"The Negro's universal mimicry is not so much a thing in itself as the evidence of something that permeates his entire self. And that thing is a drama ." (Hurston, 830) In his own words, Hurston captures the stark image he paints in the controversial early 20th century drama, “Mule Bone,” co-written by Harlem Renaissance icon Langston Hughes. “Mule Bone” is set in a fictionalized version of Hurston's hometown, an all-black community in Eatonville, Florida, where she spent the first years of her teenage life living with her father after her mother's death. Hurston's early memoirs indicate that the Eatonville of his childhood, much like the Eatonville of the stage, had two churches and no prison. Based on the short story "A Bone of Contention" that Hurston wrote in 1929, "Mule Bone" draws heavily on Hurston's anthropological work that he compiled from visits to all black communities in the Southern United States. However, Hughes and Hurston worked collaboratively on "A Bone of Contention" in a running dialogue set on stage; this project would ultimately divide the two authors when discrepancies in the text became insurmountable. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay As a piece of social criticism, “Mule Bone” is much like other comedies, however; the high level of diction resulting from what linguistics scholars have recently called African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has set a new standard of realism for African Americans on stage. Standard English (SE) has been studied in volume after volume of analysis of deep structure and lexical origins, only recently has AAVE received the same attention in the form of direct analysis that SE has enjoyed for years. The researchers found that the main differences between AAVE and SE lie in subtle rule changes. Where AAVE allows for the reduction of consonant clusters, the absence of the copula, invariant or habitual forms of being, temporal reference markers, and multiple negation (Mufwene, 1), SE has no such allowances. Much of Hurston's vocals rely on the accurate portrayal of AAVE. A voice that Holloway describes as "recursive; it begins, it names, it activates, it calls us back to a primordial ground." (Holloway, 113) Hurston was attempting to write dialogue that, up until that point, had been poorly recorded and often stereotyped African Americans as dull, primitive, and savage. In his acclaimed anthropological essay "Characteristics of Negro Expression," Hurston summarizes the making of a pure black dialect and comments on the unnatural dialogue thus far attributed to the Negro: "If we are to believe the majority of Negro dialect writers and burnt-cork artists, Negro speech is a strange thing, full of "ams" and "Ises." Fortunately we don't have to believe it. We can go straight to the Negro and let him speak for himself (Hurston, 845-846) Dialect is a term that linguists struggle with to define since it is not possible to establish precise boundaries around an unformed, often regional form of speech. By tracing the history and introduction of Africans to America, researchers have roughly outlined the origins of what is now covered by the umbrella label AAVE. Originally Pidgin French (later known as Creole) and Pidgin English were derived from Portuguese. These languages ​​were spread in West Africa and the early Afro-Asian trade involving the Western Pacific, including India, China and later the Hawaii, carried the seeds of African-American English throughout the world. Charles S. Johnson, a prominent scholar of EnglishAfrican-American, hypothesized that "the Negro dialect turns out to be a deposit of the speech of the first English colonizers in the seventeenth century" (Dillard, 39). This theory, along with others that rely on berating African-American culture as “the white man's rejects,” fell by the wayside as more scientific research was conducted on the topic.structure of the AAVE; revealing the fusion of both native languages ​​and new forms of pidgin English as the origins of African-American English in the United States. Deeply rooted in the Portuguese origins from which AAVE appears to have originated is the most obvious fundamental difference to most SE speakers. Dillard examines a sentence like: So I came down and she out there babbling told my sister I was joking from school. In which, he explains, there are no lexical anomalies from SE, nor any alien forms, although the usage is sometimes casual and "illiterate", it follows many of the same conventions as SE. (Dillard, 40) However, it is the syntactic analysis of AAVE that reveals the most information. Dillard points out that a mandatory category in SE: tense, can be ignored in what he calls Black English. While it is interesting to examine these carefully dissected volumes of AAVE, it is important to remember Hurston and