Dialect as a Means of Preserving Culture

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The role of African American literature in recent years has been to illuminate for the modern world the sophistication and beauty inherent in the culture and dialect these people developed for themselves in the American South. When writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes insisted upon retaining the dialect of the characters in their stories and poems, they managed to convey to a future world the great depth of feeling and meaning their particular culture retained within their natural speech as well as the complexity of thought this required. While they were criticized for this particular writing style at the time (Minnick 2004), their insistence on preserving the language and beat of the speech on the street has provided modern scholars with the opportunity to understand more of the complexity of communication illustrated through their natural flow and use of sophisticated literary devices. Without this attempt at preservation, much of the richness of this community might have been lost or forgotten (Wolfram 2000). Through such abstract literary tools as metynomy, writers like Hurston managed to illustrate that the black culture retained an intuitive understanding of the use of poetic language to convey oceans of shadowy meaning to the active audience, but this representation could only be captured within their natural language. Hughes, working during a much later time period when black people were still struggling for basic rights, also put this literary device to use in his poetry. Although the black southern dialect is taken as an indication of an uneducated and nearly mindless people, African American literature written in dialect such as that of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes capture the depth, sophistication and beauty inherent in this culture that might have gone unrecognized.

It has been widely recognized that Zora Neale Hurston is a master storyteller with a fine command of language and the linguistic tools commonly available to authors (Heard 2007). This is particularly evident in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. The book was published at a time in which black people in America were no longer slaves and many of the young people, including Hurston herself, had no memory of being a slave. However, the laws in America made living conditions for black people not much better than slavery, especially in the southern regions. They were struggling to gain recognition within the greater community as fully intelligent and equally capable human beings, so a book of Hurston’s style, in which the black dialect has been preserved, created a great deal of controversy. Hurston carefully preserved the dialect of the south through a phonetic spelling of much of the actual conversation that could be heard among people sitting and talking on the porch steps in any small town in the south. However, careful study of her text reveals that Hurston’s use of this diction does not indicate a lower form of communication used by her characters. Instead, her inclusion of sophisticated literary tools, particularly her inventive use of metonymy, demonstrates a different but equally or perhaps more expressive form of communication within this community of people.

Metonymy is a literary tool that is very similar, yet still different from, metaphor. Metaphors are identified as a suggested comparison between two things, wherein one thing can be replaced with another thing in an almost identical relationship. An example of this would be would be the way Janie saw her life at the beginning of Chapter 2: “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches” (Hurston 8). One can make a relation between the tree being described here and the tree of life, each growing and branching, the first providing a material image for the metaphysical concept of the second. This metaphor is extended throughout the book as a means of describing each stage of life and existence experienced by the characters. Metonymy, on the other hand, suggests a relationship between the object and a portion of it as well as deeper connections between the object and the whole. In other words, the expression of one aspect of an idea is used to represent the whole, requiring cognitive input into the idea in order to understand the idea being presented. For a more concrete example, when the same pear tree described in chapter two emerges slightly later in the book, it is given a metonymical reference: “The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree, but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that” (Hurston 14). The pear tree is Janie and what happens to the pear tree happens to Janie. The active audience knows this because of the earlier reference, but must also understand that desecration of the tree would take a much different form from what Logan Killicks might be doing to the ‘tree’ that is Janie. The connection is both material and metaphysical, the same and different, existing on several planes at once.

This type of metonym referenced in the above example is typically referred to as a nonconventional metonym because it bases its understanding upon knowledge of the context in which it is used. In the example above, this relationship depends upon the reader’s knowledge and full understanding of the use of the pear tree as a metaphor for the young girl’s life introduced in chapter two (Deignan, 2005). The complexity of the metonym is introduced in the concept that one must also be aware of the various elements that are important characteristics of the tree at this particular time in its development and how that relates back to the girl. At the same time, the poetry of the metonym sings to the spirit and captures a deep sense of the essence of being in a way that simple symbolism doesn’t seem to do. The puzzle of its paradoxes strike to the core of the human soul as it is considered how the comparison is the same and different and the various forms these differences might take even as the body seems to feel the blows of axes at the support columns within. The metonyms to be examined in the remainder of this discussion are more conventional than this example in that they use specific words to stand for the group of individuals or elements that are involved. This makes them easier to use for the purposes of this discussion..

The porch is a metonymical device in that it is used frequently to refer not just to the physical location of the porch, but also to refer to all the individuals who gather upon the porch who, collectively, represent the entire community and the power they represent together. Thus, the porch becomes a metonym for the entire black community. This concept is first given shape in the opening scene of the novel:

The people all saw her come because it was sundown … It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human … They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment” (Hurston 1).

