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Podcast: The Talking Appalachian Podcast
Episode: 'Eye Dialect' as a Contributor to Stereotype and Michael Montgomery's Research on the Written Dialect of 18th Century Documents
Description: What did you think of this episode?Early authors used "eye dialect," or a deliberate misspelling of words that doesn't change how they sound (like "tu" for "to" or "uv" for "of.") This literary practice, based on the authors' observations of what they heard people say, was to make their Appalachian characters seem foolish or uneducated. This use of eye dialect carried forward into comic characters like Snuffy Smith. The late Dr. Michael Montgomery's research provided valuable-and more legitimate- groundwork for those of us studying dialect today, as documented in his essay "The Englishes of Appalachia"...