I am a researcher who primarily works with dialects in the real world, but lately I've been interested in how dialect is used in literature as a reflection of the way we view other people. I want to read some books that have been written in the last 50 years (but it's ok if they are historical fiction) because I want to see how modern authors use dialect as a rhetorical device. I would prefer dialects from the US or the UK since I'm most familiar with that cultural context, but I'm open to anything.
I would love it especially if the book uses dialect as a primary mode of characterization, so both the other characters and readers are expected to draw assumptions about the characters from the way they speak. Authors that are both in the dialect community and not in the dialect community are welcome.
Books I have already looked into are most of the classics: Huckleberry Finn, The Color Purple, Blood Meridian, Trainspotting, Their Eyes Were Watching God. I'm looking for something that is less famous. Thanks in advance!
by Anjukk
18 Comments
Clockwork Orange
fiskadoro
the sound and the fury
The Redwall books. I was always so proud of myself as a kid when I could figure out what the moles were saying. They’re UK accents.
The Mitford Series by Jan Karon makes good use of dialect, especially to differentiate educated and uneducated characters.
Milkman by Anna Burns (Northern Ireland)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
Disnaeland by DD Johnston is written in Scots & English. And it’s brilliant!
That Lass O’Lowrey’s by Francis Hodgson Burnett. Also The Secret Garden.
The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer.
Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. 😉
“What it Feels Like for a Girl” by Paris Lees is written in dialect, as is a recent release set in Dumfries whose name eludes me.
I’ve been reading The Dublin Trilogy by Caimh McDonnell. The main character through the books is a police detective from Cork. People don’t understand what he’s saying half the time because the dialect of Cork is so different than that of Dublin. It’s not the main focus of the stories, but all of the dialogue is written as they speak. Not sure if that’s what your looking for or not.
Finnigans Wake
James by Percival Everett. Interesting to compare it with what you found in Huck Finn.
“The Toll Gate” and “The Unknown Ajax” by Georgette Heyer.
Zora Neale Hurston
James Whitcomb Riley (“Our Hired Girl,” “When the Frost is on the Punkin”) was a Mid-19th Century American poet who often wrote with regional speech conventions. Langston Hughes (“Mother to Son,” “Homesick Blues”) and Paul Laurence Dunbar (“A Negro Love Song,” “Little Brown Baby”) are Black American poets known for dialect poems. Bret Harte’s poems and stories of the American west were written during the times depicted in your contemporary example by Cormac McCarthy. As they’re authors of classics, maybe you’ve already spent time on William Faulkner and Robert Burns.
Beyond the US/UK, Marlon James’s _A Brief History of Seven Killings_ is dense with Jamaican patois. Ben Okri and Sefi Atta are Nigerian authors whose works incorporate localized vernacular.
Confederacy of Dunces
Wuthering Heights
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James