SLANG, DIALECT, AND OTHER TYPES OF MARKED LANGUAGE

Imagine opening a revised edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and reading: "My antics will no doubt remain unknown to you unless perchance you have had occasion to peruse a certain volume entitled The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; nevertheless, it matters not." The excruciatingly formal prose of this imagined revision sharply contrasts with the familiar language of the novel. Nevertheless, in early drafts Huck's famous introduction of himself to the reader had been a good deal more proper; Mark Twain (1835–1910) wrote "You will not know about me," and later emended this to "You do not know me," before he settled on the familiar: "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter." Twain's language here (and throughout the novel) is distinguished by the use of "dialect" or "slang" as those terms are usually understood. Twain was certainly not the first author to write in this informal language. The tradition of incorporating dialect into literary writing in English goes back at least as far as Geoffrey Chaucer. Even the very dialects Twain was representing had been portrayed by earlier American authors. Nevertheless, the approach to dialect and slang taken by Twain and other authors at this time represented a new direction.

Before Twain, Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908), and other writers of the period, dialect usually appeared only in dialogue and was typically used for comic effect to suggest a character's backwardness, vulgarity, or buffoonery. After the Civil War, however, many authors began to treat dialect more generously and sought to incorporate representations of "authentic" speech as part of a broader interest in painting their works with local color. This reformed attitude toward dialect and slang opened new avenues of expression. The authors of this generation broke the molds that typecast dialect-speaking characters and, in the case of Twain in Huckleberry Finn, pushed dialect well beyond the confines of dialogue.

This article presents a general framework for approaching dialect, slang, and similar phenomena in literature. The examples discussed come from the period 1870–1920, but the issues are meant to apply to literature of virtually any era. Two main questions are addressed: (1) Why do authors use dialect, slang, and other linguistic forms that stand out from the literary norm? (2) What forms do they use in constructing linguistically unusual writing?

WHY USE DIALECT, SLANG, AND SIMILAR DEVICES?

The motivations for incorporating dialect, slang, or similar forms of language clearly vary by author and even by work. Still, most cases fall under the general heading of characterization: the form of a character's speech is used to signal aspects of who that character is. Authors are keenly aware that language can serve as a powerful marker of identity. In subtle and not so subtle ways we indicate something about ourselves when we speak, not just in what we say but in how we say it. Thus, a character whose language usage differs from that of other characters, or from the narration, is read as socially or culturally different.

An author may use language to mark differences of various types. Perhaps the most familiar of these are regional differences. Characters are often written to signal their geographic origins through their use of a regional dialect. Regional speech patterns can contribute to a sense of place by adding a dimension of local color. Of course, within a given setting dialect usage may vary across characters because authors use dialect to mark social differences as well. These differences may be coded by using distinct features for different social types. Stories set in the South, for example, may include one set of dialect forms for white characters and another set for African American characters. Social difference may also be indicated by varying the relative frequency of dialect in different characters' usage. Accordingly, the dialogue of a character of lower social status might be filled with dialect markers, while such markers will appear more rarely in the dialogue of a higher status character. Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) adopts this approach in "A Church Mouse" (1891), which is set in rural New England. The speech of the "rich and influential" deacon Caleb Gale certainly includes nonstandard features, but they are not as pervasive as they are in the speech of the penniless Hetty Fifield. Caleb Gale argues: "Don't you see it ain't no use talkin' such nonsense, Hetty? You'd better go right along an' make up your mind it ain't to be thought of." Hetty responds, "Where do you s'pose I've got any place? Them folks air movin' into Mis' Grout's house, an' they as good as told me to clear out. I ain't got no folks to take me in. I dun' know where I'm goin'; mebbe I can go to your house?".

Unusual linguistic features are also commonly used to mark a character's status as a speaker of a language other than English. Given the tremendous flow of immigrants to the United States in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, it is not surprising to find nonnative speakers of English appearing in literature of the time. In "A Providential Match" (1898), Abraham Cahan (1860–1951) represents the speech of a Russian Jewish immigrant in phrases such as "feet him like a glove" and "bishness is bishness." Nonnative speech is also found in works featuring Americans traveling or living outside the country. In Their Wedding Journey (1872), William Dean Howells (1837–1920) offers a sample of a French accent encountered in Quebec: "There isn't another 'ole in the 'ouse to lay me 'ead" (p. 169).

Dialects and nonnative speech represent linguistic differences across groups of people, but language also varies on the level of the individual user. All people adjust their usage according to context, employing different registers or styles. Compare, for example, the formal style of speech that might characterize a professional meeting with the informal style found in a casual conversation among friends. One common way of indicating register differences is through word choice, particularly the use of slang words and phrases to signal informality. Slang is often used to comic effect, as in Roughing It (1872), where Twain describes an exchange between a local "rough" and a minister that opens with the former asking, "Are you the duck that runs the gospel mill next door?" This informality is contrasted with the extreme formality in the speech of the minister, who describes himself as "the spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose sanctuary adjoins these premises" (p. 310). The humor of this passage stems from the fact that neither party is able to decipher what the other is saying.

