Introduction

The artifact that I am analyzing is The Signifying Monkey and the Language
of Signifyin(g): Rhetorical Difference and the Orders of Meaning, which was
extracted from Part IV of The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader, a collection of
Gates greatest contributions to academic fields where he has provided
insight as a historian, theorist and cultural critic. The artifact originally
appeared as Chapter two of Gates seminal work The Signifying Monkey: A
Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, which was published in 1988,
and provides the framework for his theory.
When Gates wrote this artifact, which was completed in 1983 (or in Gates
words, a Yale late 1970s and early 1980s kind of book) (Rowell 448) but
published in a book format until 1988, this was not the first time the literary
theorist and critic had questioned the validity of some of the theories and
interpretations (or lack thereof) of African-American literature. As a black
intellectual and public figure, he had long been an outspoken critic of the
Eurocentric literary canon. He insisted that black literature must be
evaluated by the aesthetic criteria of its culture of origin, not criteria
imported from Western or European cultural traditions that express a "tone
deafness to the black cultural voice" and result in "intellectual racism"
(Contemporary Black Biography 44)
As a result of the influences of Derridas theory of deconstructionism, while
Gates was a student at Yale, the semiotician Umberto Eco, while he was on
the faculty there along with Gates, coupled with their willingness to apply
their theories of meaning to African-American literature (and the
unwillingness of Gates Yalean, Western-centric colleagues who claimed they
were not equipped to do so), Gates tried to bring them to bear on African
and African American literature. He said that he wanted to prove to the
skepticsthe naysayers[at Yale] that African and African-American cultures
could support the apparatus of literary theory. Its one reason I think that we
need more close reading, more and more detailed explications of AfricanAmerican literature. (Rowell 447-448)
Gates constructs a theory that offers a fresh approach to the interpretation
of race-based literary criticism, one that would resolve the conflict in the
understanding of specific aspects of language and their meaning--or
signification--within the context of race relations in America in the 1980s,
particularly between the Afro or African American vernacular and its white
Western standard SAE structural counterpart.
Gates distinguishes between Signification or Signifyin(g) in the black
vernacular oral tradition and signification and signifying in that of the white.
Using the (g) marker, he claims helps him make a clear distinction between
the two significations with otherwise identical spellings. Gates makes a

further distinction between what he identifies as the two main types of black
literary Signifyin(g). Motivated Signifyin(g) "functions as a metaphor for
formal revision, or intertextuality, within the Afro-American literary tradition."
Authors reuse motifs from previous works but alter them and signify upon
them so as to create their own meanings. Unmotivated Signifyin(g) takes the
form of the repetition and alteration of another text, which encode
admiration and respect and are evidence not the absence of a profound
intention but the absence of a negative critique" (236-237).
In his explication of the origin, nature, and meaning of Signification from
the black and white perspectives, Gates compares and contrasts both literal
and figurative language to reveal his theme, which is African Americans and
whites may assign different connotative and denotative meanings to
Signification. When blacks Signify, the language that they employ is more
often than not used metaphorically and figuratively to deflect meaning, and
this language, when used by whites, is used literally and considered
personally demeaning, sexist, debasing, and derogatory by them. But
because the term is relative culturally, the African American interpretation is
an appropriate rhetorical structure and creative mode of interpretation that
is worthy of inclusion into mainstream literary discourse.
The artifact is important to the theory and practice of rhetoric in many ways.
First, it provided the theoretical and practical context and purpose for Gates
larger work, one that is considered by many prominent literary critics as a
significant move forward in Afro-American literary study, an area of critical
inquiry that had, prior to the publication of his work, provided American
intellectuals with a basis for supplying an informed response to the racial and
cultural imperatives in America prior to the 1960s. Gates draws attention to
the problems inherent in applying theoretical models derived from Eurocentric paradigms (that is, structures of thought) to minority works of
literature while at the same time exploring new interpretive strategies for
understanding the vernacular (common speech) traditions of racial groups
that have been historically marginalized by dominant cultures.
Second, the theoretical approach that Gates used to describe and explain
Signification was useful not only for his purposes, but it was also valuable for
identifying previously neglected literary works and illustrates the ways in
which race, ethnicity, and the imbalance of power inform the works all
writers across the discipline and how literary elements of some of these
works have been formed by the social forces that helped produce them
(Glenn 260-261).
Third, the artifact is one of the most often anthologized portions of Gates
larger work and examines the carefully structured system of rhetoric in
African-American letters at multiple levels of abstraction, rather than as just
a simple indigenous black hermenutical principle meaningful only unto itself.

