Monica in Tallahassee, Florida, says that while reading the book Flossie and the Fox to her children, she wondered: What’s the right way for a parent to render dialect if the dialect is not one’s own? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “How Should We Handle Dialects When Reading Aloud to our Children?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Monica. I’m calling from Tallahassee, Florida.
Hi, Monica. Welcome to the show.
Thanks. I’m excited to be here.
So recently I was reading bedtime stories to my kids. And, you know, we check out a lot of books from the library. And I make an effort to check out books that represent a lot of different cultures because I want to expose them to a lot of different kinds of people.
And, you know, as I was reading this book called Flossie and the Fox, it got me thinking about how does one read in dialect that is not your own dialect? The book is about a little girl and her family, and they are black. I am white, as is the rest of my family. And the book is written in very deliberately in rural southern black dialect.
There’s even an author note that she wrote about how the language is key to the story, and it’s sort of from the way her grandfather told her stories when she was a kid. So it just got me thinking, you know, how do I read these words? When I read them in my own voice, it sounds kind of goofy, kind of like when you hear people who don’t speak Spanish read Spanish words with no accent, you know, like, hola, como esta?
But then to read it with any sort of put-on accent feels a little bit performative and almost disrespectful. So I just wanted some input about what you guys think about that.
Boy, what a good question. How old are your kids, Monica?
Sarah is almost seven, and Henry is five and a half.
Okay, so they’re just old enough to maybe be doing a little reading on their own, but perhaps you’re reading books to them that are a little beyond their level, and that’s the way that you can expose them to new material that they wouldn’t read for themselves, right?
Yeah, that’s true. Well, you know, we encountered this in my house as well. I wanted to read Tom Sawyer to my son, besides the use of the N-word throughout, which I figured I would handle by replacing it with another word. It’s also loaded with three or four different kinds of Missouri old-fashioned dialects.
And I had this problem. We didn’t really make it through the first chapter because I couldn’t find something that worked where he didn’t look at me funny, my son, look at me funny. And we’re just like you, I didn’t feel like I was making a really big mistake by demonstrating something that outside of this circumstance, this context wouldn’t be okay. It would be not okay for me to imitate the language of a Black American in any other context. So how could I permit myself to do it here?
Right. And the thing is, you know, like one friend of mine said, well, if you’re reading Shakespeare, you could put on an English accent and that wouldn’t be weird, but I feel like it’s so different when you’re reading something where the dialect is from a historically disadvantaged demographic, and I’m from a majority culture. You know, I really want to be deliberate about how I make that choice and not make a choice that’s accidentally disrespectful.
It sounds like part of the solution is to talk with your children about it in advance, right? And how do you do that? You know, I did actually, as I was reading, I realized how much of the book was in language that I don’t usually, you know, in a way that I don’t usually speak. So I did try to sort of address that a little bit, but it felt, I mean, I don’t know, it just kind of on the fly. I don’t think I came up with the best words.
You know, we are trying to be very deliberate about talking about race because studies show that the earlier you talk about it, the more open-minded your kids will be and the less they’ll take on racist attitudes. But, yeah, I wasn’t really sure how to kind of address it just on the fly while reading. I don’t know.
Do you guys have any phraseology you would use or language you would recommend? There’s another element we haven’t talked about, which is even if it’s an accent where there isn’t this racial difference, you know, this minority versus majority difference either. Let’s say that it’s a deep south white person’s accent. The question is, are you as a reader good at performing that accent or doing that accent? And you even pull it off without sounding foolish and without giving your kid the wrong idea of what that person probably really would sound like if they were standing there in the room.
Right. So there’s just another part of it. It’s just like, can’t you even do it? Like the English accent, could I do an accent for Shakespeare? No.
Yeah, or Harry Potter.
Or Harry Potter.
No, I can’t do that. However, one of the things that you’re talking about here is outside the context of reading books to your kids. You are talking about cultural encounters, and this is one of many cultural encounters that we as parents have to explain to our children. And so I think you can lump this experience in with what is it like being in a neighborhood where nobody looks like you? What is it like going to a school where people speak languages that you don’t know? What is it like traveling in a country where they have a different religion than you? Or they speak English differently.
Or they speak English differently. So maybe that’s your path to explaining this. Talk about those other circumstances where you and your family encounter new ideas, new cultures, new languages, new people, and just put it as part of that whole package.
Right. That’s a great idea. And since it is something that we have been talking about, I think that would be easy to kind of, you know, loop that into the larger context.
Yeah. But I appreciate that you’re thinking about this. The kid isn’t really who we’re worried about judging us, though, right? It’s how we judge ourselves for mishandling or poorly handling the material.
Well, and a lot of it is, you know, if you mess up and your kids say something disrespectful later, how other parents are going to judge you as parents, right?
Right. Yeah.
Yeah. But good for you for reading the material in the first place. What I might do for a particular text, if the one you’re talking about seems really fraught because it has a lot of different dialect passages in it, I might set it aside for later, too, until the child is ready to read it for him or herself.
Right, right. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for your input. I really appreciate it.
Monica, thank you for calling.
Thank you. And let us know if you come up with a different decision, if there’s something we can share with the rest of our listeners, all right?
Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much. And I love the show.
Thank you. Give our best to your kids.
Bye-bye.
All right. Have a good one.
Thanks.
