"Speaking in Tongues" by Zadie Smith

Addressing her own upbringing, Shakespeare, Hollywood stardom and Barack Obama, among other topics, Zadie Smith's "Speaking in Tongues" takes on the subject of existing in two or more worlds, two or more cultures at the same time, and how this is reflected in speech. Here are 25 words from this timeless examination of what it means to be authentic now. From The New York Review of Books, February 26, 2009. Read the full text here.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. disparate
    fundamentally different or distinct in quality or kind
    My own childhood had been the story of this and that combined, of the synthesis of disparate things.
  2. slough
    any outer covering that can be shed or cast off
    As George Bernard Shaw delicately put it in his preface to the play Pygmalion, “many thousands of [British] men and women…have sloughed off their native dialects and acquired a new tongue.”
  3. dictum
    an authoritative declaration
    They have betrayed that puzzling dictum “To thine own self be true,” so often quoted approvingly as if it represented the wisdom of Shakespeare rather than the hot air of Polonius.
  4. redolent
    having a strong pleasant odor
    With a voice too posh for the flower girls and yet too redolent of the gutter for the ladies in Mrs. Higgins’s drawing room.
  5. didactic
    instructive, especially excessively
    The first thing to note is that both Eliza and Pygmalion are entirely didactic, as Shaw meant them to be.
  6. genteel
    marked by refinement in taste and manners
    But they wont take me unless I can talk more genteel.
  7. specter
    a ghostly appearing figure
    It extends through the specter of the tragic mulatto, to the plight of the transsexual, to our present anxiety —disguised as genteel concern—for the contemporary immigrant, tragically split, we are sure, between worlds, ideas, cultures, voices—whatever will become of them?
  8. dogma
    a doctrine or code of beliefs accepted as authoritative
    He’s still recognizably Obama; he already seeks to unpack and complicate apparently obvious things (“Just ‘cause a girl don’t go out with you doesn’t make her a racist”); he’s already gently cynical about the impassioned dogma of other people (“Yeah, that’s what you said the last time”).
  9. sui generis
    constituting a class of its own; unique
    When Bristolian Archibald Leach became suave Cary Grant, the transformation happened in his voice, which he subjected to a strange, indefinable manipulation, resulting in that heavenly sui generis accent, neither west country nor posh, American nor English.
  10. empathy
    understanding and entering into another's feelings
    For it has been a point of honor, among the civil rights generation, that any criticism or negative analysis of our community, expressed, as they often are by white politicians, without context, without real empathy or understanding, should not be repeated by a black politician when the white community is listening, even if ( especially if) the criticism happens to be true (more than half of all black American children live in single-parent households).
  11. epithet
    descriptive word or phrase
    The black politician who played up to, or even simply echoed, white fears, desires, and hopes for the black community was in danger of earning these epithets—even Martin Luther King was not free from such suspicions.
  12. repudiate
    refuse to acknowledge, ratify, or recognize as valid
    It was felt that Jesse Jackson was sadly out of step with this new postracial world: even his own son felt moved to publicly repudiate his “ugly rhetoric.”
  13. unequivocally
    in an unambiguous manner
    It’s the fear of being mistaken for Joyce that has always ensured that I ignore the box marked “biracial” and tick the box marked “black” on any questionnaire I fill out, and call myself unequivocally a black writer and roll my eyes at anyone who insists that Obama is not the first black president but the first biracial one.
  14. apogee
    a final climactic stage
    The apogee of this is, of course, Shakespeare: even more than for his wordplay we cherish him for his lack of allegiance.
  15. immolate
    kill as a sacrifice, especially by fire
    There are many forms of heroism in Shakespeare, but ideological heroism—the fierce, self-immolating embrace of an idea or institution—is not one of them.
  16. vivacity
    high spirits and animation
    Halifax proudly called himself a trimmer, assuming it, Macaulay explains, as a title of honour, and vindicat[ing], with great vivacity, the dignity of the appellation.
  17. appellation
    identifying words by which someone or something is called
    Halifax proudly called himself a trimmer, assuming it, Macaulay explains, as a title of honour, and vindicat[ing], with great vivacity, the dignity of the appellation.
  18. lethargy
    inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy
    The English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy.
  19. propensity
    a natural inclination
    Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities any one of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice.
  20. capacious
    large in the amount that can be contained
    His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious.
  21. caveat
    a warning against certain acts
    This makes Macaulay’s caveat the more striking:
  22. doleful
    filled with or evoking sadness
    To me, this is a doleful conclusion.
  23. contingent
    determined by conditions or circumstances that follow
    The first stage in the evolution is contingent and cannot be contrived.
  24. insidious
    working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way
    It’s amazing how many of our cross-cultural and cross-class encounters are limited not by hate or pride or shame, but by another equally insidious, less-discussed, emotion: embarrassment.
  25. credo
    any system of principles or beliefs
    Well, it’s my novelist credo and I believe it.
Created on Mon Nov 11 10:00:45 EST 2013 (updated Tue Apr 09 14:31:23 EDT 2019)

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