In The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g), Gates presents a

formidable challenge to the Western notion of the meaning of signifying
precisely because of the relationship of identity that obtains between the two
apparently equivalent terms. Black people vacated this signifier, then
incrediblysubstituted as its content a signified that stands for the system of
rhetorical strategies peculiar to their own vernacular tradition. That is, a
system of wordplay and formal performance (rhetoric) becomes the goal or
result of signification, rather than a system of delivering meaning
(semantics).
Gates theory has not been without its critics, many of whom were members
of the African American literary community (Smith 102-106). When the
artifact was first published, it was scrutinized to the point of being more
talked about than read, more excoriated than understood. The main criticism
against has been that Gates's focus is exclusively Afrocentric, and therefore
is not objective. Gates himself admits, It is difficult to arrive at a consensus
of definitions of signifyin(g) (273).
Thesis: In The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g): Rhetorical
Difference and the Orders of Meaning, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. shows that
traditional Afro-American figures of Signification are appropriates modes of
interpretation for rhetoric.
Review of Theory
Dramatism and Literary Theory. In this rhetorical analysis, I apply the
agent-purpose ratio of Burkes interpretive system of dramatismthe
pentad--to Gates construction of his theory of Signification to demonstrate
that his theory holds up to the scrutiny of his critics, that it supports his
intellectual, theoretical, and cultural imperatives, and has basis and is valid. I
chose dramatism as my method of analysis because of the complex nature of
the artifact I am examining, replete with the multiplicity of terministic
screens involved and levels of theoretical abstraction required for its
thorough analysis.
Burke developed dramatism theory as a meta-method for analyzing
language and thought as modes of action rather than as means of conveying
information. Blakesley identifies three reasons why the dramatistic method is
such a powerful analytical tool in general. First, drama implicates unlimited
range of human activities, and the methods used to analyze these sets of
activities are applicable by virtually anyone. Second, drama has recognizable
genres. Burke believes that humans use language in patterned discourses,
and texts move us with recurring patterns underlying those texts. Third,
drama attracts, by its nature, audiences, which means rhetoric plays a
crucial role when humans deal with experiences. Thus, language strategies
are central to Burke's dramatistic approach (8-11).

