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American Literature: What The Huck Is He Saying? 105 Views

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Description:

Mark Twain could have just written Huckleberry Finn in his own voice. But... that would have sounded weird. Instead, he used literary devices such as syntax, characterization, vernacular, dialect, and colloquialism to make his characters sound like real, fully fleshed out people, drawing his readers deeper into the story. Which is exactly what happened with Jumanji. No thank you.

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English Language

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Transcript

00:01
No what the hawk is he saying Maxine jags eleven
00:09
one vernacular burn number burn tiling y'all dialing a couple
00:22
All right well have you ever noticed that books don't
00:24
always use english in the way your language arts teacher
00:27
would prefer You know they don't always use complete sentences

00:30
correct grammar or even spell things right Especially when they
00:34
speak in the voice of that character What we have
00:37
here is a classic case of first person narrative talking
00:40
in the voice of the character to give you a
00:41
sense of the guy or girl or siegel or stuffed
00:44
animal or rocking horse telling the story Sometimes doing cell
00:48
means breaking the rules of proper writing and rule breaking
00:51
can be fun when done in the right way Syntax
00:54
basically it's the way sentences air put together so that
00:57
words makes sense It's the anti word salad A set
01:00
of very boring rules you probably learned in english class
01:03
to figure out how to assemble it sends the right
01:05
way Get off those rules aaron place fly breakem why
01:08
would any writer deliberately go against the rules that your
01:11
english teacher is busy pounding into your head One big
01:15
word characterization Well you've probably noticed how A number of
01:18
characters don't talk the way that others do You know
01:21
this guy is a big one so's this guy and
01:24
this guy Well characters break the rules of syntax all
01:28
the time and yet we still understand what they're saying
01:31
Well syntax can usually be examined using one of two
01:34
specific techniques word order and sentence length Word order means
01:39
changing the placement of wards in a given sentence saying
01:43
trying too hard you are instead of you are trying
01:47
too hard for example the greatest practitioner of this technique
01:50
esses yoda But it goes way beyond little green guys
01:54
inside five films But if you applied correctly then the
01:56
grammatical mangling doesn't matter you still underst and what said
02:01
and the mangling actually becomes a delightful character affectation pro
02:05
tip you've got to know the rules of grammar before
02:08
you break him The other key aspect of syntax comes
02:10
from sentence length Well some people use short sentences when
02:14
they speak Check out hawk slinging short sentences my nose
02:18
began to each it it's still the tears come into
02:20
my eyes but i dass and scratch then it begun
02:23
itch on the inside Next i got tow hitch and
02:26
underneath puck spitting out about five words of sentence here
02:29
which you might expect from a thirteen year old kid
02:31
without much education Now my sentence length on the other
02:34
hand Well just starting to stop take a look Well
02:36
one night i creeps to dido posted late into dull
02:40
won't quite shit in a hero mrs tail the widder
02:44
she gonna sell me down to orleans but she didn't
02:47
want to but she could get eight hundred dollars for
02:50
me and it is such a big stack of money
02:52
she couldn't resist I know we've got a lot of
02:54
misspelling in there too We'll get to that for now
02:56
Look at the differences between the way i talk and
02:59
the way huck does well the length of the senses
03:01
becomes a way of showing who we are and how
03:04
we talk letting you know who's talking even if you
03:07
aren't directly told which is why syntax is so important
03:10
beyond sounding like jet i masters and resolutely refusing to
03:14
use a period syntax shows us who the speaker is
03:18
and what part of the world they call home We
03:20
also know this as vernacular why use vernacular well for
03:24
starters it's a quick and easy way to show us
03:27
where a character is from someone who says he all
03:31
probably from the south for example while someone who says
03:34
by jove is likely from great britain and pretty annoying
03:38
syntax and sentence structure worked the same way which is
03:41
why twain sticks to the vernacular and huck finn huck's
