Dialect Detectives: Exploring Dialect in Great Expectations

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

Great Expectations is rich in dialogue and is written in the dialect of the working class and the poor of Victorian England.  The things characters say and how they speak is one of the ways in which readers get to know them.  What does Dickens reveal about his characters using dialect?  This lesson is based on the different words that appear in the first book of the novel.  It will help students develop a comfort level and confidence in dealing with unfamiliar dialect words and phrases.

This lesson uses Great Expectations as an example, but this activity is effective with any work of literature in which dialect is important.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

• Great Expectations Dialect Handout: Use this printable resource to explore dialect in chapters 1 through 10 of Great Expectations.
• Dialect Exit Slip: This printable resource is used to check student understanding of dialect.
• Venn Diagram, 2 Circles Printout: Students use this graphic organizer to describe similarities and differences between Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” and “When Malindy Sings.”

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Learning, celebrating, and sharing dialect should be an ongoing experience in a diverse, multi-cultural language arts classroom.  Wheeler and Swords explain that “understanding the nature of language variation (across region, ethnic identity, social class, language styles, and registers) provides language arts teachers with a fertile ground from which to build a welcoming, multicultural language arts classroom” (471).  Furthermore, learning about other regional and vernacular dialects allows students to “honor linguistic and cultural diversity, all the while fostering students’ mastery of the Language of Wider Communication…” (471).

Wheeler, Rebecca and Rachel Swords. "Codeswitching: Tools of Language and Culture Transform the Dialectally Diverse Classroom." Language Arts 81.6 (July 2004): 470-480.

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