Teaching with Dialects: The Presence of AAVE in Zora
Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Lillian Bonar
Essay: Teaching with Dialects: The Presence of AAVE in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
Pages: 11
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Hurston’s novel is full of these conventions, as well as other dominant features of African American culture.
Omission or absence of the copula in conversations, consonant clusters reduced at the ends of words, r and l
deletion, signifying, playing the dozens, braggadocio (Smitherman), and free indirect discourse, or quasi-direct
discourse (Pateman). A favorite passage exploring the entertainment of verbal play, or signifying, occurs in
Chapter Seven when Janie finally stands up to Jody, her second husband, after all the times he had put her down
in front of others:
“Stop mixin’ up mah doings wid mah looks, Jody. When you git through tell’ me how tuh cut uh plug uh tobacco,
then you kin tell me whether mah behind is on straight or not…Naw, Ah ain’t no young gal no mo’ but den Ah
ain’t no old woman neither. Ah reckon Ah looks mah age too. But Ah’m uh woman every inch of me, and Ah know
it. Dat’s a whole lot more’n you kin say. You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but ’tain’t nothin’ to
it but yo’ big voice…Talkin’ ’bout me lookin’ old! When you pull down yo’ britches, you look lak de change uh life.”
(79)
An example of indirect discourse can be seen in Chapter Nineteen when the narrator reports some of the thoughts
of Tea Cake, Janie’s third husband, after he has taken ill with rabies and is not thinking clearly:
Tea Cake didn’t say anything against it and Janie herself hurried off. This sickness to her was worse than the storm.
As soon as she was well out of sight, Tea Cake got up and dumped the water bucket and washed it clean…He was
not accusing Janie of malice and design. He was accusing her of carelessness. She ought to realize that water
buckets needed washing like everything else. He’d tell her about i...
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