Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 13, 2006, 06:51:21 pm ---I wouldn't say it's narrow-minded of you, Katherine.
--- End quote ---
Well, I was expecting I might get resistance particularly from our Western members. It could just be that I'm unfamiliar with how guys like that would really talk. The movie versions, as I said, I could totally buy, but to me the story guys seemed to veer into the realm of caricature. But then, I've never lived in Wyoming.
TJ, where are you when we need you?
--- Quote ---As a former editor who had very old-fashioned training, it drove me crazy to see going as goin without an apostrophe in place of the final g.
--- End quote ---
LOL. I don't mind goin. In fact, I kind of like the missing apostrophe. What drives me crazy is "goin a." I'd rather just see "gonna"!
nakymaton:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on September 13, 2006, 09:50:22 pm ---Well, I was expecting I might get resistance particularly from our Western members. It could just be that I'm unfamiliar with how guys like that would really talk. The movie versions, as I said, I could totally buy, but to me the story guys seemed to veer into the realm of caricature. But then, I've never lived in Wyoming.
--- End quote ---
I've only spent a little time in Wyoming. There are subtle variations in the Mountain West dialects, I think, but my ears haven't gotten good enough to pick them up. I can tell a dialect from the mountains from one from Texas or from the midwest (Iowa, for instance), though. And the differences from Californian or Southern or New England accents are pretty extreme... though I probably wouldn't say that if I spoke British English. ;D
But, ok, compared to the Colorado accents I know, I would say that the rhythm of the language is pretty good. There actually is a little bit of a break between the "gonn" and "a" that you don't hear in, say, rural New England. And if I listen closely, I can pick up the hints of two syllables, the "goin a" that's typical of the way Proulx writes the dialect. But, tell you what, it still looks weird on the page to me. It's just not the way that most American writers phoneticize rural dialects.
(And the description of Jack's Texas accent as he grew older... that's spot on, as my British friends would put it. ;D But I'm sure glad that Proulx didn't decide to write Jack's Texas accent phonetically, because that would have REALLY hurt my eyes.)
Aside: I think it's really, really hard to write American dialects, at least, in a way that doesn't seem to make fun of them. I mean, to the people speaking the dialects, that's simply the way the words are pronounced. Spelling them phonetically seems to say that "these people are speaking wrong."
And when TJ wrote with a deliberate accent, it looked really exaggerated to me, and I've heard enough Oklahoma accents that it wasn't just unfamiliarity with the dialect.
I'm less certain about how well colloquial expressions in BBM work. Those are the sort of things that can vary a lot from one place to another, in my experience, and that can get lost within a generation. And they might be the sort of thing that a 60-year-old man would not say in the presence of a 40-year-old transplant woman. (But would they say them in the presence of a 60-year-old transplant woman? How would Annie Proulx pick up the language that two native Wyoming men speak to one another?) At any rate, I've never heard anyone talk about "whipping babies."
One thing that I've heard other people (maybe at the Dave Cullen forum?) mention: all the swearing. Somebody somewhere mentioned that the ranch kids they knew tended to be really polite in their speech, even if their grammar wasn't perfect. And a friend of mine who teaches middle school to ranch kids has made similar comments -- that she's never met kids who say "yes, ma'am" and "no, sir" more than the kids who were raised on ranches.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: nakymaton on September 13, 2006, 10:27:37 pm ---One thing that I've heard other people (maybe at the Dave Cullen forum?) mention: all the swearing. Somebody somewhere mentioned that the ranch kids they knew tended to be really polite in their speech, even if their grammar wasn't perfect. And a friend of mine who teaches middle school to ranch kids has made similar comments -- that she's never met kids who say "yes, ma'am" and "no, sir" more than the kids who were raised on ranches.
--- End quote ---
Whoa. That's an interesting point, but surely even ranch kids speak differently when they're alone, among themselves, than when they're addressing their teachers?
Generally, though, I never gave the swearing a thought because it's been my experience that working class people do swear more than people with middle-class pretensions. I've seen it in my own family, among my own relatives. And Ennis and Jack are certainly rural working class.
I got to like goin a. Sounds more musical to me than gonna. :)
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: nakymaton on September 13, 2006, 10:27:37 pm ---Aside: I think it's really, really hard to write American dialects, at least, in a way that doesn't seem to make fun of them. I mean, to the people speaking the dialects, that's simply the way the words are pronounced. Spelling them phonetically seems to say that "these people are speaking wrong."
--- End quote ---
That's probably the reason that spelling out dialect has largely fallen out of favor in recent years. Writers used to do it when quoting people who were of a different class or race than the writer. It's insulting and, well, accent-centric. Like there's one just correct way to pronounce the words. So these days, I think, writers try to indicate class, geography, etc. in more subtle ways (grammar and diction, for instance).
On the other hand, it can also look funny to have people say "going to," when you know they really wouldn't. One minor jarring bit of dialogue in the movie, for me, is when Ennis says, "could get you killed if I come to know them." It don't sound right.
So Annie Proulx was walking a thin line, I guess.
--- Quote ---How would Annie Proulx pick up the language that two native Wyoming men speak to one another?
--- End quote ---
Maybe listening closely in bars and things. After all, watching a guy in a bar is supposedly how she conceived of the character of Ennis.
--- Quote --- she's never met kids who say "yes, ma'am" and "no, sir" more than the kids who were raised on ranches.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 13, 2006, 10:42:46 pm ---Generally, though, I never gave the swearing a thought because it's been my experience that working class people do swear more than people with middle-class pretensions.
--- End quote ---
Well, Jack and Ennis do say ma'am and sir (Jack to Alma; Ennis to the Twists). But like Jeff, I'd guess that real ranch hands must swear a lot when they're together. Hell, most of the people I know have goddamn middle-class pretensions, and yet a lot of those sons of bitches fuckin swear all the time.
nakymaton:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on September 13, 2006, 11:12:29 pm ---Well, Jack and Ennis do say ma'am and sir (Jack to Alma; Ennis to the Twists). But like Jeff, I'd guess that real ranch hands must swear a lot when they're together. Hell, most of the people I know have goddamn middle-class pretensions, and yet a lot of those sons of bitches fuckin swear all the time.
--- End quote ---
Yes, good points to both of you. (I would say, though, that the foulest mouths tend to be on upper-middle-class kids who are slumming. ;D )
And yeah, the ranch kids may swear more around each other than they do around their teachers. (So the closest I've come to working with Wyoming ranch hands is working with young Idaho-native geologists, kids who worked in the oil fields or in mines before going to college. And they sure had foul mouths. And that may be the closest experience I could get; in their eyes, I essentially forfeited the right to be treated like a respectable lady when I picked up a hammer and tried to do a man's work, so I at least got an earful or two of the kinds of stuff rural Idaho guys say to each other.)
By the way, I meant to say something about Jeff's comment about the language in the story sounding like oral story-telling. YES. That's exactly it. Sometimes I get the urge to read the story out loud; it feels like that's how it should be read.
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