  We investigate the homology representation of the symmetric group on
rank-selected subposets of subword order.
  We show that the homology module for words of bounded length, over an
alphabet of size $n,$
  decomposes into a sum of tensor powers of the $S_n$-irreducible $S_{(n-1,1)}$
indexed by the partition $(n-1,1),$ recovering, as a special case, a theorem of
Bj\"orner and Stanley for words of length at most $k.$ For arbitrary ranks we
show that the homology is an integer combination of positive tensor powers of
the reflection representation $S_{(n-1,1)}$, and conjecture that this
combination is nonnegative. We uncover a curious duality in homology in the
case when one rank is deleted.
  We prove that the action on the rank-selected chains of subword order is a
nonnegative integer combination of tensor powers of $S_{(n-1,1)}$, and show
that its Frobenius characteristic is $h$-positive and supported on the set
$T_{1}(n)=\{h_\lambda: \lambda=(n-r, 1^r), r\ge 1\}.$
  Our most definitive result describes the Frobenius characteristic of the
homology for an arbitrary set of ranks, plus or minus one copy of the Schur
function $s_{(n-1,1)},$ as an integer combination of the set
  $T_{2}(n)=\{h_\lambda: \lambda=(n-r, 1^r), r\ge 2\}.$ We conjecture that this
combination is nonnegative, establishing this fact for particular cases.
