Date:  Sun, 13 Mar 1994 14:43:08 -0600

From:  mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU

Subject: Re: Actors & Accent



I think there is certaily an "ear dialect" that appears in films and may

have its origins in live stage performances or in fiction and other

textual sources. I can't prove it yet.



Has anyone noticed that some African American authors use eye-dialect

and other distancing features wen depicting black characters? See

Richard Wright in "Almos' a Man." Here *damn* is spelled "dam'".

I think Langston Hughes does it sometimes.



Question: in *The Color Purple,* Alice Walker's narrator, Cielie, uses

"us" in subject position. It is no accident or unconscious thing, for

antother character tries to get Celie to change to "we." It bothers me,

probably because I have never encountered it except in "Pogo Possum,"

but I don't trust my instincts much wen it comes to VBE or plantations

southern or Gullah, having had very little contact with any of them and

not being familiar with all the scholarship. Have any of you who are

speakers or students of VBE or similar southern lects ever seen or heard

an actual attestation of nominal "us"? I f you have, are the only

exampes you know from Gullah speakers (or Carribean creoles), or is it more

widespread? In the U.S.?



Second question, to people with same expertise: if you have seen the

film by the same title, what is your reaction to the varieties of English

produced in that film?