In this excerpt, it is shown how ‘the people’, a term used even within the Declaration of the United States as a metonym for the entire race of man living within a specified region – i.e. the community, could be found on the porches, passing “nations through their mouths” as a metonym for the myths and values that make up the building blocks of community. With the porch taking on this metonymic identity, it now becomes easy for Hurston to refer to the interactions or relationship of Janie to her community through her access to the porch. To participate in the community, Jody “wanders out to the porch of the general store whenever he wants to enjoy the perpetual storytelling which takes place there … As Janie tells a friend years later, Jody ‘classed me off.’ He does so by silencing her” (Caplan, 2000). The concept that she is unable to communicate on the porch connects with the concept that she is simply unable to communicate, she is silent. The concept that her marriage to Teacake might have a happier outcome than that found in either of her first two marriages is hinted at in the fact that she met him on the porch as a full-fledged, independent member of the community who can enter or leave the porch as she sees fit and under her own inclination. Teacake, unlike Jody, cannot silence her even should that be his inclination.

The above excerpt also introduces the concept of the mule, which is the metonymic identification of all those individuals forced to work at menial tasks or constrained in their actions in some other way. Although this is most strongly related to the position of the black woman, it is also frequently used to refer to black men as well. “Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human” (Hurston 1). In this statement, Hurston presents the concept in terms of a literal replacement of some entity other than the individual within the skin during the working day, only to be taken back by their proper owners at night when they had the freedom to be themselves. Whenever the mule is mentioned, Hurston is referring to this concept of a bestial or mindless existence, completely under the control of another: “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you” (Hurston 14). While Janie’s grandmother seems to want change in the world, she nevertheless sticks to traditions when she forces Janie to marry Logan Killicks.

Janie herself is quickly equated to the status of the mule, thus becoming a full-fledged member of the black community, as she becomes a blushing bride. The entire marriage sequence is placed in terms of a bargaining much like that undertaken in the trading of a mule. That this is a prevalent element of the culture is found as the life Janie lives with Jody becomes similarly constrained, referred to in terms of Janie’s behaving as his mule despite the fact that she is not engaged in hard labor in the fields. Ironically, when she does begin working at tasks that might equate her physically with the tasks for which a mule might be employed, Janie is seen in her most independent context. “To all appearances as Janie works beside her husband in the fields, she would seem to be the ‘mule of the world’ that her grandmother decried. The difference is that Janie works in the fields not because she has to, but because she and Tea Cake prefer to be together as much as possible” (Shields, 1997). With this distinction, the play with the word ‘mule’ becomes more evident just as the meaning that has been attached to it becomes deeper, questioning just where the mulish identity originates. This emerges again as a subtle stab at her fellow black people by the author as she asks whether the concept of the mule is fully a matter of the impressions of the white man imposing it upon the black or if the concept of the black man contributes to their adoption of a cultural attitude they learned from their forebears, who truly had no choice?

While ‘Tea Cake’ is used as a name to describe the man that Janie eventually falls in love with, the name itself is a descriptive replacing the man’s given name and continues to refer to all those attributes that the tea cake represents. “This tiny wafer tastes like fond memories and sweet dreams, and as such is a watermark on the page of Southern literature … Zora’s seductive name for Jamie’s lover is layered in cultural meaning” (Hood 78-79). Using the sweet treat as a name imbues this character with the metonymical concepts of affluent hospitality, general good will and the ultimate product of the hard labor of the south. Sugar was produced by a long process that typically entailed the labor of the black man. “It was produced by the sweat of those living close to the earth. The process for making syrup from sugar cane demanded planting, harvesting, hauling, cooking, squeezing, condensing and saving the sugar cane’s essence” (Hood 79). Therefore, the metynomy of this character illustrates that life with Tea Cake could not be completely blissful, but was marked with occasional troubles and strong disagreements and depends upon the audience’s understanding of the various connections this character’s name has with sweetness, culture and toil.

This element of his character, and the primary ingredient inherent in his name, is brought out in the various ways in which Tea Cake was not a perfect man. It is considered particularly dreadful that he steals Janie’s money a week after they are married and gambles it, then spends most of his winnings on a party she isn’t even invited to attend. As they work in the cane fields by day, Janie fights with Tea Cake over his improper behavior with Nunkie, but they make up in each others’ arms in full understanding: “The next morning Janie asked like a woman, ‘You still love ole Nunkie?’ ‘Naw, never did, and you know it too. Ah didn’t want her.’ ‘Yeah, you did.’ She didn’t say this because she believed it. She wanted to hear his denial. She had to crow over the fallen Nunkie” (Hurston 138). Demonstrating his own understanding, Tea Cake complies. As the tea cake is a treat typically served to company and therefore indicating a social visit, it is also significant that it is while she is with Tea Cake that Janie finally finds acceptance within the community. Her house becomes one of the primary gathering places in the community despite the fact that she lives down on the muck, but she returns to near isolation following Tea Cake’s death.

