In April, Upper School History Teacher Dr. Sandra Fahy delivered her final speech as the 2017-19 Babbott Chair of Literature and the Arts. 

Her talk, “Word Play and Prestige: How Language Makes Meaning and Signifies Power,” detailed Sandra's experiences studying French and Arabic in college and graduate school, which led her to realize the “symbolic and arbitrary nature of words and meanings.”

To illustrate this idea, she showed the Upper School audience one of cartoonist Jeremy Scott and illustrator Jim Borgman's popular Zits comic strips. The three panels depict Jeremy Duncan, the main character of the series, having unique conversations consisting only of the word “dude.” She explained that depending on the body language (“kinesics”) and tone (“paralanguage”) of the speaker, “the meaning of the word [dude] shifts.”

Sandra concluded with this excerpt: 

... we as humans combine sounds, assign meaning to sounds, arrange those sounds according to patterns, and add intonations and gestures that allow us to communicate with each other. The more meaning we add to words and phrases, the more playful and creative language allows us to be. But with more meaning, too, comes value, judgment, and signs of belonging or exclusion. Language provides access not just to culture and group identity, but also to power, status, and prestige. The processes that have shaped which languages are spoken where and by whom have been commonplace throughout history, and people throughout the world have been affected by these processes. Especially as we become even more globally interconnected, whether through social media, migration, or economic integration, it is important for us to understand not just the languages we speak but also the historical reasons for why we speak these languages. Ultimately, dudes, my goal today is to have contributed to that understanding.

In her 2018 lecture, Sandra spoke about developing a greater appreciation of human diversity using an “ethnographic lens.” 

Established in 1977, the bi-annual award recognizes "excellence in teaching and/or scholarly pursuits which will have a direct benefit to both the recipient and the school.”