Eye dialect

Eye dialect is a writer's use of deliberately nonstandard spelling either because they do not consider the standard spelling a good reflection of the pronunciation or because they are intending to portray informal or low-status language usage.^[1][2] The term was coined by George Philip Krapp to refer to a literary technique that implies the standard pronunciation of a given word that is not well-reflected by its standard spelling, such as wimmin to represent more accurately the typical English pronunciation of women. However, eye dialect is also commonly used to indicate that a character's speech is vernacular (nonstandard), casual, foreign, or uneducated,^[3][4] often to be humorous. This form of nonstandard spelling differs from others in that a difference in spelling does not indicate a difference in pronunciation of a word. That is, it is a "dialect to the eye", rather than "to the ear".^[5]

Most authors are likely to use eye dialect with restraint, sprinkling nonstandard misspelling here and there to serve as a cue to the reader about all of a character's speech, rather than as an accurate phonetic representation.

While mostly used in dialogue, eye dialect may appear in the narrative depiction of altered spelling made by a character (such as in a letter or diary entry), generally used to more overtly depict characters who are poorly educated or semi-literate.^[6]

The term eye dialect was first used by George Philip Krapp in 1925. "The convention violated", he wrote, "is one of the eyes, not of the ear."^[7] According to Krapp, it was not used to indicate a real difference in pronunciation but

the spelling is merely a friendly nudge to the reader, a knowing look which establishes a sympathetic sense of superiority between the author and reader as contrasted with the humble speaker of dialect.

The term is less commonly used to refer to pronunciation spellings, that is, spellings of words that indicate that they are pronounced in a nonstandard way.^[8] For example, an author might write dat as an attempt at accurate transcription of a nonstandard pronunciation of that.

In an article on written representations of speech in a non-literary context, such as transcription by sociolinguists, Denis R. Preston argued that such spellings serve mainly to "denigrate the speaker so represented by making him or her appear boorish, uneducated, rustic, gangsterish, and so on".^[9]

Jane Raymond Walpole points out that there are other ways to indicate speech variation such as altered syntax, punctuation, and colloquial or regional word choices. She observes that a reader must be prompted to access their memory of a given speech pattern and that non-orthographic signals that accomplish this may be more effective than eye dialect.^[10] Frank Nuessel points out that use of eye dialect closely interacts with stereotypes about various groups, both relying on and reinforcing them in an attempt to efficiently characterize speech.

In The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction, John Dufresne cites The Columbia Guide to Standard American English in suggesting that writers avoid eye dialect; he argues that it is frequently pejorative, making a character seem stupid rather than regional, and is more distracting than helpful. Like Walpole, Dufresne suggests that dialect should be rendered by "rhythm of the prose, by the syntax, the diction, idioms and figures of speech, by the vocabulary indigenous to the locale".^[11] Other writers have noted that eye dialect has sometimes been used in derisive fashion toward ethnic or regional pronunciation, in particular by contrasting standard spelling with non-standard spelling to emphasize differences.^[12][13][14]

Eye dialect, when consistently applied, may render a character's speech indecipherable.^[15] An attempt to accurately render nonstandard speech may also prove difficult to readers unfamiliar with a particular accent.^[16]

Charles Dickens combined eye dialect with pronunciation spelling and nonstandard grammar in the speech of his uneducated characters. An example in Bleak House is the following dialogue spoken by Jo, the miserable boy who sweeps a path across a street:

...there wos other genlmen come down Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded as to be a-talking to theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin to us.

In the above, wos, sed, and wuns indicate standard pronunciations.^[17]

In his Discworld series of books, Terry Pratchett makes extensive use of eye dialect to extend the caricature of his characters, besides other visual devices such as changing the font used for certain dialogue. Death, for example, speaks in small capitals, while the dialogue of a golem, who can communicate only by writing, resembles Hebrew script in reference to the origins of the golem legend. Eye dialect is also used to establish a medieval setting, wherein many characters' grasp of spelling is heavily based on phonetics.^{[citation needed]}

In his 1937 poem "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel", John Betjeman deploys eye dialect on a handful of words for satirical effect; in this case the folly of the arresting police officers, who are made to seem like comic caricatures of themselves:

Mr. Woilde, we 'ave come for tew take yew
Where felons and criminals dwell:
We must ask yew tew leave with us quoietly
For this is the Cadogan Hotel.

