The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
Introduction to the First Edition
Although it is true that no two humans know exactly the same things, they often have a great deal of knowledge in common. To a large extent this common knowledge or collective memory allows people to communicate, to work together, and to live together. It forms the basis for communities, and if it is shared by enough people, it is a distinguishing characteristic of a national culture. The form and content of this common knowledge constitute one of the elements that makes each national culture unique.
It is our contention that such a body of information is shared by literate Americans of the late twentieth century, and that this body of knowledge can be identified and defined. This dictionary is a first attempt at that task. It identifies and defines the names, phrases, events, and other items that are familiar to most literate Americans: the information that we call cultural literacy. Although few of us will know every entry, most of us will be familiar with the majority, even if we are unable to define each one exactly.
Cultural literacy, unlike expert knowledge, is meant to be shared by everyone. It is that shifting body of information that our culture has found useful, and therefore worth preserving. Only a small fraction of what we read and hear gains a secure place on the memory shelves of the culturally literate, but the importance of this information is beyond question. This shared information is the foundation of our public discourse. It allows us to comprehend our daily newspapers and news reports, to understand our peers and leaders, and even to share our jokes. Cultural literacy is the context of what we say and read; it is part of what makes Americans American.
Because this is the first time anyone has tried to identify and define the knowledge assumed in public discourse, we had to establish a number of rules for deciding what to include. First, we proposed that many things are either above or below the level of cultural literacy. Some information is so specialized that it is known only by experts and is therefore above the level of common knowledge. At the same time, some information, such as the names of colors and animals, is too basic and generally known to be included in this kind of dictionary. By definition, cultural literacy falls between the specialized and the generalized.
Our second test was to determine how widely known an item is in our culture. Only those items that are likely to be known by a broad majority of literate Americans ought to appear in this dictionary. Therefore, in selecting entries, we drew upon a wide range of national periodicals. We reasoned that if a major daily newspaper refers to an event, person, or thing without defining it, we can assume that the majority of the readers of that periodical will know what that item is. If this is true, that event, person, or thing is probably part of our common knowledge, and therefore part of cultural literacy.
Third, we proposed that cultural literacy is not knowledge of current events, although it can help us understand those events as they occur. To become part of cultural literacy, an item must have lasting significance. Either is has found a place in our collective memory or it has the promise of finding such a place. This is one of the things that contributes to the stability of cultural literacy in America. Some of the material in this dictionary has remained unchanged in our national consciousness since our nation’s beginnings.
In some cases, determining lasting significance was very difficult. In our age of communication, the lifespan of many things in our collective memory is very short. What seems monumental today often becomes trivial tomorrow. For the sake of the dictionary, we arbitrarily chose a memory span of fifteen years. If a person or event has been widely recognized for more than fifteen years or seems likely to be recognized by a majority of people fifteen years from now, that person or event deserved consideration for a place in this dictionary.
This rule of lasting significance tended to eliminate certain fields altogether, or nearly so. For example, our collective memory of most of the people and events in the fields of sports and entertainment is too ephemeral to take a permanent place in our cultural heritage. There are outstanding exceptions, however, and those are included in this dictionary.
Scientific entries presented a special problem. Because there is little broad knowledge of science even among educated people, the criteria used to compile the lists for the humanities and social sciences simply could not be used with the natural sciences. The gap between the essential basic knowledge of science and what the general reader can be expected to know has become too large. Our criterion for choosing a science entry was that the item must be truly essential to a broad grasp of a major science. The science-related terms in this dictionary represent our best judgments, and those of our advisers, about what literate Americans ought to know to achieve the levels of communication expected for the humanities and social sciences.
We realize that many of the entries included here can be questioned. We also realize that many items that are excluded are open to similar questioning. We debated these entries at length, and we hope that this dictionary will stimulate a similar debate among our readers. American culture is not the property of the elite or even of the majority—it belongs to us all.
This attempt at creating a Dictionary of Cultural Literacy remains an unfinished project. We hope our readers will become our collaborators in improving and expanding it. Our culture changes constantly as new things are added and others are forgotten, and new relationships are forged and broken. Defining cultural literacy is an ongoing project, and this is only a first step. We invite your participation.
