- TheĀ speakerĀ is an African-American man named Ta-Nehisi Coates who is the writer of the article “In Defense of a Loaded Word”. He believes that everyone should be able to refer to each other with any name as long as it is used within the appropriate relationship.
- TheĀ occasionĀ is whenever Coates sees people trying to ban the use of the n-word, even when casually used by African-American people, while everyone else gets to use whatever words they want. One instance is in 2007 when the N.A.A.C.P. organized a funeral in Detroit for the n-word.
- TheĀ audienceĀ are the people who are trying to take the word away from African-Americans like it’s just as bad as if another race says it. “To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good” (3). The “we” in the quote is the audience.
- TheĀ purposeĀ of this piece is to promote people’s freedom of speech by allowing everyone to use whatever words they please as long as it is relationship appropriate and isn’t used violently.
- TheĀ toneĀ of this piece is serious because the writer has witnessed events of verbal inequality and goes against those that want to take away the word that African-Americans use in a nonviolent manner.
- I agree that we shouldn’t be able to censor words, but rather the intentions of the words as long as it is in a appropriate environment.
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Language and Identity
