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Thinky McThinkyface: On Writing Dialect and Accents
NOTE: this only really applies to the English I happen to speak, which is the English of American Midwestern Intellectuals. Any and all statements I make are null and void elsewhere.
So today, in my class on writing systems, we were discussing ways of writing dialect in fiction. We were discussing it specifically in the context of Their Eyes Were Watching God, since the assigned reading was an article by someone who'd gone over that book and examined all the ways dialect was written, there. Soon enough, though, we got away from that, and started discussing 'eye dialect'
Well,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
etben, you may ask, what the hell is 'eye dialect'?
Well, 'eye dialect' is a way of writing dialect that doesn't actually convey any nonstandard phonological information. For example, writing 'wuz' instead of 'was', 'gonna' instead of 'going to'. In practice, these are pronounced the same way; if you're read something in which someone says "I'm going to do that tomorrow", you generally assume (or at the very least it is safe to assume) that they actually said "I'm gonna do that tomorrow". This is 'eye dialect' because it's not telling you anything you couldn't have reasonably assumed about how the speaker is pronouncing things. It's really only used to convey information about education/social status—if you see "I'm gonna do that tomorrow", you're likely to assume that the speaker (or possibly the author) is either uneducated or speaking informally, because otherwise why bother writing out what we're already going to assume?
Also, completely apart from what it says about the speaker, there are other objections to writing dialect. English doesn't really have enough letters for all the sounds it has, so any attempt to accurately convey the sounds of English (particularly the vowels) is probably going to be more confusing than anything else. That's why a standardized English orthography is such a handy-dandy thing to have: it means that we know what word is being used, and what the associated pronunciation is, regardless of how it's actually pronounced or spelled. It's because we read the whole word, and don't sound it out; we see all the letters and combine them to make words almost without reference to the sounds of each letter.
(for example, read the following: I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg! Because we read whole words, with the first and last being most important, the middle letters can be jumbled.)
And, really, if you want to convey phonological information? Use the IPA! (and not the fucking American system, which is just stupid. I'm an American; I get to say that.)
And this, of course, makes me think about Ray Kowalski, because that's the way my brain works.
See, I really, really dislike stories in which Ray's accent is written out—'dere', 'dese', that kind of thing. And I got to thinking about that, following on class discussion, today, because, well, is that eye dialect? You could say that it isn't, because it conveys valid phonological information about how Ray Kowalski talks, and because that's different from the way most of the rest of the cast talks.
But at the same time? I know how Ray talks. And chances are, if you're in the fandom, you also know how he talks. Which means that, practically speaking, writing out his accent doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. Which means that it's just an eye dialect, and, quite frankly, confusing. Not to mention annoying—OK, I'll grant you that I'm maybe a little more fussy than other people about that, because my grandmother taught elementary school English and would probably disown me for spelling errors like that, but the point remains: it's nonstandard, it's not particularly useful, and it annoys the crap out of me.
Which makes me think: in a TV / movie -based fandom, pretty much any attempt at writing accents—no matter how distinctive they are—is going to be eye dialect, to a degree, since it's not conveying any information we don't already, as fans, have. Which is not to say that writing dialect can't, occasionally, be a worthwhile thing! Mostly, though, I think it's only beneficial when it's a) for a character we don't already know, or b) for a character whose accent would be very distinctive to the POV character. (Which is why dialect is particularly vexing in stories with Ray K as POV character—I mean, Ray clearly doesn't think that he's saying 'dere' and 'dat'; he's a smart guy, he just happens to have a fairly strong Chicago accent. He's saying 'there' and 'that', and that's what he hears, when he talks. He's not going to notice his own accent unless it's explicitly pointed out to him, and possibly not even then.)
In a similar vein: Having Rodney McKay say, or, more importantly, think 'ZedPM'. It works when the POV is with an American, but when we're in Rodney's head, it's enough to kick me entirely out of a story. Because, think about it: for Rodney, [zed] is the pronunciation of the letter written < z >. If he sees (or thinks of) the letters < ZPM >, he's thinking of those letters. Sure, he pronounces the first of them as [zed], but he doesn't think of it any differently. If you're going to say [zed], then go all out—make him say [zed pee em]. Or use IPA! Have him say [zɛd pi ɛm], for the love of God!
It's different, of course, if you've got a [zee]-saying character for your POV, because to them, Rodney's saying something distinct (possibly confusingly so) from < ZPM >. It's a salient difference, there, but for Rodney? Nope. In fact, for him, you might as well note that the American staff on Atlantis say [zee] for < z >, since it's got to make just as much of a difference in the other direction.
Or, you know, you could just not touch it.
Does that make sense to anyone who's not, um, hip-deep in this stuff already? Because it's really interesting to me, but that's no good unless I've managed to, in some way, make it accessible to those of you who aren't, you know, tremendous dorks. (Or at least not tremendous dorks in this particular way.)
Although, damn. Now I want someone to write fic in which Ray has his accent pointed out to him, and gets really self-conscious about it, and tries to talk 'properly', and drives Fraser nuts. Any volunteers to write it? I'd be totally willing to provide all of the linguistics meta-babble that Fraser would spew, in an attempt to make him feel better about his accent...
Aw, fuck. *adds it to the list of stories she'll write one of these days*
[ETA: Astovalentin pointed out, most non-American English speakers say [zed], not [zee], so < ZedPM > is really only an American-listening-to-a-Canadian thing. Yay for accuracy!]
