Accents: A How (not) To

 

There is poetry in an accent. Chistopher Waltz’ Austrian lilt, Lupita Nyong ’o’s intercontinental elocution, or even the late-great Dennis Farina’s Chicago brogue are all part of their performance and inform the characters they play. Truly, accents can be lyrical on the stage and on the screen. 

 

However, in print, accent marks and dialect-indicative spellings are a pain in the anatomy for the reader and can provoke editors to chainsaw killings. 

Anyone who’s read Twain, the Brontë sisters, and/or Dickens knows that the use of accents have a longstanding, if dubious history. All-too often though the accent is a distraction. In other instances the use of an accent is exploitive, if not fraudulent, e.g. all of Forrest Carter’s writings.

Probably Petty's most underrated album—no jokes, just facts

The young’uns call it country, the Yankees call it dumb, Tom Petty, Southern Accents

Is an accent “local color,” or offensive? Usually, the difference, (or the defense) is between intent and reception. When I submitted my Louisiana-Creole-accented hoodlum to my first crit-group, I was surprised by the response. My dialogue met with praise... from the six white writers. The sole writer of color as well as the crit-group leader, (a recent immigrant from Ireland) remained coolly silent. I gutted all accent and dialect from my work that night.

The salient question is what does an accent mean now? Willie Nelson is from Abbott, (a farming community about 25 miles north of Waco) and he sounds like Texas. Jennifer Garner is from Houston, (4th largest city in the nation). She sounds like Texas, too. Neither sounds like Texas in television and the movies.

The UK comprises 12 regions, including Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Those 12 regions speak, (mostly) one language. Yet the diversity of accents is legendary. 

But there are other languages and other accents

I was once at a conference where I listened as two men from Nigeria cycled through three languages before they settled on a fourth they both felt confortable with. From a later conversation, I learned that Nigeria has four lingual families and over 500 distinctive languages. So, yeah, respectfully defining an accent might prove a little more challenging than "posh" or "Cockney."

Ignorance is understandable in conversation, in a mono-lingual nation. That ignorance is inexcusible in print. Needless to say, when I read that he/she spoke with an “African accent,” I get punchy.

So, who does it right... 

Yeah, make fun of the Doctor's accent...

Thomas Harris trusts the reader to decide what Louisianan, Will Graham and West Virginian, Clarice Starling might sound. But Hannibal Lecter is the ultimate example of “tell” efficiently moving the story forward where “show” would only encumber the reader. Born in Lithuania, relocated to France in adolescence, and settling in Baltimore as a young adult, Doctor Lecter’s "indistinct" accent is mentioned but neither defined, nor “shown.”  

Half-a-dozen cultures, no accent marks

Walter Mosley's Los Angeles is a cynosure of cultures. Ezekial "Easy" Rollins is from Houston, Texas. Paris Minton is from Galveston. Their community spans California to Louisiana, to Panama. Some speak Spanish, some Japanese, others Creole French. Most speak English. Nowhere does Mosley rely on truncations or accent marks.

A master-class in dialogue

Robert B. Parker made a 40-plus-year career writing whip-crack smart dialogue without once stooping to dialogue. In one novel, Parker wrote an F.B.I agent who mimics Police Lieutenant Martin Quirk’s Boston burr and we read him that way forevermore. Parker conveys ethnic/geographic/social differences with turns of phrase—not Franken-spellings or grammar mutilations. Elegant prose beats pyrotechnics any day.

Less is always more.

I own none of the photos here. All are used for educational/illustrational purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.