American Literature / Unit 2 AML 0111 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Diction and Register in Prose
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The idea
Register is the level a prose keeps: formal, neutral, colloquial, vernacular. American fiction made the vernacular literary, and a passage written in dialect places its speaker in a region and a class. A shift of register inside a passage marks the arrival of a different voice.
In practice
Formal, neutral, colloquial, vernacular.
Where people slip
Dialect on the page is a choice, not a transcript.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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