Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents an excerpt of a 2008 university thesis by Jennifer Sommer entitled "Writing in Dialect in Fiction: A History and Study".
The content of this post is presented for historical, linguistic, and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Jennifer Sommer for her research and writing, Thanks to all others who are quoted in this thesis.
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As is the case with other university thesis or book excerpts that I've showcased on this blog, I strongly encourage pancocojams visitors to read this entire written work and the comments that are also published at that same link.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2022/10/kinky-used-to-describe-black-womans.html for a related pancocojams post entitled " "Kinky" Used To Describe A Black Woman's Hair In The First Known Publication Of The Song "Cotton Eyed Joe" (1882)"
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EXCERPT ABOUT WRITING IN FICTION
From https://jennifersommer.weebly.com/jenreflecting/writing-in-dialect-in-fiction-a-history-and-study
Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children &
Young Adults
Hamline University
Saint Paul, Minnesota
May, 2008
Faculty Advisor:
Marsha Qualey, Assistant Professor
"Language is the culture – if you lose your language you’ve lost your culture, so if you’ve lost the way your family talk, the way your friends talk, then you’ve lost your culture.” –James Kelman
When developing a special character, the author likes to give him or her as much authenticity as possible by indicating where he is from and how he speaks. But giving characters the proper dialect can be a challenge. The use of dialect in writing has changed over the years as writers responded to criticism and acceptance of its use in literature. The negative response has increased over the years to the point that now little American literature is written using the technique, with the exception of children’s literature, where in some degree dialect is still used in recent and current novels and picture books.
[...]
What is Dialect?
To begin, we need to know what is meant by writing in dialect. Dialect may be defined as placing transliterate sounds onto paper to intentionally create an identity for a character or to situate the character with respect to geographic origin, social class, ethnicity, and gender. But there are degrees as to how this may be accomplished. In the order of the most extreme case to the least:
1. The most extreme case is to use misspelled words to replicate what is being said. In this case, the words are written exactly as they sound. It reads like a transcript of what is being said and is the most difficult to read, as in “en he sorter let Brer Rabbit ‘lone”, from Uncle Remus (p.776).
2. A bit easier to read is the use of what is known as “eye-dialect”. The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture calls words like fur (for), tu (to), frum (from), deth (death), wuz (was), uv (of), and sez (says), “eye dialect” – nonstandard spellings that represent perfectly standard pronunciations. They are pronounced phonetically the same as their counterparts.
3. Depicting dialogue may have little to do with verbatim phonetic transcriptions as much as the features that the author chooses to include or exclude from the dialect. For example, dropping the “g” from endings of words while spelling all the other words correctly may be all that is necessary to depict the appropriate dialect. This, by the way, is the most stereotyped phonological feature of nonstandard speech in the American language (Balhorn, 55). Twain used it in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to differentiate between Jim’s speech and Huck’s speech. Twain probably used it to show a greater difference between their accents since both would likely have dropped their “g”s at the end of words. But Twain needed more of a differentiation between the characters and it’s a simple way to put social distance between the two.
“What’s the matter with you, Jim? You been a-drinking?”
“Drinkin’? Has I ben a-drinkin’? Has I had a chance to be a-drinkin’?” (116).
4. The next level uses local phrases or colloquialisms and only occasional misspellings. It also relies on a combination of word cadence, selected contractions and a sprinkling of slang to set the location and time period. Many regions have phrases unique to them, like “ey?” used in Canada and northern regions and “y’all” in the south. Cameron Michaels gives a great example in her article “Writing Dialect: It’s in the Rhythm”: “A seventeenth century English gentleman’s dialogue whilst appeareth quite different than that of my friend Bubba’s, who’s fixin’ to get him a Moon Pie” (3).
5. Dialect at the next level focuses on the rhythm and word usage while spelling all words correctly. Michaels states that “most dialects are ‘heard’ through the proper cadence, or rhythm inherent within perfectly pronounced words,” and that “it has more to do with timing and word placement than actual pronunciation” (2).
6. The method easiest to read simply mentions in the text that a character is from a certain place or has the accent of a certain place, and in this way allude to the dialect being spoken.
Early Use
To understand the current trends in and use of dialect by authors today, it is necessary to look at its history. The acceptance of writing in dialect has gone through many stages. Literary representations of black dialects were being used as early as the 1770s, as in John Leacock’s Fall of British Tyranny: “Well, my brave blacks, are you come to list?” “Eas, massa Lord, you preazee.” “How many are there of you?” “Twenty-two, massa” (Krapp, 255). Northern dialects appeared in American writing by the early nineteenth century, as in A. B. Lindsley’s Love and Friendship: “darn my skin ‘f you wouldn’t dewe it, clear as mud” (Krapp, 125). Southern vernacular was used beginning around 1830, as in Robert Montgomery Bird’s Nick of the Woods: “I never seed the critter before, but I reckon it war he, for thar’s nothing like him in natur’” (Krapp, 109). The use of dialect continued to increase through the Civil War (Ellis, 129-130). It hit the height of its popularity around 1885 when Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “demonstrated that the vernacular was adequate to meet any demand a serious writer might make on it” (Kersten, 93). Twain was the first major writer to have any success tackling the colorful language while still preserving some measure of readability.
