Signifying as a Scaffold for Literary Interpretation The Pedagogical Implications of an African American Discourse Genre

Signifying, a traditional form of expression in African American communities, includes "rapping," "sounding," "playing the dozens," "loud talking," and "testifying." According to this report's author, all forms of signifying share common qualities of indirection, understatement, and irony. Can the skills of expression found in signifying lead to an understanding of the books we teach in the classroom? Can the social use of innuendo and figurative language transfer, serving as a framework for the comprehension of literary texts? Using as sample texts Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Lee has tested her hypothesis that "novice African American adolescent readers bring into classrooms a powerful intellectual tool which too often goes unnoticed, devalued, and untapped." Her report, she promises, will give "an example of an instructional approach which speaks to the problems of literacy in African American and, by extension, other ethnically diverse populations, as well as to the problems that plague literature instruction in U.S. schools." This book delivers on that promise.