Dialog and Dialect

It ain't what you say, it's the way how you say it.

"Speak the speech I pray you, as I did teach it to you, trippingly on the tongue." -- Shakespeare.

Writing is half the work. The other half is research, and 90 percent of the rest is preparation, often subconscious. -- The Yogi Berra School of Literary Excellence

   A writer's task is to communicate, but if the writer's grammar, spelling, punctuation and style clash with the reader's sense of what is acceptable, readers are distracted by what they perceive as improper usage, and the writer's message is lost. This is also true for speakers.
  There are social levels as well as regions that play a role in how people speak and write, and this is true of many countries.
   Not all the Irish, for example, sound like Barry Fitzgerald, and never have, since there are several distinct patterns depending on geography, among other things. Cork City is one, Dublin another, Belfast another, and Limerick still another. And there are social levels that play a role also. New York City, for example, has several dialects, and on these dialects are different from those in Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston SC, and New Orleans.
   Dialects, whether social or regional, formed the basis for the movie, "My Fair Lady," about Eliza Doolittle and Prof. Henry Higgins, based on the play, "Pygmalion," by G.B. Shaw. The premise was that a young woman with the Cockney dialect of London could be accepted in higher society by simply changing her speech patterns. The Higgins character, by the way, was based on a friend Shaw knew named Henry Sweet, one of the early founders of the study of phonetics.
   Speech and writing, then, apply differing standards. An editor looks for "correctness" while a linguist knows that patterns vary by region and social level. Age, too, for that matter.
   There is no such thing as a "correct" universal pronunciation, only that some dialects and pronunciations carry more prestige than others. But that is a social judgment. To a linguist, all dialects are equal. For editors and writers, it's important to write for the most clarity.
   Writing in dialect is useful, of course, and serves an important purpose in developing characteristics. Playwright Amiri Baraka, for example, wrote many successful dramas in the dialect known as Black English. However, he wrote prose passages in what can be called Standard American Written English.
   Politicians are also famous for varying their speech depending on their audience. Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office spoke in a way more understandable to a New Jersey listener. On the stump down home in Texas, he would be easily understood by fellow Texans, but New Jerseyans would be at a loss.
  Not all politicians do this, of course. There is no mistaking Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' roots in Brooklyn, even though he has lived in and represented Vermont for decades. And Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke in the social dialect that showed his background. Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham reveals his Carolina home every time he speaks. Ronald Reagan also showed his Great Plains dialect, favored by Hollywood producers, in his speechmaking.
   As with many other things in life, to quote the old song, "It ain't what you say, it's the way how'd you say it."