Top 10 Slang Narratives: From Burgess To Faulkner

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By Kathleen Massara

Dialect can be used as a class marker, or as something that identifies your hometown, your race, or your predilection for jargon. There are standard dialects, which are those institutionally-approved ways of speaking that make us understood, but are frankly a little boring. And then there are Newfies, the stalwart denizens of the oddly-shaped island near Québec who speak a language very much their own. The authors below use dialect either as a majority of the novel or as an abrupt break from the narration; many of them are from the opposite side of the Atlantic, but some of them are from the South, or fake it, like Cormac McCarthy.

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"Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce

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"Do tell us all about. As we want to hear allabout. So tellus tellas allabouter. The why or whether she looked alottylike like ussies and whether he had his wimdrop like themses shut?" John Bishop's introduction in the Penguin edition purports that this comic novel is a Rorschach test, revealing its readers "monomanias, deferentialities, and peculiar little areas of expertise." To say that this style is "experimental" is like saying Beşiktaş fans merely enjoy soccer -- a severe understatement.

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"Do tell us all about. As we want to hear allabout. So tellus tellas allabouter. The why or whether she looked alottylike like ussies and whether he had his wimdrop like themses shut?"

John Bishop's introduction in the Penguin edition purports that this comic novel is a Rorschach test, revealing its readers "monomanias, deferentialities, and peculiar little areas of expertise." To say that this style is "experimental" is like saying Beşiktaş fans merely enjoy soccer -- a severe understatement.

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This Book

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

This book was gibberish Loved this book!

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Comments

[ptrgamb]

06:46 AM on 03/17/2011

I'm surprised "Call It Sleep" by Henry Roth isn't on this list

[RTFanatic]

12:06 PM on 03/15/2011

Marjorie Kinnan-Rawlings' The Yearling belongs in this list.

[chercheur]

02:13 AM on 03/14/2011

I'm not sure it qualifies as "dialect" but it's as qualifying as "Finnegans Wake" and that's Lewis Carroll's THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK and JABBERWOCKY.

Also, include Elizabeth Gaskell's MARY BARTON (far from her best work, but probably the most important where dialect is concerned).

And someone's already mentioned Russell Hoban's RIDDLEY WALKER.

[ESerafina42]

12:36 PM on 03/13/2011

In a related note, a new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will soon be published in which all the characters, including "Slave JIm," speak Standard English. This is being done to assuage the concern of parents and teachers who are hesitant to allow their children to be exposed to the bad grammar of the original. Fundamentalist Christians have also requested that the new edition have Huck turn Jim in, since his expressed willingness to go to hell is a bad influence on their children.

[ESerafina42]

12:29 PM on 03/13/2011

Since when are "dialect" and "slang" the same thing?

[garystartswithg]

12:15 AM on 03/11/2011

darl's preoccupation in as I lay dying has to be one of the most effective uses of colloquialisms in literature. confedaracy of dunces is the only book that has come close.

[Allen Keller]

09:55 PM on 03/10/2011

Hey, Kathleen. You say Cormac McCarthy "fakes," but he grew up in Knoxville Tennessee. Why do you say this?

[garystartswithg]

12:36 AM on 03/11/2011

a thenk wesuns dawn heir in da souf ah sposed be barly litrit un mosely bakwads. dayum ma cusin is lookin fayn.

[unitron]

07:49 PM on 03/10/2011

It's Pidgin English, not Pigeon English.

[garystartswithg]

12:04 AM on 03/11/2011

awe you mean i can't hunt it? darn.

[RTFanatic]

12:08 PM on 03/15/2011

I think it's called "Pigeon" in the title for reasons entirely related to pidgin English.

[deadgnome321]

01:01 PM on 03/10/2011

Anything Irving Welsh should be included.

[iwritereadrate]

11:40 AM on 03/10/2011

Some awesome books here - I've read quite a few of them, but will definitely investigate those I haven't, and add them to my upcoming reading list...!

Thanks

Adam
www.iwritereadrate.com

[captain hooker]

11:21 AM on 03/10/2011

A good collection - I've read several of them, and found them much easier to get through reading them out loud - phonetically. Trying to visually replace the oddly spelled words on the page with correctly spelled words only goes so far. Sometimes you just have to use your mouth to realize the connection of the "corrupted" pronunciation to the "actual" word.

[ESerafina42]

12:39 PM on 03/13/2011

Listening to well-narrated audiobooks may also help.

[Gregory Marshall]

10:18 AM on 03/10/2011

I have not read most of these, but I have read "A clockwork Orange" it really takes about three chapters in before you really pick up what the slang words mean. Viddy?

[horhay]

03:03 PM on 03/10/2011

Viddy well, brother.

[RTFanatic]

12:09 PM on 03/15/2011

Real horrorshow, that list.

[DBonstrom]

11:21 PM on 03/09/2011

I'm surprised that neither Denis Johnson's "Fiskadoro" nor Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker" made this list. Both written in imagined, "progressed" languages like "A Clockwork Orange" -- and both as chilling and memorable.

[chercheur]

02:06 AM on 03/14/2011

I was paging through these comments precisely to see if anyone mentioned RIDDLEY WALKER.

[trekbette]

09:55 PM on 03/09/2011

Would EE Cummings and Dr Seuss qualify for this category?

[wm1066]

05:11 PM on 03/09/2011

In the 1940's movie" Mr Lucky" Cary Grant teaches Loraine Day rhyming slang. A twist and twirl means a girl, a tit for tat is a hat, and bottle and stopper I think was a cop... Fun movie, still holds up over time.