Wallace’s Dialects

Description

Mary Shapiro explores the use of regional and ethnic dialects in the works of David Foster Wallace, not just as a device used to add realism to dialogue, but as a vehicle for important social commentary about the role language plays in our daily lives, how we express personal identity and navigate social relationships. Wallace’s Dialects straddles the fields of linguistic criticism and folk linguistics, considering which linguistic variables of Jewish-American English, African-American English, Midwestern, Southern, and Boston regional dialects were salient enough for Wallace to represent, and how he showed the intersectionality of these with gender and social class. The author’s own use of language is examined with respect to how it encodes his identity as a white, male, economically privileged Midwesterner, while also foregrounding characteristic and distinctive idiolect features that allowed him to connect to readers across implied social boundaries Title Page Copyright Page Contents Abbreviations Series Editor’s Introduction Chapter 1: Language, Linguistics, and Literary Dialectology Chapter 2: Foreigners and Foreignness Chapter 3: Ethnicity and Segregation Chapter 4: Ethnicity and Assimilation Chapter 5: Regionality and the White Working Class Chapter 6: Texan Pride and Southern Shame Chapter 7: Midwestern and Rural Chapter 8: Boston and Urban Chapter 9: “Dave Wallace” and His Readers Chapter 10: Language and Humanity Acknowledgments Bibliography Index