Paul Laurence Dunbar Regional Dialect Essay

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Regional dialect is the type of descriptive writing authors capture through the grammar and spelling used in a particular region in the country. Two of America’s writers were successful in this type of writing, Mark Twain and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Both of these writers helped pave way for a new type a literary writing in America.

Regional dialect is unmistakable throughout the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Growing up along the Mississippi River, Samuel Clemens, famously known as Mark Twain, used his familiarity and knowledge of the region to create the novel. The sentences found in chapter 31, "We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long ways from home” and “We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards”, describe the characteristics of the south through the use of informal grammar; this is an example of regional dialect. Twain's use of phonetic spelling gives the audience insight to how words and phrases
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Dunbar caters to whites and blacks with use of formal, Standard English as well as the dialect of African Americans. The overall message of Dunbar’s poems depends on if a dialect is used or not. In his poem, "We Wear the Mask", Dunbar’s use a formal English further emphasizes the serious theme of the metaphorical poem, which is black oppression. In another poem, “Little Brown Baby”, Dunbar uses regional dialect to express the sentimental love between a southern, African American father, whose lack of education is evident, and his son. Readers can also interpret the region the man lives in because of the excessive use of apostrophes and misspelling of words which further emphasizes the deep southern accent such as that found in line 3 of the poem, "What you been doin', suh—makin' san' pies?" Dialects change the tone of the poem; a gloomy tone in “We Wear the Mask”, and a joyous tone in “Little Brown

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