dialect in novels

[Bob Haas]

Would it be demeaning if one were to use "would've" or "could've" instead of
"would of" and "could of"?  BTW, Herb, I see this from my freshman writers
quite often, too.  I like to think that "would've" is a legit contraction.
Any takers?

> From: Herb Stahlke <HSTAHLKE at GW.BSU.EDU>
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 11:24:42 -0500
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: dialect in novels
>
> Auxiliary have brings up a variant on eye-dialect, one in which
> the spelling is conventional but the grammar not.  I come across
> "would of", "could of", etc. pretty regularly in student writing,
> and I've found it also in novels where the writer is portraying
> the speech of teenagers.  Since "third of" and "would have" end
> the same way phonetically, the substitution in our students' minds
> isn't surprising.  Using it to portray immature and perhaps less
> educated persons suggests some of the same demeaning intent that
> lies behind eye dialect.
>
> Herb
>
>>>> vneufeldt at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM 02/23/01 05:24PM >>>
> (The "have" or "-'ve" is actually often included in the
> fast-speech version as well.  On the other hand, the statement "I
> got to go
> to London" is in fact ambiguous without more context, because it
> could just
> as easily be intended to mean "I (-'ve) got to go to London."
> You could
> disambiguate it by adding either "yesterday" or "tomorrow", as
> appropriate.