By referring to Janie’s true love as Tea Cake, Hurston provides her story with metonymic meaning that moves beyond the text of the story. She pulls in ideas that relate to both her black audience as well as her white audience using concepts and ideas that both can relate to and in such context as to illuminate those aspects of the idea that might not be immediately obvious. At the same time, other metonymic concepts, such as the idea of the term ‘porch’ rather than community and ‘mule’ rather than mindless work begin to explore the meanings of Hurston’s story to similar depth. The porch becomes a physical space in which Janie is allowed or disallowed to act, inclined or disinclined to participate and on which it is illustrated how her current status in the general society should be understood. The mule indicates the hard work of the people, but also the mind-set in which they undertake their work, whether they feel they are working on their own volition, to their own specifications or whether they feel they are constrained within unseen trappings set by others. Who those others might be is also called into question through the use of this term, indicating that it may be the black man himself enforcing such controls.

Langston Hughes takes the concept of speech from the allusion to ‘common speech’ one step further and preserves the vernacular of the people themselves in his poem “Mother to Son.” In this poem, Hughes also employs the concept of the metonym to depict a mother as she explains to her son that her own path through life “ain’t been no crystal stair” (2). The path has been scattered with numerous hazards that one would immediately recognize as dangerous within this context, including “splinters, / And boards torn up, / And places with no carpet on the floor” (4-6). Even the concept of the crystal stair itself has the potential for being sharp, frightening and dangerous. These references force one to think of sharp pains, sudden instability and lean times and all of the hardships that accompany such conditions. Yet still the older woman continued to climb, “And reachin’ landin’s, / And turnin’ corners, / And sometimes goin’ in the dark” (10-12). It isn’t until roughly the last quarter of the poem that it becomes clear that this is a mother trying to encourage her son to continue to struggle for something better: “So, boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps, / ‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard” (14-16). Although she knows the climb he’s making is not easy, she is telling him that she is able to understand because she has had to follow a difficult path as well. As she illustrates to him the various hardships she’s had to endure as she climbed the stairway of life, she is also letting him know that at the least, he is starting from a higher point than the place where she started. “For I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin’, / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (18-20). In making her final assertion, the crystal metonym is capable of conveying again its paradoxical nature – both sharp and piercing and beautiful and comforting all at the same time.

Through the use of these metonymic meanings, both Hughes and Hurston are able to convey the great depth of human understanding that was a natural part of their culture and heritage through the preservation of the rich language of their people. Hurston demonstrates through example how the black diction of the South is far from the ignorant, uninformed and nearly bestial bleating of a lesser spirit. By using the natural dialect of her people, Hurston is able to capture the ways in which they imbued their language with all of the depth and nuance language has to offer. Langston Hughes demonstrates how these types of deep and multi-meaningful connections can be made within the very short context of a poem. That this brilliance has only recently come to the attention of the modern world is, perhaps, a crime. Yet, had Hurston and Hughes opted not to retain the dialect of their characters, this element of their society may have escaped the modern world’s notice, forever burying the spirit and depth of their culture beneath the stilted and limited language of the white European conventions.

Works Cited

Deignan, Alice. “A Corpus Linguistic Perspective on the Relationship between Metonymy and Metaphor.” Style. Vol. 39, I. 1, (2005).

Heard, Matthew. “Dancing is dancing no matter who is doing it: Zora Neale Hurston, Literacy and Contemporary Writing Pedagogy.” College Literature. (2007).

Hood, Judy. “Born with a Skillet in her Hands.” Southern Quarterly. Vol. 44, I. 2, (2007).

Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Vintage Classics, 1995.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, (1937, 2006).

Kaplan, Deborah. “Zora Neale Hurston.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction. (2^nd Ed.). Salem Press, 2000.

Minnick, Lisa Cohen. Dialect and Dichotomy: Literary Representations of African American Speech. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.

Shields, Agnes A. “Their Eyes Were Watching God: An Analysis.” Masterplots II: Juvenile and Young Adult Literature Series. Supplement. Salem Press, 1997.

Wolfram, Walt. “Dialect in Danger.” American Language Review. Vol. 4, N. 6, (2000).

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Dialect as a Means of Preserving Culture

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