Defining Intentional Lexicon

Intentional Lexicon is the school practice of fostering a school language rooted in interconnectedness, transcendence, and service. This driver ensures that a school community creates a shared language that encourages students' belongingness and inherently nurtures their relationships and spirituality. The lexicon is also meant to be open and pluralistic to prioritize diversity and validate a range of identities, beliefs, and perspectives, while still encouraging connection. This language ought to be shared and deeply understood by the whole community. Ideally, these terms of the intentional lexicon are explicitly taught once a student begins their journey at the school, but their understanding and identification with these words deepen throughout their academic journey.   

The intentional lexicon, therefore, becomes rooted in tradition for the school and invites an openness to new language as it becomes necessary or organically emerges within a school context. A key rationale behind intentional lexicon is that language informs the way we think and builds a sense of awareness, knowledge, and self. Therefore, schools utilize their intentional lexicon to build relationships, spiritual curiosity, empathy, and connection. The shared understanding of these terms, rooted in interconnectedness, further fosters relational spirituality between the members of the school community. 

Example: 

1. Espacio: a term used in the Convent of the Sacred Heart that invites a practice for intentional silence. It is meant to affirm the value of stillness and silence in life, and then to open hearts to be receptive to divinity, mystery, or the experience of the universe. All Sacred Heart students are familiar with this term, and it invites receptiveness to Spirit, and it creates a culture of seeking silence and stillness authentically 
   

Intentional Lexicon is…. 

1. The school-specific language is a loving, authentic, and interconnected 

2. Vertically aligned throughout a school

3. Open and pluralistic 

Intentional Lexicon is not….

1. Forced, or rote

2. Inherently exclusionary 

3. Prescriptive and divisive

This module invites attention to the language we use and the effects it has on our communities. It is not an invitation to perfect our words, enforce agreement, or replace one rigid vocabulary with another.

Language, like formation itself, is living. It evolves, breaks down, and sometimes fails to carry what we intend. That is not a mistake; it is part of how meaning is made together.

As you encounter the ideas and examples in this module, notice what feels expansive, what feels constricting, and what may no longer serve. You are not being asked to adopt a fixed lexicon, but to cultivate attentiveness to how words shape experience, relationship, and belonging.

Expect moments of clarity, hesitation, and uncertainty. All are welcome. The work here is less about choosing the “right” language and more about remaining responsive to the people and contexts language seeks to hold.

Proceed with curiosity rather than certainty. Understanding will deepen through practice.