Eye dialect

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Eye dialect is a common name for the writer's practice of using nonstandard (or incorrect) spellings to indicate nonstandard pronunciation in dialogue.

However, many limit eye dialect to spellings that reflect no distinctive phonological, lexical or syntactic differences from the standard. Such spellings are often used to imply the uneducated nature of a dialect speaker.

Common examples that might be used to represent current North American colloquial speech include "gonna" for going to, "kinda" for kind of, and "wanna" for want to. Often, eye dialect is used to represent the speech of well-defined linguistic minorities; for example, Joel Chandler Harris's tales of Uncle Remus set in the post-Civil War U.S. 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"

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?

The use of eye dialect is often criticized on the grounds that the definition of standard speech is subjective and regionally biased, and that it is often overused or misused to represent what is actually quite standard speech (for example, representing says as "sez" even though "sez" better represents the accepted pronunciation among a wide spectrum of educated English speakers). Further, many people feel that drawing attention to perceived non-standard pronunciation supports or implies a value judgement of such speakers as poorly educated or less articulate, that the assumption that the reader shares the same standard of pronunciation as the writer is inherently inappropriate, or that the use of eye dialect is simply mockery.

Eye dialect is also used informally to communicate pronunciation in writing where a standardized phonetic alphabet is not available or not known to the intended audience. Such use is called pronunciation respelling.

The use of accepted or proposed simplified spelling ("hi" for high, "thru" for through), variant spelling for comic effect with no intention to show altered pronunciation ("koff" for cough) and well-standardized spellings for regional dialects such as Scots or pidgins are generally not considered to be eye dialect.

References

[Vivian Cook's page of common eye dialect]
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, 6, 522-527.
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.

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