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Perception And Power Through Naming: Characters In Search Of Self In The Fiction Of Toni Morrison, Linda Buck Myers
Perception And Power Through Naming: Characters In Search Of Self In The Fiction Of Toni Morrison, Linda Buck Myers
Explorations in Ethnic Studies
Humpty Dumpty was correct to see the important connection between language and power; and if Lewis Carroll had developed this discussion further, he might have had his characters comment as well on the interrelationship between language and thought, language and culture, and language and social change. While linguists and anthropologists continue the difficult debate about whether language is culture or is merely "related" to culture, and while sociolinguists and psychologists question the effects of language on society and on the psyche, American blacks and women understand all too well that "He is master who can define,"[1] and that the process …
Critique [Of Perception And Power Through Naming: Characters In Search Of Self In The Fiction Of Toni Morrison By Linda Buck Myers], Neil Nakadate
Critique [Of Perception And Power Through Naming: Characters In Search Of Self In The Fiction Of Toni Morrison By Linda Buck Myers], Neil Nakadate
Explorations in Ethnic Studies
In "Stranger in the Village" (1953), James Baldwin asserted that "the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it." In her article on naming in Toni Morrison's novels, Linda Buck Myers asks us to consider Morrison's insights regarding who does the controlling and how. In the end Myers offers us a number of useful and provocative observations regarding language and our uses of it as they inform ethnic experience.
Critique [Of Perception And Power Through Naming: Characters In Search Of Self In The Fiction Of Toni Morrison By Linda Buck Myers], Richard Herrnstadt
Critique [Of Perception And Power Through Naming: Characters In Search Of Self In The Fiction Of Toni Morrison By Linda Buck Myers], Richard Herrnstadt
Explorations in Ethnic Studies
Linda Buck Myers's "Perception and Power Through Naming" is an especially interesting and perceptive analysis of some of the unique ways in which Toni Morrison uses language to develop meaning through characterization; and the article deals with issues that are at the thematic core of Morrison's four published novels. Indeed, the subtitle of the article, "Characters in Search of a Self in the Fiction of Toni Morrison," is perhaps a more accurate description of what the author properly finds to be basic to an understanding of Morrison's fiction. The need for people to achieve self-identity within a societal framework is, …
Critique [Of Perception And Power Through Naming: Characters In Search Of Self In The Fiction Of Toni Morrison By Linda Buck Myers], Marco Portales
Critique [Of Perception And Power Through Naming: Characters In Search Of Self In The Fiction Of Toni Morrison By Linda Buck Myers], Marco Portales
Explorations in Ethnic Studies
There is always something final, of having said much of what appears to need saying, when we deal with opposites, when we discuss anything in terms of antipodes. Linda Buck Myers's article, "Perception and Power through Naming: Characters in Search of a Self in the Fiction of Toni Morrison," gives me this feeling; and, having considered the matter, she has not "said everything,'' but she has pointed the way and perceptively located what should become a main vein in the study of Toni Morrison. Language has always been the very stuff of literature, and Myers is correct in highlighting Morrison's …