http://www.tiedtothetracks.com/storytelling/archives/000601.htm
That's the essay I'm arguing against--and here's a snippit of a convo Shweta and I had RE the essay:
{Shweta Posts the above link. I ask a question about Internal-State vs External State stories.}
[01:31] Shweta: ^^ That's a good essaylet on dialect in speech, I think
[01:31] Shweta: Let me try to clarify internal-state
[01:31] Shweta: and tell you why it didn't seem lacking to me.
[01:32] Bartholomew: *reading*
[01:33] Bartholomew: The author of this essay believes that it is demeaning to alter the spelling, but that its okay to bastardize the grammar?
[01:35] Bartholomew: "The result? It's amusing and condescending -- the misspellings seem to indicate something about her intelligence, or her illiteracy."
[01:35] Bartholomew: No, it isn't.
[01:35] Bartholomew: I'd have a very nasty arguement with this person.
[01:35] Shweta: It's not bastardizing
[01:35] Shweta: it's alternate, perfectly fine, grammars.
[01:36] Shweta: People *do* speak differently, grammatically, in different places
[01:36] Bartholomew: Right.
[01:36] Shweta: and you can hear the accent just fine if you get the grammar right for it.
[01:36] Shweta: I have to agree with that author, you know. The phonetic spelling just *does* make the people sound illiterate. Especially when you do it for one character and not others.
[01:36] Shweta: Nobody talks like written English
[01:37] Bartholomew: She's argueing, it seems to me, that incorrect spelling makes him look stupid. I'm arguing that his grammar makes him look uneducated, which is exactly what the character is
[01:37] Shweta: When you take pains to point it out about one character, they *do* sound dumb. Because "the writer must have a reason for showing this"
[01:37] Bartholomew: When he changes Scarlet's spelling, it doesn't alter the sound in my mind--a point in your favor-- but it also doesn't make her seem trivialized or someone less intelligent to me, either.
[01:37] Shweta: It definitely does to me
[01:38] Shweta: In the first, the other persn sounds stupid and not worth taking seriously; in the second, she does. Very distinctly.
[01:38] Bartholomew: I just don't get that impression from that.
[01:38] Bartholomew: More important, though
[01:38] Shweta: Possibly it really depends on which accents one does phonetically
[01:39] Shweta: Like, the Southern ones might not to you
[01:39] Bartholomew: Is this the general consensus of *editors?*?
[01:39] Shweta: the Scots ones might not to me
[01:39] Shweta: I haven't seen many published pieces with ialectal spelling.
[01:39] Shweta: I don't know any editors though
[01:39] Shweta: put it in the ask an editor forum
[01:39] Shweta: anyway, I responded to your story
[01:40] Bartholomew: hmm.
[01:40] Bartholomew: I've always been of a "anything goes in dialogue" person.
[01:40] Bartholomew: Harry Potter has a few dialectal spellings in it.
[01:41] Bartholomew: Mostly when Hagrid speaks.
[01:41] Bartholomew: " 'Arry "
[01:41] Shweta: And Hagrid is not too bright.
[01:41] Shweta: Lovable, but not too bright. He does stupid things, he makes mistakes, the kids have to explain things to him.
[01:41] Shweta: He has a lower class accent, and he brings certain stereotypes with him.
[01:41] Bartholomew: An erronious assumption. The man tamed a giant spider and a threeheaded dog.
[01:42] Shweta: He's good with animals
[01:42] Shweta: He's also got very little sense
[01:42] Bartholomew: He has *different* sense.
[01:42] Shweta: and he sets small children against nasty mosnters and is surprised when it doesn't work out.
[01:42] Shweta: "Good with animals" and "simpleminded" go together in many fairy-tale traditions
[01:42] Shweta: and Hagrid is a pretty good example of that.
[01:43] Bartholomew: A hands-on learning approach. Nothing any of the other teachers, except History of Magic, perhaps, is any less dangerous than Hagrid's class.
[01:43] Bartholomew: *teachers does.
[01:43] Shweta: Sure. But not because they just plain don't understand the danger.
[01:43] Bartholomew: Didn't a girl lose an arm in the last book learning how to teleport?
[01:43] Shweta: I haven't read the last book
[01:44] Bartholomew: Well, she did.
[01:44] Shweta: I stopped at #4 because I hated it.
[01:44] Shweta: doesn't change my opinion.
[01:44] Shweta: But then, I'm not an editor.
[01:44] Shweta: Like I said, if you think the only important question is "Do editors care", I think you should ask an editor
[01:46] Bartholomew: I'm just saying Hagrid isn't stupid. And his accent doesn't make him stupid. The essayist here picked Gone With The Wind because she knew that the characters had a distinct Slave-Master relationship----one of them is already being portrayed as dumb. But what about Jack London's work? All the humans there had dialects, and most of them were pretty damn sharp.
[01:46] Bartholomew: And, actually
[01:46] Bartholomew: better place for this
[01:46] Bartholomew: the new forum for theory and stuff
[01:46] Shweta: sure
[01:46] Shweta: I'm not really up to arguing here. The author's intuitions match mine pretty well
[01:46] Bartholomew: Mind if I cram this convo into a thread?
[01:46] Shweta: I will put books down if they have dialectal spelling
[01:46] Shweta: No, go for it
#
I'll add more to this tomorrow, I just think its an interesting thing to debate.
