Showing Dialect in Dialogue

A reader asks how a writer wishing to create “a redneck swagger” would rewrite the “regular English” sentence “You’re surprising to me.”

He offers the following options:

“Y’a surprisin’ t’a me.”
“Y’ah surprisin’ t’ah me.”
“Ya surprisin ta me.”
“Yah surprisin tah me.”

Note: You can find my thoughts on the use of the term redneck here: Better Use “Redneck” With Care.

My reaction to the model dialogue is that a “redneck” is not likely to utter the original sentence, with or without apostrophes. A native English speaker of any dialect would be more likely to say, “You surprise me.” But the point of the question has to do with the use of apostrophes and contractions–and presumably funny spellings–to represent dialect in fictional dialogue.

Fashions in writing change. Representing dropped letters with apostrophes was a common device with 19th century authors.

“Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me summat like this: I can make nothing o’ the drawing o’ lots and the answer coming wrong; it ‘ud mayhap take the parson to tell that, and he could only tell us i’ big words. –George Eliot, Silas Marner.

“I got hurt a little, en couldn’t swim fas’, so I wuz a considable ways behine you, towards de las’; when you landed I reck’ned I could ketch up wid you on de lan’ ‘doubt havin’ to shout at you, but when I see dat house I begin to go slow.” –Mark Twain,Huckleberry Finn.

Modern readers have little patience with this kind of writing. For one thing, multiple apostrophes and odd spellings are visually distracting. For another, such detailed attention to pronunciation in a novel distracts from the thought that the character is expressing, thereby interfering with an understanding of the narrative. In addition, some readers who speak nonstandard dialects find attempts to represent their home dialects–even if they are successful renditions–disrespectful.

Sprinkling dialogue with odd spellings is especially pointless when the misspelling conveys the same pronunciation as the standard spelling. For example, sez for says, and shure for sure.

The consensus among today’s writing coaches is that dialect is best expressed with vocabulary, grammar, and easily understood regional expressions, rather than with apostrophes and made-up spellings. For example, the following bit of dialogue conveys rural speech without recourse to dropped letters or misspellings:

That woman runs around with anything in pants. Can’t figure out how her and him got together in the first place. Good Lord knows he’s boring as a fence post.” –Nancy Hartney, Washed in the Water.

Words like drawl and whine, and expressions like “a clipped Northern accent” can also be used to suggest a specific way of speaking. In writing dialogue, let the words do the work.

Parataxis and Hypotaxis

When a reader asked me to write about “the terms parataxisand hypotaxis and how they relate to Beowulf,” I had to laugh.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m quite a fan of Beowulf. Wearing my academic hat, I’ve written more than one essay about this treasure of English literature, but somehow it doesn’t strike me as a suitable topic for the DWT audience. I was pleased by the request, but put it away at the bottom of my idea file.

Now, however, I’m ready to write about parataxis and hypotaxis–not as they relate to Beowulf, but as they relate to non-academic writing.

parataxis: the placing of clauses one after another, without connecting words (conjunctions) to show the relation between them.

Dickens employs parataxis in his opening to A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

Hypotaxis, on the other hand, refers to the use of coordinating or subordinating conjunctions to indicate the relation between clauses. Here’s a passage from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit that illustrates hypotaxis:

After losing [his shoes], he ran on four legs and went faster, so that I think he might have got away altogether if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and got caught by the large buttons on his jacket.

Parataxis is common in conversation, as illustrated in this passage written by an author noted for his ability to capture contemporary speech:

“Actually,” Chris said, “you get right down to it, Phyllis’s the one does all the talking. She gives me banking facts about different kinds of annuities, fiduciary trusts, institutional liquid asset funds…I’m sitting here trying to stay awake, she’s telling me about the exciting world of trust funds.” –Elmore Leonard, Freaky Deaky.

Hemingway’s narrative style was so paratactic as to sound babyish:

Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited.

Hemingway got away with it, but a college freshman or a business executive who wrote like that would not be regarded as much of a communicator. Clear writing demands connecting words like if, because, and so.

As for a discussion of parataxis and hypotaxis in Beowulf, I’ll leave that to the scholars who love to argue about such things.

Naming Babies

Throughout history, cultures have attached great importance to names. In some cultures people, like cats, have secret names known only to themselves.

Most parents I know spent hours, days, even months writing down possible names, doing the best to ensure that their final choice would go with their surname and that the child’s initials wouldn’t spell out a word that could provoke ridicule.

American culture may not place the same value on the naming rite as some others. If you watched the movie Pulp Fiction, you may remember what one of the characters says about the meaninglessness of American names. Nevertheless I was astounded to read that in 1994 in New York City, 2,516 baby girls were named Female. In that same year, 3,639 baby boys received the name Male. Their parents hadn’t bothered to give them a name, so the sex designated on their papers was recorded as the given name. Although some of the parents later provided genuine names, many of the children grew up with names pronounced [fuh-MAHL-ee] and [MAH-lee], respectively.