Burke intended the pentad to be a form of rhetorical analysis, a strategic

method readers can use to identify the rhetorical nature of any text, or
statements that or represent human motivation. As he states in A Grammar
of Motives, simple statements about why people do things, even what they
did, are thus potential material for rhetorical and dramatistic analysis Burke
(xv). Burk himself used the pentad on many kinds of discourse, especially
poetry and philosophy. Burke also used the pentad to open a text to
multiple perspectives. Moreover, the pentad is a useful method of generating
ideas, and it is Burkes point that any well-rounded account of human
action must include some reference to all of the elements of the pentad.
Because The Signifyin(g) Monkey is a dramatic narrative based on a theory
about race and has a primal poetic base, because key features of the
artifact, including its base, are predictable and recursive, because it is
complex in terms of the homophonic nature of the signifyin(g)/signifying
structures and their antonymic functions, because of the difficulties involved
in reconciling the multifarious terministic screens associated with these
terms, and because The Signifying Monkey text tends to privilege agent and
purpose as the ultimate grounds of motivation and of corresponding
resistance to the contributions made by African American-centric literary
theorists, a rhetorical analysis using the agent-purpose ratio seems to be the
appropriate method for conducting this investigation. Thus, Gates depiction
of the hextad would be
Intellectual Racism
Act = Euro centric literary critics reject the rhetorical value of Signifyin(g) in
the black vernacular
Scene = A racially conservative literary discourse community in a post CivilRights-era America
Agent = Euro-centric literary critics
Agency = A diverse community of Euro-centric literary theorists whose
conceptions of signifying and meaning are deeply entrenched in their
philosophies and supported by them
Purpose = Insensitivity to and rejection of the literary contributions made by
literary theorists from racial groups that have been historically marginalized
by dominant cultures
Attitude = Denial, skepticism, indifference
In Gates case, the explanation of motive centers on the agent and purpose,
with the agency being the factor that enables Euro-centric literary critics to
carry out their actions. Thus, in his artifact, his primary audience was a

diverse community of Euro-centric literary theorists whose conceptions of

Signifyin(g) and meaning were deeply entrenched into their philosophies and
supported by them, and his challenge was to develop a strategy to effect an
agency that had the resources to either enable or prevent Signifyin(g) in the
black vernacular from being recognized for its rhetorical value by the inner
sanctum of the of the literary community.
Because of his training as a literary theorist and rhetorician, Gates
understood that the process of persuading a Western audience of literary
critics with theory-specific terministic screens (reader-response-, feminist
gender-, race-, class-, text-, context-, and psychoanalytic-based) to accept
his theory that black Signifyin(g) was the all-encompassing trope of all
tropes would be a complex one, to be sure, one that would involve
reshaping the interpretation or essence of signifying or meaning itself. And
because he is African American and personally identified with and practiced
Signifying, because of his expertise in African American literary criticism and
the reality that members of the wider (white) literary community had been
ignoring, rejecting, and refusing to recognize the functional value of
Signifyin(g) structures embedded in the African American literary genre,
Gates knew that he would need to make his appeal to several discourse
communities, including, African American, in hopes of getting them to
identity with the African American concept of Signifyin(g). He believed that
by reshaping their terministic screens of Signification, African American
literature could be read productively through the lenses of them all.
Gates Appeals to Seven Literary Communities
As an experienced rhetorician, and because this artifact was vital to the
success of his book, Gates knew that he needed to provide a powerful
introduction to this chapter of the book, one that would arouse his readers
interest and establish his pathos. He was also aware of the prevailing
intellectual and cultural assumptions at the time related to feminism, gender
and sexuality (which first became salient in the 1960s and 1970s), such as
patriarchy, and indeed, about who were the culprits, the owners, the main
agents of Signifyin(g). Because many of the terms used by Signifiers were
perceived to be sexist and biased against women, many people had
assumed that Signifyin(g) was performed exclusively by black males. In order
to quickly dispel this myth, he opens with an appropriate quotation speaking
indirectly but persuasively through respected author and expert Signifier H.
Rap Brown hopefullyshocking themin order to get their attention:
Some of the best dozens players were girls . . . before you can signify
you got to be able to rap . . . Signifying allowed you a choiceyou
could either make a cat feel good or bad. If you had just destroyed
someone or if they were down already, signifying could help them over.
Signifying was also a way of expressing your own feelings . . .

