eye dialect
Written accent representation
Eye dialect is the use of nonstandard spellings to represent ordinary pronunciation: sez for "says," wuz for "was," enuff for "enough." The technique appears in fiction to suggest a character's lack of education or regional background, even when the spelling represents how most people actually speak.
The term is slightly pejorative—it implies the author is creating an illusion of difference where little exists.
- accentRegional speech pattern
- thick accentPronounced regional inflection
- usageAct of employing something
- dialectRegional language variety
- gonnaCasual "will" contraction
vernacular · idiom · characterization · Zora Neale Hurston · Uncle Remus · written dialogue · narrative voice · spelling conventions · cant · language · dialogue writing · colloquial speech · local color · orthography · regional accents · speech patterns · phonetics · wanna
- slangslang, jargon, lingo, argot, cant
- dialectsregional dialect, local dialect, patois, vernaculars, vernacular
- language varietiesdialect, idiolect, sociolect, vernacular, accent
- speech errorsslip of the tongue, mispronunciation, malapropism, malapropisms, spoonerism