ABSTRACT
We die. That may be the meaning of our lives. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
Toni Morrison, Nobel Acceptance Speech, 1993; in Morrison, 1994
I am a professor of English and creative writing. Most often I teach courses that explore literary texts. Language usage and meaning, particularly as it is connected with issues of race, identity, class, and gender, are central to the ways in which I approach these classes and examine the works of literature. I am interested in the ways that language works to reinforce our sense of personal identity, and this chapter is an attempt to illustrate the pervasive power of language in identity constructions in popular culture and literature. This chapter also examines the ways that artists, particularly Toni Morrison, endeavor to subvert traditional definitions of language in a quest to dismantle the social hierarchies that proliferate as the result of language designations that are static and bound to preconceived, often erroneous, concepts of race, gender, and other social categories.