Signifying at its best can be heard when the brothers [as well as the
sisters] are exchanging tales. (234)
And he follows up with a quotation by highly-respected writer/author
Langston Hughes that shows the irony in Signifyin(g):
And they asked me right at Christmas
If my blackness, would it rub off?
I said, ask your Mama. (234)
And again the metaphorical nature of Signifyin(g)
The Monkey tales generally have been recorded from male poets, in
predominantly male settings such as barrooms, pool halls, and street
corners. Accordingly, given their nature as rituals of insult and naming,
recorded versions have a phallocentric bias . . . Whereas only a
relatively small number of people are accomplished narrators of
Signifying Monkey tales, a remarkably large number of Afro-Americans
are familiar with, and practice, modes of Sigfnifyin(g), defined in this
instance as the rubric for various sorts of playful language games,
some aimed at reconstituting the subject while others are aimed at
demystifying a subject. (243)
Brown insists, as does Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, that both men and women
can play the dozens and Signify . . . Signifyin(g) was more humane . . .
(264)
Gates was also aware that members of several of the literary communities
(e.g., text- and race-based) had assumed that black coinage of the term
Signification (or the nature of it) was done out of ignorance and navet,
that it was a bastardized form of its English homonymic cousin and only
amounted to a low-order hermeuntic form. Gates reminds them that it is
anything but that. Instead, the opposite is true--It was done purposefully. As
he states,
The difficulty that we experience when thinking about the
[complex] nature of the visual (re)doubling at work in a hall of
mirrors is analogous to the difficulty we shall encounter in
relating the black linguistic sign, Signification, to the standard
English sign, signification. This level of conceptual difficulty
stems fromindeed, seems to have been intentionally inscribed
withinthe selection of the signifier Signification to represent a
concept remarkably distinct from that concept represented by
the standard English signifier, signification. For the standard
English word is a homonym of the Afro-American vernacular
word. (235)

Again,
Let me attempt to account for the complexities of this (re)naming ritual
. . . Some black genius or a community of witty and sensitive speakers
emptied the signifier signification of its received [negative] concepts
and filled this empty signifier with their own concepts. By doing so, by
supplanting the received, standard English concept associated by
(white) convention with the particular signifier, they [wittingly]
disrupted the nature of the sign . . . . (236-237)
And again,
This political offensive could have been mounted against all sorts of
standard English terms . . . such as down, nigger, baby, and cool . . .
But to revise the term signification is to select a term that represents
the nature of the process of meaning-creation [itself] and its
representation. Few other selections could have been so dramatic, or
so meaningful. (237)
And finally, to the literary community in general,
The literature or tales of the Signifying Monkey and his peculiar
language, Signifyin(g), is both extensive and polemical, involving as it
does assertions and counterassertions about the relationship that
Signifyin(g) bears to several other black tropes. I am not interested in
either recapitulating or contribuiting to this highly specialized debate
over whether or not [a] speech act is an example of tis black trope or
that. . . I wish to argue that Signifyin(g) is the black trope of tropes.
(239-240)
He makes an appeal to members of both the race- and reader-response
based literary communities understanding that reader-response theorists
construct meaning as they read and interact with the elements within a text,
with each reader bring something different (intellectual values and life
experiences) to the text on every reading. In this passage, he provides
general information about meaning whose interpretation of meaning is left to
the eye of the beholder, both race-based and reader response.
In the extraordinary complex relationship between the two homonyms,
we both enact and recapitulate the received classic confrontation
between Afro-American culture and American culture. This
confrontation is both political and metaphysical. We might profit
somewhat by thinking of the curiously ironic relationship between
these signifiers as a confrontation defined by the politics of semantics.
(235-236)

