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Abstract:
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A Game of Confidence : Literary Dialect , Linguistics , and Authenticity builds a bridge between literary -critical and linguistic approaches to representations of nonstandard speech in literature . Important scholarship both in linguistics and in literary criticism has sought to develop rigorous inquiry into deviations from standard written language to represent features of nonstandard spoken language in literature . I argue that neither field , however , has fully embraced the idea that , by definition , 'literary dialect' necessitates an interdisciplinary approach . Furthermore , neither has successfully integrated the other's very different theories and methods . As a result , 'literary dialect' provides an exciting opportunity for new scholarship connecting recent developments in literary history , sociolinguistics , and digital humanities . The goals of my project are two -fold : First , to analyze within their own cultural and historical contexts previous attempts by authors , readers , and scholars to fix the supposedly empirical accuracy of literary dialect representations ; second , to model what I take to be an empirically more valid use of linguistics for analyzing literary artists' representations of nonstandard speech . My work provides a necessary intervention for literary dialect criticism , particularly for the many arguments that have sought a degree of objectivity for assertions about the artistic or socio -political merits of a dialect text based on vague linguistic generalizations . My dissertation's primary focus is on the period that has served historically as the locus classicus for scholarship on American dialect literature : The second half of the nineteenth century when local colorists , regionalists , and realists used 'real' American voices as the foundation for a realistic American literature . By analyzing the production and historical reception of literary dialect texts from this period I show how assessments of 'authenticity' have been a constant in the critical response to these texts for nearly a century and a half . Having underscored the critical problems inherent in linking artistic and political evaluations of dialect texts to the 'authenticity' of their literary dialects , I then draw on recent developments in the digital humanities , computational linguistics , and sociolinguistics to employ a methodology for generating and interpreting literary -linguistic data on literary dialects . |