See also Chapter 7:

THEMATIC INTERPRETATION

William Deresiewicz, Great Expectations: What Gatsby’s Really Looking For,

CLOSE READING

Emily Dickinson, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

Kanaka Sathasivan, Insanity: Two Women,

PHOTOGRAPHS AS LITERARY TEXTS

Dorothea Lange, Jobless on Edge of Pea Field, Imperial Valley, California,

Walker Evans, Burroughs Family Cabin, Hale County, Alabama,

Gordon Parks, American Gothic,

GENRE MOVES: LITERARY ANALYSIS

Gloria Naylor, From The Meanings of a Word

FORMAL ANALYSIS

Adam Bradley, Rap Poetry 101

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Zadie Smith, Their Eyes Were Watching God: What Does Soulful Mean?

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Joni Mitchell, Woodstock (song lyrics)

Camille Paglia, “Woodstock”

HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

Sara Buttsworth, CinderBella: Twilight, Fairy Tales, and the Twenty-First-Century American Dream

CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Gish Jen, Holden Raises Hell

GENRE MOVES Literary Analysis

GLORIA NAYLOR

From “The Meanings of a Word”

Beyond sexual misconduct and death, everything else was considered harmless for our young ears. And so among the anecdotes of the triumphs and disappointments in the various workings of their lives, the word nigger was used in my presence, but it was set within contexts and inflections that caused it to register in my mind as something else.

In the singular, the word was always applied to a man who had distinguished himself in some situation that brought their approval for his strength, intelligence, or drive:

“Did Johnny really do that?”

“I’m telling you, that nigger pulled in $6,000 of overtime last year. Said he got enough for a down payment on a house.”

When used with a possessive adjective by a woman — “my nigger” — it became a term of endearment for her husband or boy-friend. But it could be more than just a term applied to a man. In their mouths it became the pure essence of manhood — a disembodied force that channeled their past history of struggle and present survival against the odds into a victorious statement of being: “Yeah, that old foreman found out quick enough — you don’t mess with a nigger.”

In the plural, it became a description of some group within the community that had overstepped the bounds of decency as my family defined it. Parents who neglected their children, a drunken couple who fought in public, people who simply refused to look for work, those with excessively dirty mouths or unkempt households were all “trifling niggers.” This particular circle could forgive hard times, unemployment, the occasional bout of depression — they had gone through all of that themselves — but the unforgivable sin was a lack of self-respect.

A woman could never be a “nigger” in the singular, with its connotations of confirming worth. The noun girl was its closest equivalent in that sense, but only when used in direct address and regardless of the gender doing the addressing. Girl was a token of respect for a woman. The one-syllable word was drawn out to sound like three in recognition of the extra ounce of wit, nerve, or daring that the woman had shown in the situation under discussion. “G-i-r-l, stop. You mean you said that to his face?”

But if the word was used in a third-person reference or shortened so that it almost snapped out of the mouth, it always involved some element of communal disapproval. And age became an important factor in these exchanges. It was only between individuals of the same generation, or from any older person to a younger (but never the other way around), that girl would be considered a compliment.

Consider multiple meanings.

Though Gloria Naylor is not specifically analyzing a literary work in her famous essay, she is carefully analyzing language. Importantly, Naylor is considering the multiple meanings that single words can have, depending on how they are spoken, when, and by whom. Naylor examines the ways that the words nigger and girl come to mean different things depending on context. This sort of close attention is necessary to any analysis of language or literature; both readers and writers must be open to the ways that words can mean very different things to different audiences.

In your own literary analysis, or just in the notes you take as you read a work of literature, identify contentious or seemingly powerful words. These might be words that appear frequently — or rarely, but with great effect. Then investigate how these words might mean different things if spoken by different people, if spoken to different people, and if spoken in different times and places. Writers choose their language very deliberately, and deciphering the meaning of that language will help you gain a greater understanding of the work as a whole.

When you begin to organize your analysis, layer your interpretations of these important words within your writing, as Naylor does. That is, offer one reading of the meaning of the word, then offer an alternative reading, and then offer yet another possibility. This technique can be used in any literary or rhetorical analysis essay, either as a brainstorming strategy to uncover deeper questions or as an organizational strategy to bring together a broad analysis. Look for more than one way to interpret any literary or rhetorical text, considering not just what the words mean to you, but what they could mean to a variety of audiences, and what the words might mean if they were phrased just slightly differently. Building this kind of flexibility will allow you to see that, as Naylor suggests elsewhere in her essay, language “achieves its power in the dynamics of a fleeting moment.”