Their Eyes Were Watching God Language Analysis

The English language is and always has been a fluid, ever changing form of speech. The way we think, speak and write is influenced several different factors. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader sees examples of multiple forms of English on the same platform. Though it can’t be known exactly why the novel was written this way, its impact is unmistakable. The use of both formal language and Southern black colloquialism not only shapes how the reader sees the characters and the main character Janie’s transformation, but it also exposes how the average reader has been subjected to the elitism of English. The way people speak English is primarily affected by where and from whom they learned to speak it. In many cases,