And further, We bear witness here to a protracted argument over the nature
of the sign itself, with the black vernacular discourse proffering its critique of
the sign as the difference that blackness makes within the larger political
culture and its historical connections. (236)
Yet again,
To read the Monkey tales as a simple allegory of the blacks political
oppression is to ignore the hulking presence of [other more important
factors]. To note this is not to argue that the tales are not allegorical or
that their import is not political. Rather, this is to note that to reduce
such complex structures of meaning to a simple two-term opposition
(white versus black) is to fail to account for the strength of [contingent
factors]. (243-244)
And finally,
Signifyin(g) as a rhetorical strategy emanates directly from the
Signifyin(g) Monkey tales. The relationship between these poems and
the related, but independent, mode of formal language use must be
made clear. The action represented in Monkey tales turns upon the
action of three stock characters. (244)
He makes an appeal to the literary community in general and to race-based
theorists in particular, using a Derrida neologistic parallel referencing
Saussure to both back and qualify his usage of Signifyin(g).
Signification and signification create a noisy disturbance in silence,
at the level of the signifier. Derridas neologism, difference, in its
relation to difference, is a marvelous example of agnominato, or
repetition of a word with an alteration of both one letter and a sound.
In this clever manner, Derridas term resists reduction to self-identical
meaning. The curiously suspended relationship between the French
verbs to differ and to defer both defines Derridas revision of
Saussures notion of language as a relation of differences and
embodies his revision which in its own unstable meaning [is] a graphic
example of the process at work. (236)
I have encountered great difficulty in arriving at a suitable similar
gesture. I have decided to signify the difference between these two
signifiers by writing the black signifier in upper case (Signification)
and the white signifier in lower case (signification). Similarly, I have
selected to write the black term with a bracketed final g (Signifyin(g)
and the white term as signifying. (236)

During the period in which this artifact was written, capitalization had strong
racial implications and inuendos. It was a time when many blacks had begun
to finally exhale believing that at long last, the political, economic,
psychological, and emotional shackles affixed to them during slavery had
been broken. Prior to this time period, and in fact historically, the norm or
convention for notating anything related to African Americans, especially
their race, was made using the lower (or inferior) case (rather than the upper
or superior case) at the beginning of the word. The move that Gates makes
here is audacious, and undoubtedly a rhetorical and race based strategy the
purpose of which was to appeal to the terministic screens of similarly
situated theorists.
According to Gates, few scholars have recognized this level of complexity in
Signifyin(g), which Brown argues implicitly to be the rhetorical structures at
work in the discourse, rather than a specific content uttered (265). In Talking
Black, published in 1976, Roger Abraham, a well-known and highly regarded
literary critic, linguist, and anthropologist, did a seminal study of Signifyin(g).
He states that Signifyin(g) can be used in recurrent black-white encounters
as masking behavior (269). Abrahams most important contribution to the
literature on Signifyin(g) is his discovery that Signifyin(g) is primarily a term
for rhetorical strategies, which often is called by other names depending on
which of its several forms it takes (270).
He expands Blooms taxonomy of Signification to illustrate the functional
equivalents of Signification between standard American English rhetorical
tropes, Blooms Revisionary Ratio, African American Signifyin(g) Tropes,
Classical Yoruba, and Lexically Borrowed Yoruba tropes (279-282).
Gates makes an appeal to context- and class-based theorists whose
terministic screens focus on how a literary work interacts with economic
conditions, socio-economic classes, and other cultural artifacts such as songs
or fashion from the period in which it was written. Class-based theorists, in
particular, argue that differences in socioeconomic classin the material
conditions of daily lifedivide people in profoundly significant ways, more so
than differences in race, ethnicity, culture, and gender. And so, supplies
these theorists with information about the relationship between poetry,
music, and Signifyin(g) in an effort to get them to identify with his theory.
The [stanzaic form] of Signifyin(g) Monkey poems, like the ese of the
Yoruba Odu . . . can vary a great deal. The most common structure is
the rhyming couplet in a-a-b-b pattern. Even within the same poem,
however, this pattern can be modified . . . Rhyming is extraordinarily
important in the production of the humorous effect that these poems
have and has become the signal indication of expertise among the

