In “Mom, What Does Nigger Mean?” ", author Gloria Naylor explains throughout her article that reality shapes language and that language can shape reality. Naylor explains this, “the chicken and the egg argument” (Naylor 1) through his experiences with the word nigger. Gloria explains how she starts on one side of reality and shapes her language, then comes to another understanding from the boy in her third grade class. Language can be how words are used, what their meaning is, and the purpose behind this selection of words. Reality is everyday life and experiences. In third grade, Naylor encountered a nigger as being racist when a boy called him "nigger" while he was receiving graded tests. For Gloria, it was anything but a racial reprimand since her grandmother insisted that the family use it in the sense of a communicative word describing a person and that she did not hate the African race. American. She had to ask her mother what the boy had called her that day. She grew up understanding that negro could be a reputation, quantity, gender, outlook or pronunciation, based on the way her close-knit family...