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Eye dialect is the use of nonstandard spelling for speech to draw attention to an ironically standard pronunciation. The term was coined by George P. Krapp to refer to the literary technique of using nonstandard spelling that implies a pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard, such as ''wimmin'' for ''women''; the spelling indicates that the character's speech overall is dialectal, foreign, or uneducated. This form of nonstandard spelling differs from others in that a difference in spelling does not indicate a difference in pronunciation of a word. That is, it is dialect to the eye rather than to the ear. It suggests that a character "would use a vulgar pronunciation if there were one" and "is at the level of ignorance where one misspells in this fashion, hence mispronounces as well." The term is less commonly also used to refer to pronunciation spellings, that is, spellings of words that indicate that they are pronounced in a nonstandard way. For example, an author might write ''dat'' as an attempt at accurate transcription of a nonstandard pronunciation of ''that''. The rest of this article will discuss the former definition. See pronunciation spelling for the latter. ==Use== Some notable authors who use eye dialect include Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, William Faulkner, Robert Ruark, Charles Dickens, Alex Haley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Terry Pratchett, Greer Gilman, Russell Hoban and James Whitcomb Riley. However, most authors are likely to use eye dialect with restraint, sprinkling nonstandard misspelling here and there to serve as a cue to the reader about all of a character's speech, rather than as an accurate phonetic representation. While mostly used in dialogue, eye dialect may appear in the narrative depiction of altered spelling made ''by'' a character (such as in a letter or diary entry), generally used to more overtly depict characters who are poorly educated or semi-literate. Eye dialect is often employed when authors wish to establish a sympathetic sense of superiority between themselves and the reader as contrasted with the nonstandard speech of the character.〔Tom McArthur,(1998) Eye Dialect, The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language.〕 Such spellings serve mainly to "denigrate the speaker so represented by making him or her appear boorish, uneducated, rustic, gangsterish, and so on".〔Denis R.Preston (1985), The Li’l Abner Syndrome: Written Representations of Speech, American Speech, Vol. 60, No. 4, pp. 328〕 "The convention violated is one of the eyes, not of the ear".〔George P. Krapp(1925) The English Language in America〕 Jane Raymond Walpole points out that there are other ways to indicate speech variation such as altered syntax, punctuation, and colloquial or regional word choices. She observes that a reader must be prompted to access their memory of a given speech pattern and that non-orthographic signals that accomplish this may be more effective than eye dialect. Frank Nuessel points out that use of eye dialect closely interacts with stereotypes about various groups, both relying on and reinforcing them in an attempt to efficiently characterize speech. In ''The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction'', John Dufresne cites ''The Columbia Guide to Standard American English'' in suggesting that writers avoid eye dialect; he argues that it is frequently pejorative, making a character seem stupid rather than regional, and is more distracting than helpful. Like Walpole, Dufresne suggests that dialect should be rendered by "rhythm of the prose, by the syntax, the diction, idioms and figures of speech, by the vocabulary indigenous to the locale." Eye dialect, when consistently applied, may render a character's speech indecipherable. An attempt to accurately render nonstandard speech may also prove difficult to readers unfamiliar with a particular accent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eye dialect」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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