Turn on the Barbecue. Now, please!
I’m a slow reader.
Forever the first to start the page and last to close the book. But that’s ok. Within my slow reading emerged a preoccupation with words.
Take barbecue.
Last Saturday, my Dad asked me to turn on the barbecue.
Bar-buh-que.
Eight letters. Three syllables.
Try saying it five times fast.
Interestingly, before the modern term barbecue emerged in English, it was first heard and transcribed by the Spanish as barbacoa, referring to the wooden frames Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean used to cook fish or meat (Wills, 2019).
You may be wondering where this is going. How does the word barbecue relate to globalization?
Now, consider the words you employ daily. Those you use to conceive and communicate thought, or connect with friends and family. Even those you use when some bleep driver cuts you off.
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Think about the etymology of English words: how their meanings evolve across space and time, their cross-pollination beyond the confines of varying dialects, cultures, and regions.
Think about the derivation of English words — their Indo-European and Germanic roots, their borrowed Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes (Deckker & Sumanasekara, 2025). Some English words have evolved through European exploration and colonization, like canoe (Harper, n.d.); others through trade and economic proximity, like tobacco (Harper, n.d.). Their coexistence within what Deckker and Sumanasekara (2025) considered “a modern global lingua franca” (p. 78) reflects centuries of human mobility that we don’t think twice about when our Dad asked us to turn on the barbecue twenty minutes ago!
The formation of English words serves as a living record of the diverse nodes of connectivity that constitute the earliest architecture of globalization: what Steger (2023) describes as “embodied globalization” — the interconnectedness and mobility of people (p. 3).
I formerly associated the phenomenon of globalization with global supply chains and supranational organizations. Now, I realize the words I use daily are at once a product of, and conduit through which, globalization takes place.
Words originate in historical contexts, morph through the voices of others, transcend borders, bear stories — are borrowed, imposed, resisted, reshaped, outdated, and revitalized. Embedded within them are traces of human mobility, connection, and history.
Were I not a slow reader, I might never have explored the formation of the word barbecue, forgetting to turn it on like my Dad had asked me to (whoops… sorry, Dad).
References
Deckker, D., & Sumanasekara, S. (2025). The origin of the English language: A historical and linguistic review. EPRA International Journal of Research and Development (IJRD), 10(4), 77–89. https://doi.org/10.36713/epra20926
Harper, D. (n.d.). Etymology of tobacco. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/tobacco
Harper, D. (n.d.). Etymology of canoe. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/canoe
Steger, M. B. (2023). Globalization: A very short introduction (6th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Wills, M. (2019, October 18). The Origins of the Word “Barbecue.” JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/the-origins-of-the-word-barbecue/
