Mary Shapiro explores the use of regional and ethnic dialects in the
works of David Foster Wallace, not just as a device used to add realism
to dialogue, but as a vehicle for important social commentary about the
role language plays in our daily lives, how we express personal
identity, and how we navigate social relationships.
Wallace's Dialects straddles the fields of linguistic criticism and
folk linguistics, considering which linguistic variables of
Jewish-American English, African-American English, Midwestern, Southern,
and Boston regional dialects were salient enough for Wallace to
represent, and how he showed the intersectionality of these with gender
and social class. Wallace's own use of language is examined with respect
to how it encodes his identity as a white, male, economically privileged
Midwesterner, while also foregrounding characteristic and distinctive
idiolect features that allowed him to connect to readers across implied
social boundaries.