Rhetorical Use of Literary Dialect in English Literature: From Chaucer to Shaw

Rhetorical use of dialect in literature is progressively more emergent phenomenon in different literatures endeavouring to situate a character within a geographical location, ethnic group, educational level, social class, and others. And so, dialectal variation has many rhetorical effects so as to show humour, degree of intimacy, age of a generation, nostalgia, solidarity of group, and belonging to a community; my concern, in this paper, is to show how can a writer of the standard deal with literature a discipline highly humane and, in the meanwhile, embrace dialectal variations in objective ways. The dilemma is set between preserving the text written in standard language and, at the same time, breaking some of the norms throughout a spelling that fits rather a character’s identity, social background, and regional origins. My objective highlights the function of literary dialect technically adopted by novelists to clarify greater understanding of levels of society they strive to depict mainly during different periods in English literature.