Zora Neale Hurston's Sweat: The Influence Of Culture

Setting, including physical location and time, is essential for establishing the backgrounds and identities of characters in a piece. Even within countries like the United States, where English is the national language and spoken by almost everyone, regional influences on language exist. The way a character speaks and communicates is an important part of their personal identity as a character, as well as an expression of their regional and cultural background. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Sweat, the dialect of the South used by the characters is a ready example of the influence of culture on one’s language. The heavy influences of culture are apparent in many texts, and a change in time or location would alter the language and mannerisms of speech

She does this by writing out the words the way the characters pronounce them, not necessarily how they are spelled. An example of this style is a line spoken by a minor character: “Yep. Hot or col’, rain or shine, ies ‘ez reg’lar ez de weeks roll roun’ Delia carries ‘em an’ fetches ‘em on Sat’day.” Hurston exemplifies the traditional southern speech, used specifically by African Americans, by removing letters and replacing them with an apostrophe, eliminating the sound to match the omission of syllables by the speaker. When the reader reads this line, they not only understand the message, but the way that it would be spoken. This allows for a deeper connection to each character, and for the regional and cultural influences on their language to be showcased naturally. The physical representation of language influences our perception of the character, and in most other books written in “proper” English, this connection is somewhat lost. This phonetic language represents the culture of the area perfectly, and contributes the development of characters and their

It is widely known that regional accents exist all over the United States, and that the cultural history of the area has a large influence on how modern inhabitants speak. This is addressed and tracked in the documentary Do You Speak American, and provides an excellent sampling of the regional accents throughout the United States and their origin. The differences, all based on the historical inhabitants of an area, pertain to any number of differences, primarily pronunciations of words. This creates a clear picture for all the different possible accents or mannerisms that could be developed by the characters of Sweat, provided the story took place in a different location and possibly time. If the story had changed location to the Northeast, near Boston, the lifestyle and culture, as well as the language, of the characters would be vastly different. As described by Professor Vajda, the Northeast dialect, influenced primarily by English Puritans, possesses a twang, a “flat sounding nasal lengthening of vowels.” This leads to the famous r-less pronunciations of words, like cah (car) and Hahvahd (Harvard). If this language influence was present in Sweat, the individuals would speak without the distinctive lack of an -ing at the end of words, along with a number of traits. African Americans were much more