Wallace's Dialects

Zusammenfassung 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 how we 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. Wallace’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. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of Abbreviations Series Editor’s Introduction 1. Language, Linguistics, and Literary Dialectology2. Foreigners and Foreign-ness3. Ethnicity and Segregation4. Ethnicity and Assimilation5. Regionality and the White Working Class6. Texan Pride and Southern Shame7. Midwestern and Rural8. Boston and Urban9. “Dave Wallace” and His Readers10. Language and Humanity Acknowledgments Bibliography Index

Product details

• Authors: Mary Shapiro
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.12.2021
• EAN: 9781501371134
• ISBN: 978-1-5013-7113-4
• No. of pages: 240
• Series: David Foster Wallace Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 21st Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Sociolinguistics, c 2000 to c 2010, c 2000 to c 2009, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, c 1990 to c 2000, c 1990 to c 1999