The Meanings of a Word

This essay begins with the idea that context is everything: "Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power." As the author goes on to describe an experience she had in the third grade, she addresses an issue that I have heard many my age ask: "Why when they call each other niggers it's okay, but when we do, it's offensive?" She goes on to explain a language tool that I believe many of us use today. It's not so complicated. I could call my best and worst friend an idiot, and it means two entirely different things. I could call the girls in my residence hall idiots for pulling a prank and a group of learning disabled students idiots because they appear to lack the kind of intelligence I have. Again, "it is the consensus that gives them true power." This essay is not a debate about whether the spoken word is better than the written word, but that the written word seems robbed of the context that is understood in the middle of dialogue. This point is confirmed in Naylor's statement: "Whatever we manage to capture in even the most transcendent passages falls far short of the richness of life."