Page 1 of 1

How a dialect influences how we think about a character

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 6:04 am
by Yva
Hello!

As I am interested in languages, I like to explore e.g. what special speech patterns do to readers and characters in books. I think it's amazing how tweaking the language just a bit can change how the reader thinks about this character or situation entirely.
At the moment I am really interested in dialects, especially social dialects - so a dialect which is influenced and determined by social factors. Do you know of any books where you read a dialogue and without it being mentioned you decided that one of the speakers had to be a 'member of the high-society' while the other one had to be 'lower-class'? Just because of the image some social dialects and patterns of speech evoke in our heads. The same goes for determining who might be the old lady and who the young adult in a conversation (without the actual content making it obvious).

At the moment, I am looking for a book that was published fairly recent (preferably in the 21st century because those images change so fast) and where at least one of the characters uses a very distinctive dialect that evokes a special image in the reader's mind and also in the minds of the other characters in the book, e.g. Cockney (to name a popular one).

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions but am also looking forward to hearing about your experiences with these phenomena in general!


P.S.: I don't think that everyone that uses a specific dialect is poor or dumb but authours have to play with stereotypes to evoke special images in our minds and that is what I am looking for! :)