The word girl is used as identification and description. Gloria Naylor in the essay, “The Meanings of a Word,” showcases the different ways that the word girl can be interpreted. In certain instances, the word girl can alter the entire mood of a situation and I believe that language is more than just words. Depending on race, gender, and age Naylor outlines the word girl can have different meanings in one’s own environment. One word can go from a positive to a negative understanding merely due to how it is spoken and by whom.
My understanding of the word girl can have a negative influence when used to misrepresent a woman. Words often get thrown around that can be harmful to one’s feelings and may even cause a change in friendship, love interest,
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Using a word like girl can be an indirect insult towards a woman. In a professional setting, as a manger, I will not stand for being called a girl. It can make one feel as if the environment they are surrounded by is belittling. In a school setting, among your peers, it may not feel as offensive. With that being said, the environment and people in it can express what a word represents.
Nevertheless, words spoken can be positive or negative depending on how it is received and by whom. I find that it depends on who is speaking and how their demeanor is can simply emphasize a word. Naylor writes, “The noun girl was its closest equivalent to that sense, but only when used in direct address and regardless of the gender doing the addressing.” The understanding of the word girl being misspoken by someone can go from a positive to a negative outcome.
In conclusion, the word girl has several different meanings and how it’s spoken of. No word should be used to downgrade, make someone feel worthless, or feel as if they are not a part of the society. Being left out and being picked upon by simply one’s choice of words can have a negative impact on one’s thoughts and feelings about their self. Gloria Naylor’s writing, “The Meanings of a Word,” wants to be understood as some words are reprehensible in today’s society. Words can distinguish one person from another and the meaning
In the text “The Meaning of a Word” by Gloria Naylor, the author discloses on how her personal experiences altered her life and presented another perspective on how words can have different effects depending on its context or the situation. She emphasizes and outlines how a racial term can adopt a positive connotation by those whom it is being used against. The second text “Being a Chink” is about a woman who _____. The anecdote also provides experiences where the narrator focused on the existence of a racial term that remained effective throughout her childhood. The meaning of the word varies from ____. Naylor’s story shares similarities with “Being a Chink” by Christine Leong in regards to discussing the essence of a racial term. Both individuals demonstrate how racial acts can ________. Yes, racist language can be
In “Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid’s use of repetitive syntax and intense diction help to underscore the harsh confines within which women are expected to exist. The entire essay is told from the point of view of a mother lecturing her daughter about how to be a proper lady. The speaker shifts seamlessly between domestic chores—”This is how you sweep a house”—and larger lessons: “This is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all…” (Kincaid 1). The way in which the speaker bombards the girl overwhelms the reader, too. Every aspect of her life is managed, to the point where all of the lessons she receives throughout her girlhood blur together as one run-on sentence.
In the article, “Little Girls or Little Women: The Disney Princess Affect”, Stephanie Hanes shows the influential impact that young girls, and youth in general, are experiencing in today’s society. This article goes in depth on the issues that impressionable minds experience and how they are reacting as a result. “Depth of gender guidelines” has been introduced to youth all around the world making it apparent that to be a girl, you have to fit the requirements. Is making guidelines of how you should act and look as a gender going too far?
meant many things to many people. Most girls do not attempt to define it anymore.
Have you ever been to a restaurant and heard a waiter call you ‘gal’? No, you have not heard such a thing. So, using the word guy is better than any other word. McKean says that “ The plain truth and knotty problem is that all the other options for addressing a group are worse.” This, as a matter of fact, is true. McKean tells us in her piece of writing that it is a bitter reality that in English there are really fewer ways to address a mixed group of people. If we use the word ‘ladies and gentlemen’ this would sound too much formal and the word ‘folks’ sounds too much old-fashioned. McKean states that “As much as I enjoy Damon Runyon, “Right this way, guys, and dolls,” is not really a practical opinion in places other than self-consciously cute speakeasies.” Therefore, it could be seen that there is no other appropriate word to replace guys. Also, she says that in the English language we use many words with different meanings, she states that “...and it's easy to imagine guy and guys joining the list.” McKean makes us aware of the fact that the word guy is not a word to fight for because
Nilsen began this study of the dictionary not with the intention of prescribing language change but simply to see what the language would reveal about sexism to her. Sexism is not something that existing independently in American English or in the particular dictionary that she happened to read. Rather it exists in people's minds.
