Home. It’s where our family gathers at Thanksgiving and where the B bus drops us after class. It can be a dwelling, a city, a network of friends, or a place where we spend a lot of time.
Sometimes it’s a noun. Other times it’s an adjective or some idiom whose origin we no longer recall. Why is the last bit of a race called the home stretch? And what exactly does it mean when something hits too close to home?
“It’s a concept that is very powerful,” says Joe Clements, professor of linguistics in Spanish and Portuguese. “Justice. Freedom. Those are powerful words because there is so much that they index, so much that they make you think of. Home fits that.”
The meaning of the word shifts depending on who’s using it, making it a deictic expression. Simply put, home is a lot of things, varying by person and context. Your definition of home is different from ours. And from the girl who sits next to you in your political science class. Or the kid who wears his Doors T-shirt twice a week.
We asked for definitions of home and received 150 different answers. We read your stories of crashing on couches overseas and enduring horrible roommates. We reminisced as you told us about the first time you called Bloomington home (and your mother cried, screamed, or disowned you).
We can’t claim our survey reflects a perfect cross-section of IU students, but the results illustrate how, as Clements explains, “college students are learning the different definitions of home.”
Here’s what we can tell you: Our home isn’t defined by four walls. It’s a construct held together by cat hair and chocolate chip cookies and screaming little brothers. It’s a place that smells like spaghetti sauce and dad’s cologne and, for one person, sweat.
It’s a place we love to hate and hate to love. So take off your shoes, grab your dog, and raid the fridge. We hope that somewhere between pollution and crab enchiladas you’ll find your own definition of home.
