SPEECH FEATURES OF THE CHARACTERS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE NOVEL BY K. STOCKETT ‟THE HELP”

Abstract

The article analyzes the history of the African-American dialect and its linguistic and stylistic features. One of the most important grammatical features in African American English is the presence of certain structures that express the appearance and timing of the verb. In addition, the most recognizable are also: the lack of use of past tense forms in the form of extracting the ending; grammatical inconsistency of the time form of the predicate in the singular present tense of the subject; non-use of the verb-connection; non-normative formation of the plural form; use of double negation; the use of an indefinite article even when the word following it begins with a vowel; the use of personal pronouns instead of possessive ones; contamination of verbs close in meaning and sound; replacing adverbs with adjectives; as well as the lack of use of the past tense in the formation of sentences in a passive state. African American English also has its own unique lexical features, but information about all the words and expressions characteristic of the speakers of this dialect is stored exclusively in their minds, because until today there is no complete vocabulary characteristic of Black English In the vocabulary of speakers of African American English there are many words that sound the same as words from the standard version of American English, but at the same time have a completely different meaning. Since the African American dialect is a combination of African culture and the spoken English of African Americans, most of the vocabulary that forms the basis of the African American dialect is slang. The African-American dialect plays a key role in shaping the linguistic image of the characters in the novel by Catherine Stockett. This is due to the fact that the dialect is not only a speech characteristic of the characters, but also a means of conveying the social context, cultural characteristics and identity of the characters. The features of the speech of the heroes of African-American literature are determined. The linguistic and stylistic features of the text by K. Stockett are allocated.