The Analysis of the Ebonics Used in Hurston's Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God

Hurston gave a great importance to language and succeeded to amalgamate between both Ebonics and Standard English within her novel. Besides, she employed skillfully her rural southern Black dialect (Ebonics) to shape aspects of her Black culture and picture the life of Negroes. She as well abundantly integrated Ebonics in both dialogues and narrative to depict an authentic vision of the Black community.

She employed Ebonics as a regional dialect and characterized it by some unique grammatical, phonological and lexical features:

The Grammatical Features

The Phonological Features

The Lexical Features

The use of Multiple Negations, for instance:

The Contracted /g/, for instance:

Hurston's novel comprises a rich lexical variety of Ebonics

Mah wife don't know nothin' 'bout no speech-makin'. Ah never married her for nothin' like that (43).

Mawnin' for morning

Gal is used to mean a woman

Naw, Ah ain't no young gal no mo' (Hurston 79).

Due to Hurston's familiarity with the southern dialect, she eagerly introduced it within her novel. She had been admired by her readers for her typical use of Ebonics. She employed a heavy rural Black dialect spoken at the south; rich with vocabulary of localism and crafted a different portrayal of the Black social life by classifying her Black characters within only the middle and upper social classes. She thus endeavored to represent an authentic speech of her Black community.