10

street poets who narrate them. The rhythym of the poems is also
crucial to the desired effect, an effect in part reinforced by their quasimusical nature of delivery. (243)
Gates points out that Mel Mezzrow, the well-known jazz musician, defines
Signif(y) in the glossary of his autobiography, Really the Blues, as hint, to
put on an act, boast, make a gesture. In the body of his text, however,
Mezzrow implicitly defines signifying as the homonymic pun. In an episode in
which some black people in a bar let some white gangsters know that their
identity as murderers is common knowledge, the blacks, apparently
describing musical performance, use homonyms such as killer and
murder to signify upon the criminals . . . Signify here connotes the play of
languageboth spoken and body languagedrawn upon to name something
figuratively. (260)
In his efforts to redirect the terministic screens of psychoalanlytic literary
theorists he approached this from a Freudian/Lacanian/Saussurean
perspective, one which focuses readers attention on the motivations of
characters, helps them to envision the psychological state of the author as
implied by the text, and helps them evaluate the psychological reasons for
their own interpretations. Readers may apply the psychological approach to
explain why Signifyers use indirect modes of rhetoric. As he states,
Signifyin(g) constitutes all of the language games, the figurative
substitutions, the free associations held in abeyance by Lacans or
Saussures paradigmatic axis, which disturb the seemingly coherent
linearity of the syntagmatic chain of signifiers, in a way analogous to to
Freuds notion of how the unconscious relates to the conscious. The
black vernacular trope of Signifyin(g) exists on this vertical axis,
wherein the materiality of the signifier (the use of words as things, in
Freuds terms of the discourse of the unconscious) not only ceases to
be disguised but comes to bear prominently as the dominant mode of
discourse. . . I do not cite Freud idly here. Directing, or redirecting,
attention from the semantic to the rhetorical level defines the
relationship . . . between signification and Signification. (247-248)
As regards the issue over defining Signify, Gates cites the works of Haskins
and Hughes to demonstrate the many uses of the word.
We can see the extremes of dictionary and glossary definitions of
Signify in . . . The Psychology of Black Language, by Jim Haskins and
Hugh F. Butts . . .Haskins and Butts, in a glossary appended to their
text, define to signify as To berate, degrade. In their text, however,
they define signifying as a more humane form of verbal bantering
than the dozens, admitting, however, that Signifyin(g) has many

11

meanings, including meanings that contradict their own glossary

listing: It is, again the clever and humorous use of words, but it can be
used for many purposesputting down another person, making
another person feel better, or simply expressing ones feelings. (262)
Gates makes an appeal to race-and feminist gender-based where he sees a
mutuality in their terminal screens.
Signifyin(g) is so fundamentally black, that is, it is such a familiar
rhetorical practice, that one encounters the great resistance of inertia
when writing about it. By inertia I am thinking here of the difficulty of
rendering the implications of a concept that is so shared in ones
culture as to have long become second nature to its users. (254)
He reminds them that the [race and feminist gender-based critic is bound to
encounter Ralph Ellisons Little Man at Chehaw Station. While a student at
Tuskegee [University] . . . [h]aving failed at an attempt to compensate for a
lack of practice with a virtuoso style of performance, Ellison had sought some
solace from the brilliant Hazel Harrison, one of his professors. . . Instead of
solace, however, his friend and mentor greeted his solicitation with a riddle
that suggests a relationship between Esu, an African literary figure also
referred to as the little man or woman who surfaces when one least
expects them to and the literary critic who begins to translate a signal
concept from the black vernacular milieu into the discourse of critical theory.
While critics write for writers and other critics, they also writein the
instancefor little men and women who dwell at the crossroads (255)
He suggests that the critic of comparative black literature also dwells at a
sort of crossroads, a discursive crossroads at which two languages meet, be
these languages Yoruba and English, or Spanish and French, or even
(perhaps especially) the black vernacular and standard English. This sort of
critic would seem, like Esu, to live at the intersection of these crossroads.
When writing a book that lifts one concept from two discrete discursive
realms, only to compare them, the role of the critic as the trickster of
discourse seems obvious. The concept of Signification is such an instance
(255)
Finally, Gates, citing Brown, says Brown earned his byname because he was
a master of black vernacular rhetorical games and their attendant welldefined rhetorical strategies. Gates says Browns understanding of
Signifyin(g) is unsurpassed by that of any scholar. Brown represents the
scenes of instruction by which he received his byname.
I learned to talk in the street, he writes, not from reading about Dick
and Jane going to the zoo and all that simple shit. Rather, Brown