That's the essay I'm arguing against--and here's a snippit of a convo Shweta and I had RE the essay:
{Shweta Posts the above link. I ask a question about Internal-State vs External State stories.}
[01:31] Shweta: ^^ That's a good essaylet on dialect in speech, I think
[01:31] Shweta: Let me try to clarify internal-state
[01:31] Shweta: and tell you why it didn't seem lacking to me.
[01:32] Bartholomew: *reading*
[01:33] Bartholomew: The author of this essay believes that it is demeaning to alter the spelling, but that its okay to bastardize the grammar?
[01:35] Bartholomew: "The result? It's amusing and condescending -- the misspellings seem to indicate something about her intelligence, or her illiteracy."
[01:35] Bartholomew: No, it isn't.
[01:35] Bartholomew: I'd have a very nasty arguement with this person.
[01:35] Shweta: It's not bastardizing
[01:35] Shweta: it's alternate, perfectly fine, grammars.
[01:36] Shweta: People *do* speak differently, grammatically, in different places
[01:36] Bartholomew: Right.
[01:36] Shweta: and you can hear the accent just fine if you get the grammar right for it.
[01:36] Shweta: I have to agree with that author, you know. The phonetic spelling just *does* make the people sound illiterate. Especially when you do it for one character and not others.
[01:36] Shweta: Nobody talks like written English
[01:37] Bartholomew: She's argueing, it seems to me, that incorrect spelling makes him look stupid. I'm arguing that his grammar makes him look uneducated, which is exactly what the character is
[01:37] Shweta: When you take pains to point it out about one character, they *do* sound dumb. Because "the writer must have a reason for showing this"
[01:37] Bartholomew: When he changes Scarlet's spelling, it doesn't alter the sound in my mind--a point in your favor-- but it also doesn't make her seem trivialized or someone less intelligent to me, either.
[01:37] Shweta: It definitely does to me
[01:38] Shweta: In the first, the other persn sounds stupid and not worth taking seriously; in the second, she does. Very distinctly.
[01:38] Bartholomew: I just don't get that impression from that.
[01:38] Bartholomew: More important, though
[01:38] Shweta: Possibly it really depends on which accents one does phonetically
[01:39] Shweta: Like, the Southern ones might not to you
[01:39] Bartholomew: Is this the general consensus of *editors?*?
[01:39] Shweta: the Scots ones might not to me
[01:39] Shweta: I haven't seen many published pieces with ialectal spelling.
[01:39] Shweta: I don't know any editors though
[01:39] Shweta: put it in the ask an editor forum
[01:39] Shweta: anyway, I responded to your story
[01:40] Bartholomew: hmm.
[01:40] Bartholomew: I've always been of a "anything goes in dialogue" person.
[01:40] Bartholomew: Harry Potter has a few dialectal spellings in it.
[01:41] Bartholomew: Mostly when Hagrid speaks.
[01:41] Bartholomew: " 'Arry "
[01:41] Shweta: And Hagrid is not too bright.
[01:41] Shweta: Lovable, but not too bright. He does stupid things, he makes mistakes, the kids have to explain things to him.
[01:41] Shweta: He has a lower class accent, and he brings certain stereotypes with him.
[01:41] Bartholomew: An erronious assumption. The man tamed a giant spider and a threeheaded dog.
[01:42] Shweta: He's good with animals
[01:42] Shweta: He's also got very little sense
[01:42] Bartholomew: He has *different* sense.
[01:42] Shweta: and he sets small children against nasty mosnters and is surprised when it doesn't work out.
[01:42] Shweta: "Good with animals" and "simpleminded" go together in many fairy-tale traditions
[01:42] Shweta: and Hagrid is a pretty good example of that.
[01:43] Bartholomew: A hands-on learning approach. Nothing any of the other teachers, except History of Magic, perhaps, is any less dangerous than Hagrid's class.
[01:43] Bartholomew: *teachers does.
[01:43] Shweta: Sure. But not because they just plain don't understand the danger.
[01:43] Bartholomew: Didn't a girl lose an arm in the last book learning how to teleport?
[01:43] Shweta: I haven't read the last book
[01:44] Bartholomew: Well, she did.
[01:44] Shweta: I stopped at #4 because I hated it.
[01:44] Shweta: doesn't change my opinion.
[01:44] Shweta: But then, I'm not an editor.
[01:44] Shweta: Like I said, if you think the only important question is "Do editors care", I think you should ask an editor
[01:46] Bartholomew: I'm just saying Hagrid isn't stupid. And his accent doesn't make him stupid. The essayist here picked Gone With The Wind because she knew that the characters had a distinct Slave-Master relationship----one of them is already being portrayed as dumb. But what about Jack London's work? All the humans there had dialects, and most of them were pretty damn sharp.
[01:46] Bartholomew: And, actually
[01:46] Bartholomew: better place for this
[01:46] Bartholomew: the new forum for theory and stuff
[01:46] Shweta: sure
[01:46] Shweta: I'm not really up to arguing here. The author's intuitions match mine pretty well
[01:46] Bartholomew: Mind if I cram this convo into a thread?
[01:46] Shweta: I will put books down if they have dialectal spelling
[01:46] Shweta: No, go for it
#
I'll add more to this tomorrow, I just think its an interesting thing to debate.