Dialect: Not Code for 'Stupid'

One day, when I was working on my postgrad degree, the heat went out in our building. A student from the adjacent lab poked her head in, and asked if I could call maintenance, because, as she put it, I 'speak fluent repairman'.

Sadly, I do not possess any superpowers that cause maintenance workers to rush to my aid. She actually meant that I can speak Central Scots, which these days is spoken most regularly by those from a working-class background. As I got off the phone, she commented: 'It's a good thing I know you from the lab, or I'd think you were kind of dumb.'

There it was-- the assumption that speaking something other than flawless Standard English indicates stupidity. This prejudice has been well-documented, with speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) being particularly targeted in the United States.

In fiction, this prejudice can be amplified when dialects are represented selectively in text. Often, characters with whom the author identifies are presented as speaking Standard English when they would not realistically do so, and represents characters from different backgrounds as speaking in dialect. Usually, this means the characters from poor and working-class backgrounds, and/or characters of colour, get heavily accented dialogue in 'inferior' forms of English, in contrast to (middle-class, Anglo-western) characters who speak like university lecturers.

While I don't advocate erasing regional speaking patterns-- they are a vital part of portraying character and setting-- it is worth giving thought to how those variations are distributed. If only side characters who are there to prop up/fawn over the main character speak in anything but Standard English, you may have a problem. There isn't a magic line to determine if you're using dialect as code for 'stupid' or 'inferior', but take a good look at your characters and their context to see what else is being conveyed besides someone's pattern of speech.