Dialect Lessons from the Masters

When it comes to capturing patterns of human speech, Irish author Roddy Doyle has a great ear, and it shows in one of my favorite novels and movies, “The Commitments,” about a group of working class musicians trying to bring American soul music to Dublin. Here is a typical scene in which the group goes after Deco, its obnoxious but talented lead singer:

In this brief passage, Doyle reveals one way of capturing the authentic dialect of working class Dublin, and that is by using a phonetic rather than regular spelling of the spoken word. In this case, for example, the second person plural, which is simply “you” in Standard English, is represented by “yis,” which might be “youse” in parts of New York City, and “y’all” in the American South.

In addition to sound, dialect can also be expressed by distinctive vocabulary variations. A classic example in the U.S. reveals the regional variations for describing sweet carbonated beverages in a can or bottle. In the New York City of my youth it was “soda.” When I went to school in New England, some kids from the Boston area called it “tonic.” When I moved south it was either “pop” or a generic “coke,” representing all soft drinks, not only cola.

Here, for example, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Madeleine Blais captures the speech patterns of a young woman in prison for the murder of children under her babysitting care: “I love young ‘uns. I don’t know why I done what I done. Young ‘uns is real cute. They don’t really give you no problem.  They sleep most of the time. They is affection and you can cuddle them … Everybody asks me, why you done it, why you done it. I keep askin’ myself.”

Blais characterizes the sound of the “killer babysitter” with spellings such as “askin’,” and she uses a version of Southern speech with vocabulary such as “young ‘uns” rather than “children.” And she reflects the third element of dialect, which is non-standard syntax, exemplified by phrases such as “done what I done,” rather than “did what I did”; “They is affection” rather than “They are affectionate”; and the double negative of “They don’t really give you no problem.”

So remember that trinity of techniques: sound, vocabulary, and syntax.

Mark Twain brought brilliant transparency to this process in his explanation at the beginning of “Huckleberry Finn”: “In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri Negro dialect, the extremest form of the backwoods southwestern dialect, the ordinary Pike County dialect, and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion or by guesswork, but painstakingly and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

 

“I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.”

Twain may have been the first great American author to suppress some of his own language in order to stay true to the dialect of his characters. But in capturing versions of Southern speech, I believe Flannery O’Connor was his equal. In a non-fiction essay about her raising of peacocks, the famous author from Milledgeville, Georgia, represents the speech of a farm family amazed by the sight of a peacock in full bloom:

What gives such writing its authority is O’Connor’s characterization of her own speech. Referring to an ad for peacocks, she tells her mother, “I’m going to order me those.” Later she tells a lineman from the telephone company to be patient for her peacock’s grand display of tail feathers. “Nothing ails him. He’ll put it up terreckly. All you have to do is wait.” “Terreckly” instead of “directly” sends the message: This is my language, too. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Workshop:

1. Sit with a notebook in a busy public place, such as a student union or an airport lounge. Listen to the speech around you and try to identify as many dialects of English as possible. Write down some distinctive elements of dialect: pronunciation, vocabulary, or syntax. Test yourself to see if you are basing your judgments on national origin, region, ethnicity, race, social class or some other factor.

2. Assume that you have a prejudiced ear. As you listen to the speech of others, either in daily life or through the media, be alert to those occasions when you make immediate judgments about a person based upon his or her dialect or speech patterns.

3. My friend Howard Berkes of National Public Radio once interviewed a man who had a serious speech impediment. He stuttered. Howard was not doing a story about speech impediments, but used the man as a news source on another topic. With the man’s permission, Howard edited the sound track so that a word like “p-p-p-p-person” became simply “person.” What do you think of this editing decision? Imagine you were the reporter or the stuttering source. What would you do?

4. Have a friend conduct a brief interview with you and ask that friend to break off about a half-dozen quotations in which he or she tries to capture your distinctive pronunciations. Now switch roles and discuss your findings.

5. Write a passage of about 100 words in which you try to capture a person’s distinctive speech patterns. Go all the way, capturing pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax. Revise the passage three times, each time cutting back on the deviations from Standard England. What is the minimal amount that allows you to capture the flavor of the speaker without detracting from the comprehension of the audience?