In literature, eye dialect is the use of nonstandard spellings to indicate that a character speaks in a colloquial, dialectal, or uneducated way, often for comic effect. The spellings represent standard pronunciations (e.g. bloo for blue or enuff for enough) and the convention violated is thus "one of the eye, not of the ear".[1]

The term was coined by George Philip Krapp in 1925. It is sometimes used more broadly to describe any attempt to represent nonstandard speech in spelling, whether or not the pronunciations indicated are standard.[2]

Use

Most authors are likely to use eye dialect with restraint, sprinkling nonstandard misspellings here and there to serve as a cue to the reader about all of a character's speech, rather than as an accurate phonetic representation. While mostly used in dialogue, eye dialect may appear in the narrative depiction of altered spelling made by a character (such as in a letter or diary entry), generally used to more overtly depict characters who are poorly educated or semi-literate.[3]

The term eye dialect was first used by George Philip Krapp in 1925, in The English Language in America:

Examples in English

Prose fiction

Charles Dickens combined eye dialect with pronunciation spelling and nonstandard grammar in the speech of his uneducated characters. An example in Bleak House is the following dialogue spoken by Jo, the miserable boy who sweeps a path across a street:

...there wos other genlmen come down Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded as to be a-talking to theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin to us.

In the above, wos, sed, and wuns indicate standard pronunciations.[14]

In his Discworld series of books, Terry Pratchett makes extensive use of eye dialect to extend the caricature of his characters, besides other visual devices such as changing the font used for certain dialogue. Death, for example, speaks in small capitals, while the dialogue of a golem, who can communicate only by writing, resembles Hebrew script in reference to the origins of the golem legend. Eye dialect is also used to establish a medieval setting, wherein many characters' grasp of spelling is heavily based on phonetics.[citation needed]

Poetry

In his 1937 poem "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel", John Betjeman deploys eye dialect on a handful of words for satirical effect; in this case the folly of the arresting police officers, who are made to seem like comic caricatures of themselves:

Mr. Woilde, we 'ave come for tew take yew
Where felons and criminals dwell:
We must ask yew tew leave with us quoietly
For this is the Cadogan Hotel.

An extreme example of a poem written entirely in (visually barely decipherable) eye dialect is "YgUDuh" by E. E. Cummings, which, as several commentators have noted, makes sense only when read aloud.[15] In this case, Cummings's target was the attitudes of certain Americans to Japanese people following World War II.

In comics

American cartoonist Al Capp frequently combined eye dialect with pronunciation spelling in his comic strip Li'l Abner. Examples include lissen, aristocratick, mountin [mountain], correkt, feends, hed, introduckshun, leppard, and perhaps the most common, enuff. Only his rustic characters are given these spellings; for instance, the "overcivilized" Bounder J. Roundheels's dialogue contains gourmets, while Li'l Abner's contains goormays.[16]

Cartoonist Walt Kelly made extensive use of eye dialect in Pogo. Like Pratchett, he used unique fonts for many of his supporting characters.[citation needed]

Some cartoonists and comic book creators eschew phonetic eye dialects in favor of font changes or distinctive speech balloons. Swamp Thing, for example, has traditionally been depicted using "crusty" yellow speech balloons and dialogue heavily laced with ellipses, suggesting a gravelly voice that only speaks with great effort. Robotic and computer characters often use square speech balloons and angular fonts reminiscent of OCR-A, suggesting a stilted, emotionless cadence. Thor's dialogue has routinely been written in an elegant font, implying his archaic vocabulary and pronunciation as a millennia-old god. After Thor passed the mantle to Jane Foster, her dialogue was written in the same font whenever she transformed into Thor, before reverting to normal when she did as well.

Other uses

American film director Quentin Tarantino used eye dialect for the title of his movie Inglourious Basterds.

The titles of a number of songs by Black Country band Slade, starting with "Coz I Luv You", are written in a Black Country pronunciation.[17]

Examples in other languages

The novel Zazie dans le Métro is written in French yet disregards almost all French spelling conventions, as the main viewpoint character is a young child.[18]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "eye dialect". Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/OED/5434124506. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  2. ↑ McArthur, Tom; Lam-McArthur, Jacqueline; Fontaine, Lise, eds. (2018). "Eye Dialect". The Oxford Companion to the English Language (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-174438-9.
  3. ↑ Nuessel (1982:349)
  4. ↑ Krapp, G.P. (1925). The English Language in America. New York: The Century Co., for the Modern Language Association of America. p. 228.
  5. ↑ Wilson (1993:186)
  6. ↑ Preston, Denis R. (1985). "The Li'l Abner Syndrome: Written Representations of Speech". American Speech. 60 (4): 328–336. doi:10.2307/454910. JSTOR 454910.
  7. ↑ Walpole (1974:195)
  8. ↑ Dufresne (2003:200)
  9. ↑ Hornback, Robert (2018-07-19). Racism and Early Blackface Comic Traditions: From the Old World to the New. Springer. p. 239. ISBN 978-3-319-78048-1.
  10. ↑ Feagin, Joe R.; Cobas, José A. (2015). Latinos Facing Racism: Discrimination, Resistance, and Endurance. Routledge. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-317-25695-3.
  11. ↑ Rush, Sharon (2006). Huck Finn's "hidden" Lessons: Teaching and Learning Across the Color Line. Rowman & Littlefield. p. xiii. ISBN 978-0-7425-4520-5.
  12. ↑ Walpole (1974:194)
  13. ↑ Nuessel (1982:346)
  14. ↑ Levenston (1992:56)
  15. ↑ Reef, Catherine (2006) E.E. Cummings, New York: Clarion Books, ISBN 9780618568499, p. 104
  16. ↑ Malin (1965:230)
  17. ↑ Verrico, Lisa; Holder, Noddy (15 December 2010). Who's Crazee Now?: My Autobiography - Lisa Verrico, Noddy Holder - Google Books. ISBN 9781446407431. Retrieved 2017-10-19.
  18. ↑ Marnette, Sophie (2005). Speech and Thought Presentation in French: Concepts and Strategies. John Benjamins. pp. 264–65. ISBN 9789027253767.

References

Further reading

  • Bowdre, Paul H., Jr. (1971). Eye dialect as a literary device. In J. V. Williamson & V. M. Burke (Eds.), A various language (pp. 178–179). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
  • Fine, Elizabeth. (1983). In defense of literary dialect: A response to Dennis R. Preston. The Journal of American Folklore, 96 (381), 323–330.
  • Ives, Sumner. (1950). A theory of literary dialect. Tulane Studies in English, 2, 137–182.
  • Ives, Sumner. (1971). A theory of literary dialect. In J. V. Williamson & V. M. Burke (Eds.), A various language (pp. 145–177). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
  • Krapp, George P. (1926). The psychology of dialect writing. The Bookman, 63, 522–527.
  • Macaulay, Ronald K. S. (1991). Coz It Izny Spelt When Then Say It: Displaying Dialect in Writing. American Speech, 66 (3), 280–291.
  • Preston, Dennis R. (1982). Ritin' fowklower daun 'rong: Folklorists' failures in phonology. The Journal of American Folklore, 95 (377), 304–326.
  • Preston, Dennis R. (1983). Mowr bayud spellin': A reply to Fine. The Journal of American Folklore, 96 (381), 330–339.
  • Preston, Dennis R. (1985). The Li'l Abner syndrome: Written representations of speech. American Speech, 60 (4), 328–336.
  • Wiktionary logo The dictionary definition of eye dialect at Wiktionary
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_spelling