The American Novelist and the African American English Dialect

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain stands out not only for its characters but for its "representation of African-American English (AAE)."


Twain's ability as an author has helped him to expand the limits of speech. He enabled the African-American language and rhetorical practices to play a major role in the story. Among all the features of AAE, the character Jim utilized each frequently. Linguists Ningrum and Rohman say that AAE has two basic parts: grammar and sound. In discourse, Twain embodied these elements.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain was his pen name) was born in Florida, Missouri. He'd had a distinctive style of storytelling. The vocabulary was used to reflect the time and Twain aimed to praise the language. While it will remain contentious to some due to the degree of which it has represented AAE, the material is authentic.

"Jim pleading to the ghost"

Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has a range of AAE features. Jim's character encompasses the AAE dialect. AAE doesn't use have/has. On page 26, in the scene illustrated in the image above, Jim says “Don' hurt me—don’t! I ain't ever done no harm to a ghos," shows the stressed "done," to express an action as being complete. In this sentence, every word differs from Standard English, writes Ida Dewi.

The double negatives in "done no harm" are produced by applying negation to the action word and to the modifier of the noun, or to the object of the action word. There is another negative indicator, the utilization of "ain't" in the expression. To communicate this behavior, different dialects will use "haven't." This terminology is supplanted by AAE. Twain uses consonant clusters "Don' hurt me," when two consonants show up toward the end of a word and are reduced.

There is a strong respect for how Twain used Jim's character to speak to a natural dialect. Curt Rulan, a professor at Texas State University, notes that it does require the reader to note that Jim was a slave. The repeated use of AAE and given Jim's background was something that Twain made clear. With the discussion that this content has caused as far as it is taught in schools, it comes down to the reader and their capacity to take note of the important subjects, contrasting language, and sensitive topics. It is important to keep Mark Twain's writing of AAE around because it is a language and an important part of American history.

Despite the fact that Twain wrote the novel during the 1800s, AAE is a language that is utilized today. It shows that the idea of language is fluid and ever-evolving. Individuals need to quit seeing those who speak AAE as different, there is no standard in the English language. It relies upon what is said and is comprehended by the people who speak it. Twain may have composed something provocative, however, it aimed to paint an image of America, one that was brimming with varieties of English.