Joy said
"Copyeditors discuss this sometimes. The consensus usually is
the less of it,
the better because (1) it's hard on the reader and (2)
it tends to have a
demeaning effect on the speaker. Writers mostly don't
phonetically spell out
what Lord High Muckety-Muck says; the marginalized, the
poor, the
uneducated, the foreign, and various other outsiders
get the treatment. It's
an easy way for the author to signal disdain for the
speaker.
In your example, Colin, how is
"vews" pronounced? When I sound it out,
it sounds just like my "views." Of course, I have a
funny accent, too."
My views is probably "veyues". In this story the two chumps
spoke in dialect - and the author was disdainful of them. I'm
just trying to think of any others who do the same, and none
really spring to mind, I do remember noticing that both
Hammett and Chandler would signal street hoodlums and the
like by using "Could of", while the hero keeps using the
correct "Could have".
Brookmyre had every word they spoke in style, and I found
some of it incomprehensible, I think maybe that selecting
fewer words to signal the strength of accent would carry more
weight and be easier on the reader.
Maybe Al, who I am presuming has a better knowledge of
Scottish accents, can illuminate why these particular people
were accented up - working class Edinburgh I think - maybe it
means more if you are familiar with the linguistic
terrain.
Cheers. I would be interested, for next month, if US readers
have had much difficulty with British English, in UK HB -
tough and colloquial, but whose colloquialisms?
Cheers.
(Or cheerrrrrrrers, as I would of said.) Colin
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