12

continues, we exercised our minds, not by studying arithmetic but

by playing the Dozens. (263)
And so for Brown, Signifyin(g) was an especially expressive mode of
discourse that turns upon forms of figuration rather than intent or content.
Signifyin(g), to cite Brown, is what the white folks call verbal skills. We
learn how to throw them words together. Signifyin(g), at its best,: Brown
concludes, can be heard when brothers are exchanging tales. It is this
sense of storytelling, repeated and often shared (almost communal canonical
stories, or on the spot recounting of current events) in which Signifyin(g) as a
rhetorical strategy can most clearly be seen. 266)

Also, (258)
The great mistake of interpretation occurred because the blacks were
using antiphonal structures to reverse their apparent meaning as a mode of
encoding for self-preservation . . . I [say this] only to emphasize that black
people have been Signifyin(g), without explicitly calling it that since slavery.
Conclusion
Gates made an appeal to the broadest audience of literary theorists available
to him during the time period in which The Signifying Monkey artifact was
written. And in so doing, he refuted the claim by his critics that Signifyin(g)
was Afrocentric and atheoretical, and he showed that traditional AfroAmerican figures of Signification are appropriates modes of interpretation for
rhetoric.
In 1989, one year after the book was published, The Signifying Monkey won
an American Book Award, a literary award that annually recognizes a set of
books and people for outstanding literary achievement. The American Book
Award is a writers award given by other writers. There are no categories, no
nominees, and therefore no losers.
As stated in the Introduction, this analysis was important for a number of
reasons. It provided me with a carefully structured system for analyzing an
artifact that proved to be the theoretical and practical context and purpose
for Gates larger seminal work. And for that I am truly grateful. It allowed me
to apply a powerful analytical method--dramatism and the pentad/hextad--to
an extraordinarily complex set of theoretical problems in hopes of resolving
them for Gates and for others. And I hope that I was successful. And, as a
result of undergoing the process of this analysis, it gave me a new
perspective on the potential for black vernacular.

13

As an African American signifier myself, I connect to Signifyin(g) on a daily

basis, both at the theoretical and practical levels. Either I am consciously or
unconsciously Signifyin(g) on others or else someone is Signifyin(g) on me,
this includes my mother who is 90 years old. Our Signifyin(g) amounts to
nothing more than a few puns here and there. For example, I might (lovingly
but persuasively) call her an an ancient old person and she might call me a
bookworm with no common sense. But these are just metaphors and we
both know this. The truth of the matter is, although my mother is as old as
she is, one would never know it judging by her mobility, her good looks, how
fast she drives her car, and especially her wit. If she were graded by these
qualities, shed be a 5.0 student.
As for me, I dont consider myself a bookwormwhatever that means (and I
dont really believe she actually sees me that way either). I consider myself a
generalist, a jack of all trades, no less, who hasnt until just recent, enjoyed
reading books. And so I havent been at it long enough to have become a
worm. I havent quite wormed my way through a book yetwell, maybe
just one. But if I were graded on that one, Id probably be given less than a
5.0.
Now, whos really the smart one, me or mom?
Works Cited
Blakesley, Dennis. Dramatism and Rhetoric. The Elements of Dramatism.
New York: Longman, 2002. 1-47. Print.
Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. California ed. Berkeley: U of
California P. 1969. Print.
_____, K. Permanence and Change. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. (1965). Print.
Contemporary Black Biography. Vol 67. Gale, Reproduced in Biography
Resource Center,
Farmington Hills, MI.: Gale, 2009. Print.
Delbanco, Andrew. "Talking Texts." Black Literature Criticism Supplement.
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