So today, in my class on writing systems, we were discussing ways of writing dialect in fiction. We were discussing it specifically in the context of Their Eyes Were Watching God, since the assigned reading was an article by someone who'd gone over that book and examined all the ways dialect was written, there. Soon enough, though, we got away from that, and started discussing 'eye dialect'
Well,
etben, you may ask, what the hell is 'eye dialect'?Well, 'eye dialect' is a way of writing dialect that doesn't actually convey any nonstandard phonological information. For example, writing 'wuz' instead of 'was', 'gonna' instead of 'going to'. In practice, these are pronounced the same way; if you're read something in which someone says "I'm going to do that tomorrow", you generally assume (or at the very least it is safe to assume) that they actually said "I'm gonna do that tomorrow". This is 'eye dialect' because it's not telling you anything you couldn't have reasonably assumed about how the speaker is pronouncing things. It's really only used to convey information about education/social status—if you see "I'm gonna do that tomorrow", you're likely to assume that the speaker (or possibly the author) is either uneducated or speaking informally, because otherwise why bother writing out what we're already going to assume?
Also, completely apart from what it says about the speaker, there are other objections to writing dialect. English doesn't really have enough letters for all the sounds it has, so any attempt to accurately convey the sounds of English (particularly the vowels) is probably going to be more confusing than anything else. That's why a standardized English orthography is such a handy-dandy thing to have: it means that we know what word is being used, and what the associated pronunciation is, regardless of how it's actually pronounced or spelled. It's because we read the whole word, and don't sound it out; we see all the letters and combine them to make words almost without reference to the sounds of each letter.
(for example, read the following: I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg! Because we read whole words, with the first and last being most important, the middle letters can be jumbled.)
And, really, if you want to convey phonological information? Use the IPA! (and not the fucking American system, which is just stupid. I'm an American; I get to say that.)
And this, of course, makes me think about Ray Kowalski, because that's the way my brain works.
See, I really, really dislike stories in which Ray's accent is written out—'dere', 'dese', that kind of thing. And I got to thinking about that, following on class discussion, today, because, well, is that eye dialect? You could say that it isn't, because it conveys valid phonological information about how Ray Kowalski talks, and because that's different from the way most of the rest of the cast talks.
But at the same time? I know how Ray talks. And chances are, if you're in the fandom, you also know how he talks. Which means that, practically speaking, writing out his accent doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. Which means that it's just an eye dialect, and, quite frankly, confusing. Not to mention annoying—OK, I'll grant you that I'm maybe a little more fussy than other people about that, because my grandmother taught elementary school English and would probably disown me for spelling errors like that, but the point remains: it's nonstandard, it's not particularly useful, and it annoys the crap out of me.
Which makes me think: in a TV / movie -based fandom, pretty much any attempt at writing accents—no matter how distinctive they are—is going to be eye dialect, to a degree, since it's not conveying any information we don't already, as fans, have. Which is not to say that writing dialect can't, occasionally, be a worthwhile thing! Mostly, though, I think it's only beneficial when it's a) for a character we don't already know, or b) for a character whose accent would be very distinctive to the POV character. (Which is why dialect is particularly vexing in stories with Ray K as POV character—I mean, Ray clearly doesn't think that he's saying 'dere' and 'dat'; he's a smart guy, he just happens to have a fairly strong Chicago accent. He's saying 'there' and 'that', and that's what he hears, when he talks. He's not going to notice his own accent unless it's explicitly pointed out to him, and possibly not even then.)
In a similar vein: Having Rodney McKay say, or, more importantly, think 'ZedPM'. It works when the POV is with an American, but when we're in Rodney's head, it's enough to kick me entirely out of a story. Because, think about it: for Rodney, [zed] is the pronunciation of the letter written < z >. If he sees (or thinks of) the letters < ZPM >, he's thinking of those letters. Sure, he pronounces the first of them as [zed], but he doesn't think of it any differently. If you're going to say [zed], then go all out—make him say [zed pee em]. Or use IPA! Have him say [zɛd pi ɛm], for the love of God!
It's different, of course, if you've got a [zee]-saying character for your POV, because to them, Rodney's saying something distinct (possibly confusingly so) from < ZPM >. It's a salient difference, there, but for Rodney? Nope. In fact, for him, you might as well note that the American staff on Atlantis say [zee] for < z >, since it's got to make just as much of a difference in the other direction.
Or, you know, you could just not touch it.
Does that make sense to anyone who's not, um, hip-deep in this stuff already? Because it's really interesting to me, but that's no good unless I've managed to, in some way, make it accessible to those of you who aren't, you know, tremendous dorks. (Or at least not tremendous dorks in this particular way.)
Although, damn. Now I want someone to write fic in which Ray has his accent pointed out to him, and gets really self-conscious about it, and tries to talk 'properly', and drives Fraser nuts. Any volunteers to write it? I'd be totally willing to provide all of the linguistics meta-babble that Fraser would spew, in an attempt to make him feel better about his accent...
Aw, fuck. *adds it to the list of stories she'll write one of these days*
[ETA: As
tovalentin pointed out, most non-American English speakers say [zed], not [zee], so < ZedPM > is really only an American-listening-to-a-Canadian thing. Yay for accuracy!]