Gloria Naylor's The Meaning Of A Word

Gloria Naylor, in her essay, “The meaning of a word” describes language as a subject. We know subject is anything that is generally discussed or dealt with. So Naylor wants to say the language is a thing where it has lots of meaning and perceptions. She writes her own personal experience clarifying how a language could be misleading and misinterpreted. She writes her own experience and tries to convince the readers about different forms of a word. She is affected by a word nigger and tries to find the arbitraries of any word. Her main intention in her essay is to lead her readers think about the words they choose to use and hear and how the context of these words can alter the meaning of them. Naylor takes a word nigger and tries to share her experiences of how she felt when she got encountered with the same word in different ways. She does not take a sharp tone. From her essay we can generalize that she is having a conversation with her readers as her friends. She is trying to educate her readers by sharing her personal experiences. I think she wants her readers to sit and think about the words they use, how others may use them, and how those words affect others around them. Naylor wants her readers to understand how deeply she was affected by a young boy but also by how she didn't really think about the word

Naylor discusses how language is the subject of her writing, and although the written word is what has kept her going throughout her life she still feels that the written word is inferior to the spoken word. Her arguments in the introduction of her writing are clear and easily understood. She is portraying just how powerful she feels the spoken word can be. Naylor states, "Dialogue achieves its power in the dynamics of a fleeting moment of sight, sound, smell and touch." This helps the readers understand the power of a spoken word such as