An extreme example of a poem written entirely in (visually barely decipherable) eye dialect is "YgUDuh" by E. E. Cummings, which, as several commentators have noted, makes sense only when read aloud.^[18] In this case, Cummings's target was the attitudes of certain Americans to Japanese people following World War II.

American cartoonist Al Capp frequently combined eye dialect with pronunciation spelling in his comic strip Li'l Abner. Examples include lissen, aristocratick, mountin [mountain], correkt, feends, hed, introduckshun, leppard, and perhaps the most common, enuff. Only his rustic characters are given these spellings; for instance, the "overcivilized" Bounder J. Roundheels's dialogue contains gourmets, while Li'l Abner's contains goormays.^[19]

Cartoonist Walt Kelly made extensive use of eye dialect in Pogo. Like Pratchett, he used unique fonts for many of his supporting characters.^{[citation needed]}

Some cartoonists and comic book creators eschew phonetic eye dialects in favor of font changes or distinctive speech balloons. Swamp Thing, for example, has traditionally been depicted using "crusty" yellow speech balloons and dialogue heavily laced with ellipses, suggesting a gravelly voice that only speaks with great effort. Robotic and computer characters often use square speech balloons and angular fonts reminiscent of OCR-A, suggesting a stilted, emotionless cadence. Thor's dialogue has routinely been written in an elegant font, implying his archaic vocabulary and pronunciation as a millennia-old god. After Thor passed the mantle to Jane Foster, her dialogue was written in the same font whenever she transformed into Thor, before reverting to normal when she did as well.

American film director Quentin Tarantino used eye dialect for the title of his movie Inglourious Basterds.

The titles of a number of songs by Black Country band Slade, starting with "Coz I Luv You", are written in a Black Country pronunciation.^[20]

The novel Zazie dans le Métro is written in French yet disregards almost all French spelling conventions, as the main viewpoint character is a young child.^[21]

• Apologetic apostrophe
• Eye rhyme
• Hypercorrection
• Inventive spelling
• Mondegreen
• Preved
• Satiric misspelling
• Sensational spelling
• Spelling pronunciation
• SMS language

• Bolinger, Dwight L. (Oct–Dec 1946), "Visual Morphemes", Language, 22 (4): 333–340, doi:10.2307/409923, JSTOR 409923
• Dufresne, John (2003), The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction, W.W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0-393-05751-8
• Levenston, Edward A. (1992), The Stuff of Literature: Physical Aspects of Texts and Their Relation to Literary Meaning, SUNY Press, ISBN 0-7914-0889-2, retrieved 2011-06-12
• Malin, Stephen D. (1965), "Eye Dialect in "Li'l Abner"", American Speech, 40 (3): 229–232, doi:10.2307/454075, JSTOR 454075
• Nuessel, Frank H. Jr. (1982), "Eye Dialect in Spanish: Some Pedagogical Applications", Hispania, 65 (3): 346–351, doi:10.2307/341268, JSTOR 341268
• Rickford, John; Rickford, Russell (2000), Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English., New York: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-39957-4
• Walpole, Jane Raymond (1974), "Eye Dialect in Fictional dialogue", College Composition and Communication, 25 (2): 191–196, doi:10.2307/357177, JSTOR 357177
• Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993), The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-06989-8

• 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, 63, 522–527.
• Macaulay, Ronald K. S. (1991). Coz It Izny Spelt When Then Say It: Displaying Dialect in Writing. American Speech, 66 (3), 280–291.
• 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.

• The dictionary definition of eye dialect at Wiktionary