Linguistic Approaches to Literature - Assignment 16 James Madison University

[This assignment will be marked only as an acceptable or unacceptable effort.]

• Find a written text which uses some representations(s) of dialect in dialogue and/or narration. It can be a story, a song, a poem, or any other written medium, as long as it has a big enough sample to discuss. (Think about the size of the sample texts in your reading. If your text is longer than a page, find a good excerpt!) Make two copies.


• Bring one clean copy to class for in-class discussion. (I'll make copies.)


• Use the other copy to examine the dialect writing. Mark all instances of words that are unconventionally spelled, all instances of nonstandard word choices or forms, and all examples of any other dialectal details (nonstandard sentence structures, for instance.) Then try to assess this use of dialect. Write down as many questions as you can think of to ask (including the ones in our first reading, but also ones based on class discussion (like what words and patterns are used/reused, how much of the speech/narration is actually marked for dialect,etc.) and ones from our other readings (like what impact does it have, does it fit into any general type/genre of dialect use in literature, is it used in both narration and dialogue, who uses it, etc.) Make your best stab at answers to these questions too. :) Bring this to class to for submission as your assignment!