dialect in novels

[Salikoko Mufwene]

For the past four years, I have taught a class titled "Dialect Voices in
Literature," in which there are usually a handful of African-American
students.
We have consistently declared Alice Walker's representation of AAE in The
Color
Purple rather stereotypical, if not inept. An earlier example of such
misrepresentation may be found in Richard Wright's Uncle Tom's Children.

    What led me to offer this course is sheer accident. About 6 years ago, I
stumbled on a novel by Albert French (an African American), titled Billy.
It was
acclaimed on the back cover as the best novel written in dialect since Tony
Morrison's Beloved. The setting is on a cotton plantation of Mississippi in
the
1940s. I was appalled when I skimmed through it right there in the
bookstore. I
thought the language of the White characters should have been in the mouths of
the Black characters (too) and that of the Black characters belonged in
no-man's land. However, the plot was impeccably put together.

Sali.

At 08:27 AM 2/27/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi Arnold:
>
>I can't think of a recent novel or short story offhand, but media coverage
>of the Ebonics controversy produced lots of inept representations,
>including Jack White's "Ebonics According to Buckwheat" column for Time
>(Jan 13, 1997), and other examples discussed in the "Media" and "Ebonics
>Humor" chapters of _Spoken Soul_ (the book I wrote with my son Russell
>last year).  And of course there are lots of similar examples from
>minstreal parodies of the 19th century.  Hope this is helpful.
>
>John
>
>
>On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>
>>
>> i have an undergraduate student who's looking for a novel
>> in which aave is represented ineptly, by someone (white or
>> black) from outside aave-speaking communities.  ideally,
>> a fairly recent novel, with an urban setting (this is so
>> the student can take advantage of knowing about the variety
>> in modern urban settings).  this is a small project, so
>> even short stories or journalism might do; it's not like
>> the student will be doing statistics on the data - just
>> getting a qualitative feel for it.
>>
>> any suggestions?
>>
>> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>>
>>
>>
>
**********************************************************
Salikoko S. Mufwene                        s-mufwene at uchicago.edu
University of Chicago                      773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924
Department of Linguistics
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html
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