Reasons for dialect’s early popularity are many. Part of the literary realism movement that began around the time of the Civil War, writing in dialect was a response to the writing style of the eighteenth century in which the wealthy often were the focus of stories. American writers in the later 1800’s were not as interested in writing about society as the British were (Kaplan, 2). Realism was an attempt to give voice to the less wealthy. There was a desire to hear the voice of the regular people and realism was valued for its plain-speaking vernacular. Dialect was used as part of the commitment to writing realistically.
The years between 1880 and 1914 were the time of mass immigration to America. There was greater mobility and communication due to technological advancements such as the transcontinental railroad and the telephone. There was post-Civil War migration, the Gold Rush, and the westward expansion that occurred in response to it (Strand, 117). Among the many American writers there was a desire to demonstrate in writing who was speaking, and one way to show that was by imitating speech as closely as possible. By 1894, dialect was believed to give writing “local color.” Local color celebrated the experiences of all the people with their varying accents. The writing attempted to be authentic and differentiate the regional differences as there was a new awareness of these differences. Diversity became an American trait to celebrate. Local color was one way to join all the different accents, and writers felt that distinctions needed to be made. More and more, dialect was singled out as the central feature of realism and what made American writing democratic. Realism lasted from about the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I.
Also, in the late 1880’s, research began on what is known as “visible speech,” and groups such as the American Dialect Society (ADS) were formed that collected words and expressions from around the country for dictionaries such as James A. Harrison’s “Negro English” published in 1884 (Strand, 118). Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings was one of the books used in these studies that showed how dialect in spoken language intersected with written language (Strand, 123).
According to Berthoff (Wirth-Nesher, 44), the most important feature of American realism is the use of “plain speaking and the free use of common idiom.” He said that the true spellings of words did not indicate how spoken words really sounded, so writers attempted to achieve an “artistic consistency” (Wirth-Nesher, 44).
Henry James in 1898 commented that there was nothing more striking in American fiction then dialect (Wirth-Nesher, 49). Although James did not use it in his fiction, Mark Twain did. He used it in order to make his stories as realistic as possible. He also loved to use dialect for its comic and satirical effects, most notably in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But this use of dialect – to portray a character in a negative way – shows that “the rage for dialect writing after the war had complex and contradictory motives” (Werth-Nesher, 43).
Reaction Sets In
Some argued that in the attempt to capture realism and the natural characteristics of a region, writers had gone too far (Preston, 329). In many cases, dialect writing was used to show the speech as racial and ethnic, and class differences were accentuated in an attempt and commitment to show realism. Birnbaum argues in her article “Dark Dialects,” that since there was no longer a visual ranking of race during the Reconstruction period, dialect was used to indicate ignorance (36). The written representation of speech replaced the skin color as a physical marker of race (38). Essentially, race may not always be visible, but it can be made visible through speech – dialect – and no one would be able to “pass.”
Black dialect in the nineteenth century was written almost exclusively by the dominant white culture and was a white representation of black speech. It was easy for some dialects to be used in a racist manner to show inferiority. Most misspellings could be used to defame characters. Eye-dialect forms, for example, are well known caricature-forming devices (Preston, 329) and authors used them as an intentional exaggeration (Ellis, 140). Eye-dialect is used to make a character appear boorish, uneducated, rustic, gangsterish, etc. Eye-dialect is especially used in Southern dialect to emphasize ignorance or create the impression of illiteracy, such as “Where you frum? I sez to the guy.” Anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews included speech representation that was considered defective German or used a Yiddish accent. The Irish brogue was considered the “lowest rung on the ladder of white native English speakers in America” (Wirth-Nesher, 55), while the creoles and pidgins were probably the lowest for non-white English speakers (Muhleisen, 5). Overgeneralization and exaggeration of dialectical features for comic, thematic, and even political purposes were employed (Ellis, 140), as is exemplified in Twain’s work. Janet Burroway argues in Writing Fiction that by dropping ‘g’s the writer is indicating that the character is ignorant enough to spell them that way when writing, and this can alienate a reader (172). So, even though America was supposed to be classless and democratic, discriminations among classes and races could still be made in literature.
Certainly older writings from the nineteenth century and early twentieth century dialect were used to show ignorance, lower status and a lack of education (Burroway 172), as in Huckleberry Finn where the dialogue of the slave Jim was written in a heavy dialect
[…]
There were other arguments against dialect. Some thought it
was a sign of moral degeneration, that the “traditional” speech spoken by those
who were already here needed to be demonstrated by the “purer” or Standard
English and should not be “muddied” by the speech of the new people coming into
the country. In other words, the “true dialect” spoken by Americans was
acceptable while the broken English used by immigrants was not. Twain’s
depiction of Jim’s strong Southern accent and “poor” speaking skills made the
book an easy target for grammatical purists.
Various dialects looked like a deviation from the national norm. Authors acknowledged that “most people, especially those possessing a certain degree of education, are prone to look upon these variations simply as the bad usage of the ignorant, and therefore as something to be avoided and done away with as soon as possible” (Strand, 122). Also, rather than providing national identity, there was the opinion that by using linguistic diversity, the English language and unity of the American people was threatened.
Some authors have been known to think of any language that
is not Standard English to be an inferior form of writing. There was a similar
problem when writers tried to write “red man” English, or that of the Native
Americans because of the risk that distorted English could be used as a means
to portray American-Indian characters unfavorably, as in Red Man’s Revenge,
written in 1880 by R.M. Ballantyne, a Scottish-born fiction writer for
adolescents. This story uses dialect to depict many languages, including French
(“I vish it vas blue”)”…
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