Nigger: The Meaning of a Word In the essay The Meaning of a Word, “Gloria Naylor” discusses the essence of a word and how it can mean different things to different people in a number of situations. Naylor talks about how depending on your race, gender, or social status using a word like ‘nigger’ can have different meanings. Naylor then uses personal experiences to help the reader visualize how someone views the meaning of the word used in different contexts. Naylor talks about how a written word…
Sowell November 5, 1998 Dr. Osinubi The Meaning of the Word "Nigger" I can recall the first time I paid close attention to the word nigger. In junior high a school fight would occur about every week and of course the whole school would gather together and watch. Well this particular fight sticks out in my mind because it was between two boys of different races, Hispanic and black. During their conflict the Hispanic boy bluntly called the black boy a nigger, and that was when the rest of the black…
The word nigga comes from the Latin word niger which simply means black. The word niger was then changed to negro and integrated into two other languages, Spanish which kept the pure meaning of the word as “black”, and English which perverted the meaning into “black person”. However, by about the 1800s most white Americans had adopted the word as a derogatory racial slur to describe black African American slaves and yet again changed it into a new form of the word. They transformed the word negro…
generation there is different reaction to the word ¨nigga¨ or ¨nigger¨ than there was before. When you say the ¨n¨ word some people take it as calling you ¨dude¨ ,¨man¨ or some people get insulted. Most African Americans say it is not okay for white people to say the ¨n¨ word because of the history behind it. When using this word it traces down to bad history even though it has totally different meaning and is not meant to insult anybody. If you use this word in referring to a friend then it shows your…
"Nigger to Nigga: Not Bad After All" When some think about the word nigger they immediately think about negativity and some might even venture to say that it is a "bad" word. It takes you back to a time when blacks were oppressed and demoralized. When blacks were looked at as inferior and not worthy to obtain equal rights in America. But that was decades ago and it is now the 21st century. Not only have we changed the spelling of the word, by dropping the er and adding a, but the definition…
both Gloria Naylor’s Essay “The Meanings of a Word” and Christine Leong’s “Being a Chink,” both authors, whom are women of color, address the power behind words and their definitions. While acknowledging that words can be both empowering and positive, both Naylor and Leong address that words can be used in negative ways and easily manipulated. Words have the power to express an individual’s feelings and thoughts to one another, whether positive or negative. Alongside this, words can be used as labels…
The word "nigger" has become a popular saying amongst our current population. The word appears to be used more each day by an assorted group of people. I've conducted a research in order to gather a better understanding as of to why the word "nigger" is so commonly used. I've collected responses from my fellow class mates and read a book called nigger to acquire addition information about the different opinions brought on by its usage. In these responses were patterns that helped me to get better…
written word inferior to the spoken, and much of the frustration experienced by novelists is the awareness that whatever we manage to capture in even the most transcendent passages falls far short of the richness of life. Dialogue achieves its power in the dynamics of a fleeting moment of sight, sound, smell and touch." -excerpt taken from Gloria Naylor's 'The Meanings of a Word'. Words The first sentence of this excerpt can have several interpretations, depending on which synonym of the word 'language'…
Peter thought it was a little offence that African American call each other that when know what the word Nigger meant. At the same time the two guys where in deep conversation they come across Jean and Rick who are a Caucasian upper class couple. Rick is a District Attorney for the county and his wife Jen is an uptight woman that thinks she is better than ever one else. As Jen and Rick walk past Anthony and peter you can see the fear in her face that the two African Americans were going to try to…
«The meaning of the word» Course Project in English Year IV Group 431 Ann Nyagu Research Supervisor: L.P. Gulidova Izmail, 2011 Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………3-4 1. CHAPTER 1. Theoretical part…………………………………………….5 2. The lexical meaning versus notion………………………………………7-11 3. Grammatical meaning…………………….……………………………11-13 .1.3.1. Meaning of singularity…………………………………………………13-14 .1.3.2. Meaning of plurarity………………………………………………………