The distinction drawn here between dialect and register is often blurred in actual usage and in literary representations. A given linguistic form may be associated with particular registers as well as with particular dialects. Consider, for example, the pronunciation of words ending in "-ing," which for most people is sometimes articulated with the back "ng" sound and sometimes with the front "n" sound. This distinction is often represented as "-ing" versus "-in'." Studies of linguistic usage by a variety of people in a variety of situations indicate that the front pronunciation is used more frequently among certain groups of people (e.g., the working class) and in informal contexts (e.g., personal conversations). Thus, an author might have a character use forms like "nothin'" and "walkin'" as an indication of the casualness of the context or as a signal of his or her social origins. In fact, the latter intention seems to be more common.

MARKEDNESS

The common thread linking literary representations of dialect, nonnative usages, and registers is their markedness. In linguistics, "markedness" describes the difference between default categories and special cases. The latter are called "marked" because they often contain additional linguistic material. For example, the plural of a noun is considered the marked case because it is generally formed by adding a suffix to the "unmarked" singular form. Markedness reflects how one thinks about language at a fundamental level. For example, the singular of nouns is viewed as the basic form and the plural as a derived form; consider how odd it sounds to describe "child" as the singular of "children" instead of describing "children" as the plural of "child." Extending this notion to literature, one can see that there is a kind of unmarked language used throughout most works, which might for convenience be called Standard Written English. This language establishes a backdrop against which dialect features, slang terms, and so forth stand out. These marked usages draw attention to themselves as linguistic forms and lead readers to consider why the given form is used.

The concept of markedness is especially useful in the examination of literary uses of dialect and slang because markedness relations are inherently relative. One speaks of a given form as marked only in relation to an unmarked counterpart. Moreover, a linguistic form may be marked in relation to one form but unmarked in relation to another. So an author can indicate social differences among dialect speakers by putting in the mouth of one character language that is more marked. A common example in literature of the period is seen in the variation between "goin' to" or "gonna" and "gwine" or "gwyne to." These forms are marked relative to the standard "going to," but "gwine to" is arguably more marked as it deviates more radically from the standard spelling (although not necessarily from the usual pronunciation) and appears almost exclusively in the speech of African American characters. The relativity of markedness relations helps explain why even when the unmarked language of an entire work is a dialect, the author can still use linguistic means of distinguishing characters, as in Huckleberry Finn.

HOW MARKED LANGUAGE IS CONSTRUCTED

While authors have various reasons for using dialect, slang, and other types of marked language, some common forms appear in literature of the period. Authors vary greatly in the extent to which they use marked linguistic forms, although they vary less in terms of the forms selected; that is, there seems to be a common pool of forms from which many authors routinely draw. It is important to remember that every author faces certain practical limitations in the use of marked language. One type of challenge is presented by the writing system, which makes it difficult to represent many interesting variations in pronunciation. The reader's needs bring another set of challenges; authors must bear in mind the potential for frustrating readers with language that deviates from standard orthographic conventions and therefore needs deciphering.

Nonstandard spellings are perhaps the most common technique employed in literary dialect. They are most often intended to convey a marked pronunciation. Among the more common forms are "dem" (also "dat," "dis," etc.); "fer"; "git"; "jest"; "kin" for "can"; "thar" (also "whar"); and "-in'" for "-ing" (as in "fishin'"). Each of these examples involves an alternation between two sounds; it is also common to find representations of deleted sounds, most often indicated with the apostrophe (e.g., "an'" or "'n'"; "'cause"; "'em"; "'round" or "'roun'"; "s'pose"). Although readers may interpret such forms as dialect, each of the pronunciations represented in these examples is heard in the ordinary speech of most people. A more restricted usage, the deletion of the "r" sound, is a recognizable feature of southern and northeastern accents and appears frequently in literary dialect, represented in various ways (e.g., "yo'" for "your," "heah" for "here"). An unconventional spelling is not always indicative of a variant pronunciation. Forms such as "wuz," "sez," and "frum" reflect the usual pronunciations. Examples like these are called "eye dialect" because they are nonstandard only to the eye and not to the ear.

It may be difficult for modern readers to determine whether a given form is meant to reflect a marked pronunciation or is simply eye dialect. For example, Joel Chandler Harris and others used spellings like "w'en" and "w'ite." Many Americans (and most Britons) might interpret these forms as eye dialect because the standard "wh" spelling does not call for a distinct pronunciation in their speech. In the nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, however, many speakers in some regions (especially the South) discriminated between the pronunciations of pairs like "witch" and "which." For them, a spelling like "w'en" certainly represented a marked pronunciation. Similarly, the pronunciation suggested by the spelling "bin" for "been" does not attract much attention in the early twenty-first century but appears to have been more marked in earlier periods.

