The meaning of words

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I liked that Professor Peck focused on the different ways of saying "no", and it made me think about how we read texts, whether literary or informational, from other countries. How often do we misread certain things when we take them as literal rather than as a suggestion of something else? How often do we as teachers therefore reinforce incorrect readings of texts to our students based on our own cultural assumptions and understandings of what certain words mean and our own understanding of what authors are trying to say with their words. Literary analysis is already so difficult, and thinking about this added layer made me both really excited to learn more, and also made me really stressed thinking about all the different obstacles that ltierature teachers have to navigate when tackling certain texts