is a tool designed to improve information literacy, an immeasurably important skill in today’s world….

Here are some questions that may help guide you through this resource:

• What differences do you notice in the language used by scholars, journalists, legislators, and advocates? Why might they take different tones and approaches to describing the same thing?
• How have the definitions of a given term changed over time? How might events and trends have shaped and reshaped the way we talk about these issues?
• What differences do you notice between definitions from similar sources in different countries? For example, what might account for linguistic variations in different countries’ laws regarding hate speech?

One crucial component of research and critical analysis, however, is acknowledging the limitations of the sources we collect. This project has several. First, the Glossary is by no means exhaustive. Some of these terms have dozens, if not hundreds, of definitions, which would be impossible to collect within our time constraints. The Glossary is also currently limited to English-language definitions, which inevitably leads to English-speaking countries being overrepresented in our sample. In fact, because the terms themselves are English, they may not even translate grammatically or conceptually into non-Anglophone languages and cultures. Some of these terms are also much older than others; for example, ‘antisemitism’ has been in use since at least 1881, whereas ‘ableism’ entered the lexicon around 1990. More to the point, the practices and prejudices that terms like ableism and antisemitism attempt to capture are of course much, much older than the words themselves. Finally, in the spirit of objectivity, it worth noting that very few of our definitions related to ideologies come from proponents of the ideologies themselves. Efforts to deplatform hate groups have made their websites difficult to access. However, many of the sources we link to in the Glossary quote extensively from these sources as a means of studying them, so if you are interested in that information, it can still be located using this tool.