Nonstandard grammatical usages are another resource on which an author may draw to distinguish marked language. These grammatical variants may be used to represent regional dialects and appear frequently as markers of social status. The form "gwine" (sometimes "gwyne") mentioned above may be seen as an example of a nonstandard verb form although it is perhaps better classified as a pronunciation variant. Regardless, the form seems to have become conventionalized in representations of African American speech in the nineteenth century. More clear-cut cases of nonstandard verbs include uses of "come" and "seen" as simple past tense as well as forms like "riz," "cotch," and "sot" as the pasts of "rise," "catch," and "set." All of these forms had currency in some dialects at one time, and of course, "come" and "seen" remain widely used in the early twenty-first century as past tense forms. Patterns of subject-verb agreement are also known to vary across dialects, and nonstandard agreement types sometimes appear in literature. Among the more common examples are "you was" and "I weren't." Perhaps the most frequently appearing markers of nonstandard grammar relate to negation. Included here are "ain't" and the forms known as "double negatives" (e.g., "don't do nothing," "never go nowhere").

The vocabulary an author chooses may also contribute to a sense of linguistic marking. As do certain pronunciations and grammatical forms, some words convey social information about the people who use them. Compared with pronunciation and grammar, the boundaries between standard and nonstandard and between formal and informal in the area of vocabulary are often fuzzier. Judgments about linguistic registers vary greatly, especially regarding the very informal words and expressions recognized as slang. A word that one person considers slang may strike another as more widely acceptable. Moreover, slang is largely ephemeral; indeed, part of the allure of slang is its freshness. A slang usage may be fashionable for some time and then disappear altogether. Occasionally, an item once seen as slang sheds its informal connotations and passes into general usage. The nature of slang presents special challenges to students of literature. An author's use of what was a slang term a century ago may baffle modern readers unfamiliar with the term. When a "drummer" appears in Stephen Crane's (1871–1900) "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (1898), readers in the early twenty-first century might visualize a musician rather than the salesman denoted by the term then. Similarly, readers might be shocked by the frequent references to "making love" in literature of the period if they are not aware that the phrase simply meant flirting or courting. In other cases, the author's intention to convey informality may be missed because the former slang term has achieved wider currency. Consider, for example, Twain's labeling of "You bet!" as Nevada slang in Roughing It.

Closely connected to slang is jargon, the specialized vocabulary of a given profession. Medicine, the military, and the law are fields well known for terminology that can be impenetrable to outsiders. Twain provides several examples of mining jargon in Roughing It (e.g., "wildcat claim," "foot," "flume," "salting a claim"). The boundary between slang and jargon is often unclear. Consider, for example, the vocabulary of professional baseball as seen in the work of Ring Lardner (1885–1933). Items such as "bunt" and "strike" are clearly jargon while a usage like "pill" for "ball" is perhaps better termed slang, but what of "fungoes" (flyballs hit for fielding practice)?

Also in the borderland between slang and jargon lies the vocabulary of the underworld often called cant. The cant of criminals is a particularly fruitful and fascinating lexical arena that remains, by design, largely opaque to outsiders. For example, Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) in Thirty Years a Detective (1886) discusses the pickpocket's technique of "reefing," the process of gradually drawing up a pocketbook. Another cant term, "gat," for "revolver," is noted by A. H. Lewis, who offers the definition "Gatts is East Sidese for pistols" in Apaches of New York (1914). This word, a shortening from "Gatling gun," may have inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald in naming his title character in The Great Gatsby (1896–1940). H. L. Mencken offers several other real-life examples of underworld vocabulary in The American Language (1919, 1936), and the numerous citations included there indicate the great interest this topic aroused in the general and scholarly press early in the twentieth century.

In particular, the literature of 1870–1920 illustrates how marked language can serve as a powerful tool for bringing characters and settings to life. Authors like those exemplified here took seriously the use of this device and often displayed remarkable sensitivity to "nonliterary" language. Unraveling the way such marked language was constructed can add depth to our understanding of this literature as well as greater appreciation for its creation.

See alsoAdventures of Huckleberry Finn; Humor; A New England Nun and Other Stories; Oratory; Regionalism and Local Color Fiction; Short Story

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Works

Freeman, Mary Wilkins. "A Church Mouse." In her A New England Nun and Other Stories. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891.

Howells, William Dean. Their Wedding Journey. 1872. Edited by John K. Reeves. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968.

Mencken, H. L. The American Language. 1919. 4th ed. New York: Knopf, 1936.

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885.

Secondary Works

Carkeet, David. "The Dialects in Huckleberry Finn." American Literature 51 (1979): 315–332.

Ives, Sumner. "A Theory of Literary Dialect." Tulane Studies in English 2 (1950): 137–182. Reprinted in A Various Language: Perspectives on American Dialects, edited by Juanita V. Williamson and Virginia M. Burke, pp. 145–177. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971.

Wolfram, Walt, and Natalie Schilling-Estes. American English: Dialects and Variation. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998.

Matthew J. Gordon