Creating Voice and Revealing Character through Diction and Dialect

Purpose: To assist writers in understanding how individual word choices as well as dialect can enhance a speaker’s voice and reveal character details.

Applicable Age/Grade Level: The target group for this exercise is adult writers, college or high school students.

Process Overview: The Creating Voice and Revealing Character through Diction Notably Dialect lesson plan has the potential to familiarize students with dialect as a writing tool that can be utilized to build their speaker’s voice and help with the revelation of character. Students who were unfamiliar with any dialectical choices outside of their own will learn how expanding their characters dictions and dialects can reveal details to readers, give character’s depth and can be entertaining.

Diction: stated simply is word choice.

Dialect: is a particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group.

Vernacular: The language or dialect spoken by the everyday people in a particular country, region or social group.