How and why does Hurston use dialect in the story? Note that the characters’ speech and the narrator’s are in different dialects, with the former being Southern African-American speech and the latter being more traditionally grammatical American English, and so the story has two registers of diction.
It is very noticeable and clear that Hurston uses both South African-American dialect when the characters speak and traditionally grammatical American English during the narration. Hurston intentionally switched between two dialects for many reasons. First, adding a dialect brings liveliness to the story. It adds voice to the characters, making the story seem more realistic and bringing it to life. Because of this, “The Gilded Six-Bits” could easily be a true story. This helps readers relate to it more, as it makes the characters of the story become more human-like rather than just characters made up by Hurston. Another reason Hurston uses dialect is because dialect is often used to say phrases that do not mean the same in another dialect. For example, “making feet for shoes” is quoted with the South African-American dialect and it wouldn’t give the same feeling if it was directly translated in American English. Some phrases in a dialect are more meaningful when phrased with a dialect rather than translating it. The use of South African-American dialect also emphasizes that their culture was a little different, making the story more unique than if it was all written in American English. Hurston’s use of dialects added to the story and made it more lively and interesting.
The story is indeed very lively and interesting and this is all because of the use of dialect within the story. Although the dialogue was a little hard for me to understand I could hear their conversations in my mind, which made the story more interesting. It also brought me closer to the characters because I could feel their emotions especially the guilt Missie May felt when she betrayed her husband.