Dialect in Their Eyes Were Watching God

The characters in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God use very flowery and complex language while speaking. They also speak in a dialect very similar to, if not the same as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This is an interesting phenomenon because commonly in literature when characters speak AAVE or another dialect typically associated with a lower socioeconomic status, these characters are depicted poorly. For example, in Native Son, Bigger says things like “yessuh” instead of “yes sir” and is not depicted particularly intelligently. There are better examples out there where the character(s) solely speak in AAVE, speak more often, and are more explicitly depicted more negatively. Besides books, several TV shows and movies are among the abundance of examples of this all-too-common phenomenon.

At first it is unclear to the reader whether or not Hurston is painting her characters in a positive light. The fact that they are speaking in what is often called “broken English” seems negative upon a surface-level reading. (This English would be considered broken by some people because it does not obey laws of vocabulary, pronounciation/spelling, and grammar that are widely accepted as proper.) The fact that how Hurston's characters speak strays from what is accepted as the formal, respectable, and correct way of speaking can initially imply that the characters that speak this way are none of these things.

However, it is clear upon a close reading that the way these characters talk has very little to do with their intelligence. In fact, Hurston elevates her characters rather than demeans them by having them speak in this way. In the particular dialect that Hurston illustrates, simple images or concepts are frequently replaced with witty, clever metaphors and similes. For example, someone in the first chapter declares, “‘taint no use in tryin’ to cloak no ole woman lak Janie Starks” (3). While the example is nowhere near the most obscure in the book, or even in the chapter, it demonstrates how dialect-style spelling and phrasing are used in tandem with inventive metaphors. This figurative language is most likely initially difficult to Hurston’s average reader, but it is spoken naturally and understood easily by her characters. For example, we wouldn’t write “I” as “Ah” and therefore might take an extra second to recognize it, but that is how it would be identified by the characters in the book. In order to speak in such metaphorical terms all the time, these characters must be quick-thinking and creative. It also requires for the characters to be able to understand their language on a figurative level, which is a whole nother additional level that we are used to nonchalantly speaking in. Take the phrase “you switches a mean fanny round in a kitchen,” for instance (5). The words “switches,” “mean,” “fanny,” and “round”  all have different meanings in this sentence then they do when we first think of them. All of the characters in the book have storytelling voices that, like Hurston’s, appeal to a particularly strong sense of imagery and emotion. The sentence “An envious heart makes a treacherous ear” (5), gracefully gives the idea being explained a certain level of detail that couldn’t be achieved with more direct language. There are other sentences with figurative language in the book that evoke emotion as well.

I am writing this blog post very early on in the novel, and quite curious as to how the dynamic between how the characters speak, and how they are depicted continues throughout the book. I wonder if the characters will still be depicted in a generally positive light, and whether or not we will come across any characters