eye dialect

Eye dialect is the deliberate use of non-standard spelling to draw attention to pronunciation. There is some disagreement on what constitutes eye dialect and what constitutes phonetic spelling.^{[citation needed]} For some, eye dialect is the literary technique^[1] of using non-standard spelling to approximate a pronunciation that is actually no different from the standard pronunciation^[2][3] but has the effect of dialectal, foreign, or uneducated speech. This definition of eye dialect differs from others in that a difference in spelling doesn't indicate a difference in pronunciation of a word. For example, spelling was as wuz does not indicate an unusual pronunciation but is used to suggest that a character has non-standard speech of some sort as well as to alter a reader's perception of a speaker.^[4]

The term may also be used to refer to a similar technique of indicating pronunciation through spelling. This is used, for example, in Hispanic literature to portray the speech of lower class individuals like criminals, prostitutes, and beggars (though it may also be used to convey other social and geographical information).^[5] In this latter definition, eye dialect may act as a relatively faithful representation of a non-standard pronunciation. For example, where Standard English has word-initial [ð], African American Vernacular English (as well as a number of other English dialects) has word-initial [d] instead; therefore, an author might write that as dat in the speech of African American characters.

Use

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

Some notable authors who utilize eye dialect include Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, William Faulkner, and Robert Ruark,^[6] and Ross O'Carroll-Kelly.

However, most authors are likely to use eye dialect with restraint, sprinkling non-standard misspelling 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 speech, 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.^[7]

Walpole (1974) points out that there are other ways to indicate speech variation such as altered syntax, punctuation, and colloquial or regional word choices. She points out that a reader must be prompted to access their memory of a given speech pattern and that non-orthographic signals that accomplish this may be more effective than eye dialect.^[8] Nuessel (1982) points out that use of eye dialect closely interacts with stereotypes about various groups, both relying on and reinforcing them in an attempt to efficiently characterize speech.

In The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction, John Dufresne cites The Columbia Guide to Standard American English in suggesting that writers avoid eye dialect; he argues that it is frequently pejorative, making a character seem stupid rather than regional, and is more distracting than helpful. Like Walpole, Dufresne suggests that dialect should be rendered by "rhythm of the prose, by the syntax, the diction, idioms and figures of speech, by the vocabulary indigenous to the locale."^[9]

Eye dialect, when consistently applied, may render a character's speech indecipherable.^[10] An attempt to accurately render nonstandard speech may also prove difficult to readers unfamiliar with a particular accent.^[11]

Examples in English

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From Joel Chandler Harris's tales of Uncle Remus, set in the U.S. in the post–Civil War South:

"'You er stuck up, dat's w'at you is,' says Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'en I'm gwine ter kyore you, dat's w'at I'm a gwine ter do,' sezee.

— "The Wonderful Tar Baby Story"^[12]

Eye dialect is also found in representations of the speech of various Londoners in Sherlock Holmes stories. Some of Mark Twain's books are also full of eye dialect, as Simon Wheeler's narrative in "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which begins:

There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley…

Other literary uses of eye dialect are to represent foreign accents, such as in Charles Godfrey Leland's Hans Breitmann's Ballads:

D’VAS near de state of Nashfille,
   In de town of Tennessee,
Der Breitmann vonce vas quarderd
   Mit all his cavallrie.
Der Sheneral kept him glose in gamp,
   He vouldn’t let dem go;
Dey couldn’t shdeal de first plack hen,
   Or make de red cock crow.

— Breitmann Goes to Church

Zora Neale Hurston is also a writer well known for the use of eye dialect in her stories about the life of African Americans in the rural southern United States, a fact that has caused some controversy about her stories:

"Looka theah, folkses!" cried Elijah Mosley, slapping his leg gleefully, "Theah they go, big as life an' brassy as tacks."

— "Spunk"

One of the most famous instances of eye dialect in literature is in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion:

THE FLOWER GIRL: Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them?

(Oh, he's your son, is he? Well, if you'd done your duty by him as a mother should, he'd know better than to spoil a poor girl's flowers and then run away without paying. Will you pay me for them?)

An excellent example of the use of eye dialect in the representation of Australian English, for which the eye dialect spelling Strine is sometimes used, is in the book Let Stalk Strine, by Afferbeck Lauder (a pseudonym of Alastair Ardoch Morrison), itself eye dialect for alphabetical order.

In his Discworld series, Terry Pratchett makes extensive use of eye dialect to extend the caricature of his characters, even going to the point of changing the font used for certain dialog. Death, for example, speaks in small capitals, while the dialog of a golem who can only communicate 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.

Cartoonist Walt Kelly used eye dialect for most of the characters in his classic comic strip, Pogo, and, like Pratchett afterward, used unique fonts for many of his supporting cast.

Many 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.

Examples in other languages

In Spanish, Juan Ramón Jiménez substitutes <j> for soft <g> (dirige → dirije) as a one-man spelling reform. Like English, Spanish has two sounds for <g>, and <j> corresponds to one of them.

In Russian, Shukshin's story "Moy zyat' ukral mashinu drov" ("My son-in-law stole a carful of firewood"), has the main character say "Што?" for "What?" instead of the expected "Что?"; что is commonly pronounced [ʂto] rather than [tɕto], as if it were spelled with <Ш>. The character is a delivery driver in Siberia and the eye dialect emphasizes his uneducated nature.

See also

• Eye dialect terms at Wiktionary
• Apologetic apostrophe
• Inventive spelling
• Mondegreen
• Preved
• Pronunciation spelling
• Satiric misspelling
• SMS language

Notes

References

• Dufresne, John (2003), The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction, W.W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0393057518 
• Main, Stephen D. (1965), "Eye Dialect in "Li'l Abner"", American Speech 40 (3): 229–232 
• Nuessel, Frank H. Jr. (1982), "Eye Dialect in Spanish: Some Pedagogical Applications", Hispania 65 (3): 346–351 
• Rickford, John; Rickford, Russell (2000), Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English., New York: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-39957-4 
• Walpole, Jane Raymond (1974), "Eye Dialect in Fictional dialogue", College Composition and Communication 25 (2): 191–196 

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.