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Dialogues@RU is published
annually by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey

Volume Two
Spring 2003

Every day and every second we are engaged, both voluntarily and involuntarily, in the process of conveying a sense of our "self." This expression can be through the clothes we wear, our facial expressions, or our actions. Even though this comes as no surprise, the most common source we employ to convey a sense of self to others and even to ourselves is through everyday discourse. We are constantly engaged in the construction of our identity through the employment of words, written or spoken, that we use to express ourselves. This ability to use words to express ourselves is often seen as a great freedom. However, what many people do not realize is that language can also be a source of imprisonment, especially when we use language to create our identity. By illustrating how language has led her to take both an active and passive role in discovering a sense of self, Rebecca Walker's autobiography, Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self , reflects on how language can be both paradoxically conducive and restrictive in our attempts to construct our identities and to express ourselves effectively.

Black, White, and Jewish is a firsthand account of one woman's experience growing up as a "movement child." This term was first coined in the 1960s to refer to the offspring of interracial couples, which at that time were a rarity. Rebecca Walker is the daughter of a white Jewish civil rights lawyer, Mel Leventhal, and famed African-American activist and author, Alice Walker. Throughout her upbringing, she is constantly living in two worlds: the white, Jewish, conservative world of her father, and the emerging hip, liberal, black world of her mother. She finds herself bombarded by feelings of belonging to both worlds and simultaneously feeling like she belongs to neither. Her book describes her constant efforts to define herself in one of the worlds. Her autobiography becomes her struggle to challenge people to see past labels of both assumed and often times imposed identity, so that they may discover the essence of who she is, which is not something that can be captured solely in the words "black," "white," or "Jewish."

Before exploring how language influences the creation of our identity, one needs to comprehend why language is such a commonly used tool in creating our identity. In the beginning of her book, Walker writes: "Freedom can feel overwhelming. I would not trade it, but sometimes I want to be told what to do . . . . Let me master myself within articulated limitations. Without these, I feel vast, out of control. Like I can too easily slip outside of my own life and into someone else's" (4). This quote captures one of the fundamental reasons why we use language to construct our identity. There tends to be a universal human need to make everything tangible and defined. Without limitations and boundaries, as Walker expresses, we feel lost or out of control. The goal of language is to make sense out of things by defining them within articulated boundaries. Thus, in a similar fashion, we use language to transform our "self," an inherently complex entity, into something tangible and definable. Language allows us to think that we are creatures with lucid identities. While language is prefabricated and is meant to give things boundaries, it does not completely take away our freedom. American linguist Noam Chomsky states in his lecture on "Language and Freedom" that "language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation" (402). In other words, even though language, in its nature of always defining, is fixed, the words we use to define are not fixed units. The "principles of generation" that Chomsky refers to allude to the idea that words are dependent variables whose meanings and uses change from generation to generation and within the different contexts in which the words are used. The best modern-day example of this notion would be the growing popular usage of the term "nigger" by the black population in America. The term has traditionally been used solely as a derogatory slur by white people to debase African-Americans. However, in the current generation heavily influenced by the hip-hop/rap industry, "nigger" has gathered several meanings depending on the person using it and the context in which it is used. In some cases, when the term nigger is used by a black person towards another black person, it is almost synonymous with the casual word "brother". This meaning strongly contradicts the meaning the word was originally meant to convey. One can see this reinterpretation of the word by blacks of this generation as a subconscious attempt to own a word that originally was used by white people to illustrate their perceived superiority. Possessing this power to redefine, blacks illustrate how people can take an active role in reshaping the boundaries of a word's meaning. This example reiterates the point of how language, paradoxically, allows the writer to take an active role in giving meaning to the word through reinterpretation.

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