03:44
also a kid which means he doesn't know a lot
03:47
of the five dollar words that tween did Look at
03:49
the first line of the book you don't know about
03:51
me without you have read a book by the name
03:54
of the adventures of tom sawyer but that ain't no
03:57
matter Ouch Seriously bad grammar there If you turned in
03:59
a paper with grammar that bad well the failing grades
04:02
would fall like rain And obviously smart guy like mark
04:05
twain knew how to construct a sentence but he wrote
04:08
this way because well it's how hot would talk talk
04:11
wouldn't use big words So why should twain So yeah
04:14
vernacular creates character at least helps twain can tell us
04:18
that huck's a kid he comes from a certain place
04:21
and even that he's kind of racist Through his use
04:24
of slurs Well there's another rule in writing called show
04:28
Don't tell the wren acura louse tween to show us
04:31
all these things about hawk without having accountant just say
04:34
he's a bigot from missouri with a fourth grade education
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Which brings us to another important part of vernacular use
04:41
of dialect Well dialect is a particular way of speaking
04:44
from a particular part of the world Why californians say
04:48
whoa dude texan say howdy and people from the midwest
04:53
say yeah that's right don'tyou know anyway dialect can become
04:56
very detailed when you write specific characters In extreme cases
05:00
you can identify one tiny little corner of territory based
05:03
solely on where a character from that region maybe speaking
05:06
believe it or not twain was going extreme on this
05:08
one twin developed specific dialects for his character's Huck for
05:12
example uses pike county dialect which is a county on
05:15
the mississippi river between the cities of st louis and
05:18
animal btw pike county is reald despite huck's hometown of
05:22
st petersburg being totally made up If you read the
05:25
book you'll notice that i speak in a much different
05:28
dialect than huck does I was an escaped slave and
05:32
the dialogue between used for me was called slave speak
05:36
It stemmed from a lack of education and was part
05:38
of twins Efforts to call out slavery is completely awful
05:42
things as you can see have upped my game Most
05:44
interesting bits of dialect in the book come from the
05:47
duke and the king the con artist we get up
05:50
on the raft they use a very formal dialect with
05:53
a lot of complicated words However it's also clear they
05:56
don't always understand the meaning of those words They're trying
05:59
to convince everyone that their sophisticated when in fact they've
06:01
just couple of buffoons again with show don't tell idea
06:06
We know these two are deceitful and try to look
06:08
fancier than they are without having to be told we
06:11
have to listen to the way they talk well Part
06:13
of making dialect sound comes from using colloquialisms which are
06:18
specific phrases that are well overly familiar For example cap
06:21
got too handy with his hickory is a colloquial way
06:25
of saying my father beat me silly Using colloquialisms is
06:28
a clever tool for keeping the dialect simple sounding like
06:32
the characters would sound in real life While still keeping
06:35
the dialogue interesting if pucks started every sentence with i
06:38
don't expect or kindly lend me your wired era reader
06:43
well you probably be throwing the book at the wall
06:45
by the end of the first chapter But by varying
06:48
the dialogue with colloquial terms twin khun do a number
06:51
of nifty things one show readers how people talk in
06:54
a given location to make the dialogue more interesting to
06:58
read by mixing it up Three give the characters a
07:01
distinctive personality when they speak Books like huck finn have
07:05
a lot going for them which is why the language
07:07
arts students get to read them instead of say twilight
07:10
The way tween skillfully uses syntax is a tool of
07:13
characterization is one reason this book is still being taught
07:16
today not only to show us how the characters think
07:19
and act but to give us a good idea of
07:21
where they come from and to show us something about
07:23
life in that place and time It's pretty slick if
07:27
you can pull it off and it's just one of
07:28
the little tricks tween used to make huckleberry finn all
07:32
kinds of awesome Now if you'll excuse me i've got
07:34
to bone up on my french colloquialisms while huck and
07:37
i might just be planning another trip here in a 00:07:40.549 --> [endTime] few
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