The story “Girl” takes the form of a series of lessons; the point of the lessons, according to the mother, is to teach her daughter to behave and act properly. Kincaid’s complicated relationship with her mother comes out in the mother-daughter dynamic in the story. The mother mentions practical and helpful advice that will help her daughter keep a house of her own someday and also how to have a life of her own. It can be argued that in Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” that the mother is loving towards her daughter because the mother is taking time to teaching her daughter how to be a woman, and because she wants to protect her in the future from society’s judgment.
Throughout the story, however, the word girl is constantly used as an insult against her. For example, when a feed salesman comes to the father, the father introduces her as a hired-hand, and the salesman laughs and says, “ ‘Could of fooled me.’ He said ‘I thought it was only a girl.’” The mother also reinforces that she should not be out there when she talks to the father about keeping the girl inside. The narrator sees her mother in a negative light and does not want to become her; she hates housework and describes it as depressing and endless, despite the fact that shortly after she says that the father’s work is “ritualistically important.”
Yet, “Girl” focuses on the ways of life for females in a specific culture (Post-Colonial West Indies/Antigua), rather than the universal. Resulting, in a further push towards the Post-Modern, and simply accepts the unpleasantness of the girl’s reality, the way that it is. “Girl” takes deconstruction to a further level than Modernism, by defamiliarizing what readers expect from a text and creating a new and peculiar hybrid found in Post-Modernism. Initially, it both looks and sounds like an unusual poem (no periods/chaotic pace) that has a fast lyrical feel. Yet, “Girl” can also be read as a short story, perhaps a poem-short story hybrid.
The mother particularly warns her not to become “a kind of woman the baker won’t let near the bread,” because she fears that her daughter will bring her shame by becoming a loose woman. The gender theory helps us to analyze the elements of the story that could be perceived as being feminine and how the characters in the “Girl” support the traditional roles of women. In “Girl,” sexuality has a
Gloria Naylor begins her essay “The Meanings of a Word” with an analysis of words, their meaning, and why the power placed behind a word is more important than the word itself. This entire essay seemed to be about the weight a word can carry, and how no matter the permanent structure of the word itself, the weight can be shifted and transformed into something completely different. Specifically, the essay is about the word nigger, which feels as though it’s italicized constantly as some sort of defense mechanism for the writer. She goes on to describe the first time she heard the word, but by the end of the essay, we understand that this is only the first time that she recognized a hint of the cruel meaning behind it, because it is likely she heard the word many times before. This solidifies the idea that it is not actually the word that contains the power, nor the definition, but the connotation that the word
The distinction between girls and women is not whether they are smart or interesting; it is whether one is a ‘good’ girl or a ‘bad’ girl.
There is a prevailing idea amongst those who oppose the concept of gender-neutral language that you have no right to be protected from being offended. That one cannot enforce guidelines on how others speak, act, or write, because to do so infringes on the concept of ‘free speech’. They argue that to try to enforce genderless language is just another way of coddling an already over-sensitive and naïve generation. Objectively speaking, they have a point. The idea of free speech inherently allows anyone to say whatever they want.
To be feminine means to be passive, nurturing, innocent, graceful, tidy, and restrained. However, failure to conform to these societal expectations is not the fault of the woman herself; rather it is the fault of her mother and an indication that she was not raised properly (in accordance to society that is).
Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” shows in society how a woman should be placed and what it means to be a woman. A women doesn’t question her partner, instead she is subservient to him. A woman’s duties include staying at home taking care of the children and cooking; while the man works and brings home the money. A feministic approach to Kincaid’s “Girl” points to the idea of the stereotypes that women can only be what they do in the home, they should only be pure and virtuous, and their main focus should be satisfying their husband.