ARTICLE REVIEW

THE USE OF LITERARY DIALECT IN UNCLE TOMS CABIN

This article is written by Allison Burkette from University of Georgia in United States of America. She uses quantitative approach in her research, thus we can find many tables and percentages in her article. She wanted to dissect Uncle Toms Cabin (UTC) to see the dialect representation of the characters in UTC rather than only mentioning the colorful language of the characters. She will also prove that Harriet Beecher Stowe, the writer of UTC was remarkably accurate both linguistically and historically in writing the book. Burkette has chosen to examine only three characters from UTC; George, Mr. Haley and Aunt Chloe. She did this because to her, other characters speech is represented too seldom to make them candidates for empirical analysis. To do an empirical base for her discussion, Burkette used Wordsmith Tools. I do not know what version she used, but the current version is 5.0 and the price is currently around 50 (approx. US$70-80 or 65), too expensive for me to look around. To begin, Stowes UTC actually received both praises and criticism. Tremaine McDowell, in his 1931 article The Use of Negro Dialect by Harriet Beecher Stowe, commented that Stowe writing of dialect is inaccurate and inconsistent. On the contrary, Kenneth Florey in his own short piece in 1984, said that although Stowes use of dialect representation is somewhat crude, her linguistic curiosity did result in some attempt at realistic dialect portrayal. To disprove Tremaine McDowell, Burkette herself gives one point; she wrote that actually, in recent studies of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), it is opined that there is a close relationship between AAVE and Southern White Vernacular English (SWVE) as a result of the sociohistorical context in which AAVE began. This is one of the reasons that made me think that Burkette actually want to defend Stowes UTC in her article. I agree with the three characters that Burkette has chosen to do her article. The first one is George, a slave but handsome, intelligent and had good education. He also talked fluently, so fluently that his master began to feel an uneasy consciousness of inferiority.

(Stowe, 1966:22). As for Mr. Haley, he is white slave trader from Kentucky who is described as having coarse, commonplace features and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world (Stowe 1966:11). Aunt Chloe, the wife of Uncle Tom, is described as having a round, black shining face; her plump countenance attests to her universally held and acknowledged role as a fine and generous cook (Stowe 1966:31). Note that Burkette (or Stowe) uses many inverted commas to describe the characters. Although I find it a bit too much, but it helps me to see the characters even though I have not read the novel. Now comes to the analysis. I find that Burkette really got a lot of information from her Wordsmith Tools software. By using the software, she could do a non-bias comparison of the three characters because she could size up the samples taken from those characters. She took only the first 2000 words attributed to each character. Out of those 200 words, she made five tables and she presented it nicely. From the software, she did a phonological analysis and found that George has no gdropping (as in comin for coming), Mr. Haley has 52% g-dropping, and Aunt Chloe has 66% g-dropping in her speech. Both Mr. Haley and Aunt Chloe have dialect respelling. As for syntactic features, George has none, whereas Mr. Haley has three and those are multiple negations, lack of subject verb agreement and the non-standard use of verbal particles. Aunt Chloe also has the first two of Mr. Haleys syntactic features but for the third one, she uses non-standard past tense instead of verbal particles. The smarter the character, the more standard their language. I could not agree more with Burkette when she said that it is tempting to evaluate Stowes use of literary dialect like that. But I have to agree also with her that in real life, it is not so. In conclusion, it seems that Burkette tried to make her reader to see that Stowes UTC is based on real life. In her words; her (Stowe) use of language in it (UTC) is deliberate, carefully constructed and, to the best of her ability, an intentionally accurate and consistent portrayal of the various dialects she was exposed to in her journeys through the Ohio River area and the South, and her personal encounters with slaves and freed slaves. I agree with burkette.

DEFINING

DIALECT,

PERCEIVING

DIALECT,

AND

NEW

DIALECT

FORMATION: SARAH PALINS SPEECH

Sarah Palin. Who is she? She was born February 11, 1964, to Charles R. "Chuck" Heath, a science teacher and track and field coach, and Sarah "Sally" (ne Sheeran), a school secretary. Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. When she was a few months old, the family moved to Skagway, Alaska. Then they relocated to Eagle river in 1969; and finally settled to Wasilla, Alaska in 1972. Those information gives hint into what is peculiar about her speech. Though she is from Alaska, her speech was often identified with the upper Midwest, but we will elaborate on that later. She came to be known to the whole world when she became the Republican Vice President candidate.