Tag: accents

kierongillen:

Usually.

Two reasons:

Firstly, I’m terrible at them. 

Secondly, takes more explanation.

I was reminded of this by Marie Nixon (ex-Marie Du Santiago of Kenickie) about the coded-language in the first reviews of her current band, the Cornshed Sisters. Specifically, with its link to the piece by Emma Jackson (Ex-Emmy-Kate Montrose of Kenickie) “Classy: Kenickie, Northerness and Femininity”.

(Scroll towards the end of the pdf for Jackson’s piece.)

There’s lots to read in there, but this section reminded me where my particular aversion to Phonetic accents originated from:

“Our northerness was also accentuated in the way our speech was transcribed in newspaper articles. There is a tendency in the music press sometimes to write the speech of people from ‘Oop North’ phonetically – I have never heard anyone say ‘oop’.” 

In other words,  anyone from the South is written in perfect English and anyone from the North is written as written as an exotic, Neanderthal other. As if someone from London doesn’t have an accent, while someone from Manchester does. And there’s a mass of assumptions in there, none of them pretty.

And that’s why I don’t do it, in a nutshell.

Unless you’re going to write everyone with a splash of phonetics, you’re implying that a number  of your characters are so separate from the language everyone else is speaking that you have to bastardise the words to show it. 

The exceptions are telling. When I’m working on a pre-existing character who’s always been written with semi-phonetic flourishes, I follow suit. Normally in a relatively minimal fashion, but enough to recognise that I’m playing in the tradition. The second is when I’m explicitly trying to turn someone into the Other, which is really about  critiquing that (She in Phonogram 2.7 speaks in a complete mass of gibberish. But she’s just a voice in Marc’s head, and the story is about the way he viewed her, etc.) And thirdly… oh, there’s ways when someone really is completely and utterly unintelligible. I don’t think I’ve written one, but Arseface in Preacher would be a good example of that particular type.

But being a guy with his face shot off is a completely different thing than someone being Glaswegian. 

(In passing, Ennis a good example – probably the best in comics – of a writer who pulls off phonetics, because he does it so widely and because he does it so well.)

I play with syntax, slang, structure, whatever – but I consider the words themselves sanctified. It’s the basic level of dignity the characters deserve. And frankly, because it isn’t my strongest card, I sidestep the possibility of just doing a really shit and offensive accent. To me, the rewards are small to negligible and the risk is enormous.

In short: if you’re not really 100% sure you’re hot shit, I’d advise writers to think carefully before going there.