Language in Hurston

Let's look at some of those mysterious phrases in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

A. Look up the terms "signifying" and "playing the dozens."Define these terms on a sheet of paper and give me an example of both from Their Eyes. What folk or cultural groups share these phenomena? What anthropological term describes these forms of speech?

B. For each phrase below, copy the phrase onto a sheet of paper and find it in the text. Using context clues, write what the phrase means. If you recognize a specific literary technique (simile, metaphor, allusion, etc.), be sure to mention that. We'll take a look at these today and tomorrow in class.

01. "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board" (1).
02. "These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day" (1).
03. "...the way Joe spoke out...took the bloom off of things" (43).
04. "...he's de wind and we'se de grass" (49).
05. "The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in" (71).
06. "She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her" (72).
07. "The years took all the fight out of Janie's face" (76).
08. "She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boilded down to a drop" (76).
09. "For the first tiem she could see a man's head naked of its skull" (77).
10. "Well, if she must eat out of a long-handled spoon, she must" (81).
11. "...that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the West" (84).
12. "It was like beating a bass drum in a hen-house" (86).
13. "Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil" (88).
14. "Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead" (106).
15. "Look lak we done run our conversation from grass roots tuh pine trees" (106).