Some countries have laws that curb excessive imagination in naming newborns. The United States is not one of them.

American celebrities tend to choose unusual names for their offspring. For example:
Indiana August
Moses Amadeus
Satchel Seamus
Seven Sirius
Apple
Zowie

Some non-celebrities go further:
Hippo
Jedi
Thunder
Popeye
Espn
Google
Burger
Vanille
J’Adore
Shoog

Despite names like these, a glance at the most popular names given to babies in the United States decade by decade reveals that traditional names have staying power. Good old-fashioned “Mary” remained in the top three until the 1970s; “Michael” made it into the 21st century.

Here are the top three name choices for boys and girls (Social Security statistics) for each decade since 1930:

1930 
Boys: Robert, James, John
Girls: Mary, Betty, Barbara
1940
Boys: James, Robert, John
Girls: Mary, Barbara, Patricia
1950
Boys: James, Robert, John
Girls: Linda, Mary, Patricia
1960
Boys: David, Michael, James
Girls: Mary, Susan, Linda
1970
Boys: Michael, James, David
Girls: Jennifer, Lisa, Kimberly
1980
Boys: Michael, Christopher, Jason
Girls: Jennifer, Amanda, Jessica
1990
Boys: Michael, Christopher, Matthew
Girls: Jessica, Ashley, Brittany
2000
Boys: Jacob, Michael, Matthew
Girls: Emily, Hannah, Madison

The tide seems to be turning. Judging by 2013 figures, the boys are on their way to exotic names, while the girls are headed back to more traditional choices:

2013
Boys: Jackson, Aiden, Liam
Girls: Sophia, Emma, Olivia

1880s
Boys: John, William, James
Girls: Mary, Anna, Emma

A Sample of Amateur Writing

At a recent writers’ conference I heard a successful self-published author say, “Readers are not looking for great writing; they’re looking for a great story.”

Does that mean that taking pains over grammar, diction, and syntax is a waste of time? Certainly not!

Just because readers are not looking for “great writing” doesn’t mean that novelists shouldn’t be expected to produce good writing.

Few writers have what it takes to produce “great writing,” but even a great storyteller requires professional writing skills to get the story across to the reader.

The difference between amateur writing and professional writing is rewriting.

Here is an extract from a self-published work. The fact that the book was self-published is not so important as the fact that the author published it before it was ready.

Here the author describes a church interior:

It had hat shelves and coat racks along both sides. There were double doors leading into the sanctuary, which was plain but neat. There was a carpeted main aisle that ran from the doors to the altar. There were neat rows of oak pews on both sides of the aisle. Secondary aisles ran along both sides of the church between the pews and the windows. On the raised platform in front, there was an altar, a lectern, and behind that were two rows of chairs for the choir. There was a fairly new piano on the left side of the platform…

The excerpt contains ten clauses, eight of which have was or were for the main verb. It contains 101 words, eight of them repeated at least once: aisle/s(3), pew/s (2), altar (2), rows (2), doors (2), platform (2), sides (3), neat (2). Of the seven sentences, four begin with There and one begins with It. The sentence that begins, “It had hat shelves,” produces a double take in the reader because the “had hat” looks like a typographical error.

One paragraph like this every hundred pages might not trouble a reader, but this sample is typical of the book. Word choice is unimaginative, and passages abound that contain nothing to connect the scene to the story.

Here is a description written by a professional novelist (P.D. James). The setting is the interior of a clinic for mental patients in a building that used to be a Georgian mansion:

Behind the reception kiosk and with windows facing the square was the general office, part of which had been partitioned to form a small filing-room for the current medical records. Next to the general office was Miss Bolam’s room and, beyond that, the E.C.T. suite with its treatment-room, nurses’ duty-room and male and female recovery bays. This suite was separated by a hallway from the medical staff cloakroom, clerical staff lavatories and the domestic assistant’s pantry. At the end of the hallway was the locked side door, seldom used except by members of the staff who had been working late and who did not want to give Nagle the trouble of undoing the more complicated locks, bolts and chains on the front door.

I’m not holding the second passage up as “great writing.” It resembles the previous passage in some ways. The word room–alone and in compounds–occurs five times; door and hallway occur twice each; was is used four times. But what James does that the other writer doesn’t do is vary language and syntax and relate the description to the story and the characters. The first writer could have done the same thing.

Whether readers are looking for it or not, few novelists are capable of producing great writing. Anyone who aspires to publication, however, should know the difference between amateur writing and professional writing. It’s revision.