Hughes' goal in writing "Mule Bone"; the accurate depiction of the language of life in a racially non-oppressed Southern black community. Hurston has failed to capture the elusive dialect in perfect written form, as far as researchers are concerned, as she often substitutes more easily recognizable structures in place of those that are difficult to interpret. read more accurate written compositions, which he could have transcribed from tapes collected during his anthropological studies. Nonetheless, Hurston and Hughes managed to convey AAVE's sounds, its subtle inflections and whimsical expressions, which, in view of the theatrical backdrop that "Mule Bone" enjoyed, remain of greater importance than their choice of spelling. Hughes appears to have played a minor role in designating the reality of the dialogue in "Mule Bone" as critics have commented on other literary works he published as "stale, flat and spiritless". (Redding, 73) Further examination of his literary resume reveals that as Hughes matured and evolved as a human being, so too did his writing. One critic's nostalgic view of Hughes reveals the disgust within a literary niche in response to its stronghold on its roots. folk' - the farmer, the worker, the urban slum dweller - does a disservice to his art." (Redding, 74) This irreducible image of the common black man is the cornerstone of the "Mule Bone" community , and an important role that Hughes facilitated by transcribing "A Bone of Contention" into a piece of dramatic text. Within "Mule Bone," concrete examples of Hurston and Hughes' regionalized diction are plentiful, the work it is written strictly in dialect. Dividing these forms of speech into appropriate categories is essential in the analysis of the text. Hurston reveals in "Characteristics of Negro Expression" that the most basic language is that which relies on comparisons, rather than extensive descriptions for. elaborate meaning. She assumes the inherent ease of parallels as the natural form from which all other descriptive discourse arises. And in doing so, Hurston recognizes African Americans as contributors to broad, often natural, similes and metaphors. descriptive (such as high-tall, little-tee-ninchy, kill-dead) and verbal (such as funeralize). , puts shame and ugliness on him) to the English language. (Hurston, 832-833) "Mule Bone" is full of these elements,some examples of the co-author's awareness of the vivid language associated with similes are as follows: I would beat her until she smelled of onions. (Bass, 52) I would stomp on it until it stringed like an okra. (Low, 52) I would let her loose until she relaxed like lime. (Bass, 52)The first example is self-explanatory, however the second and third are a little more elusive in their meaning. Okra is a non-native English word introduced by African Americans, one of a dozen words that researchers formally recognize as African in origin, referring to a particular type of vegetable. The meaning comes from the strands of sticky sap exuded from cooked okra when eaten. Hurston's simile paints a picture of such a severe beating; one might be left bleeding. Weak as lime is a term that has apparently fallen into oblivion, as no formal explanation appears to exist. “Smells like a nest of Yellowhammers” was another slippery term, however Yellowhammers are a type of bird; there is little to no evidence demonstrating a connection between the two. The characters in “Mule Bone” connect everything with a grounded understanding of their world. Every description implies something physical; a tangible piece of the surrounding environment that basically represents the implied meaning. For example, in the opening lines, Hambo counters that his baldness doesn't matter because he "wants nothing, not even a hair, between (him) and God." (Bass, 49) Old Brazzle's description of the mule lends itself well as an example of the physical aspect of everyday speech. “He was so thin you could wash his ribs for a week like a washboard and hang them to dry on his hip bones.” (Low, 53) Or, Clarke's description of Daisy "...a big mango...sweet smelling, you know, with a strong flavor, but not something you could crush like a strawberry. Something with a body from It." (Bass, 60)Several West African languages ​​denote the creation of man in a drum-beating God; the shock waves of each heartbeat resonate throughout humanity. This kind of primal being, a connection to the physical universe, comes to life when Hurston examines this feeling in relation to African-American dance, she says: "...The performer sharply flexes one knee, assumes a fierce face mask, pushes the upper body forward with clenched fists, elbows tense as in energetic running or grasping a thrusting blade. That's all, but the spectator himself adds the image of a ferocious assault, hears the drums and finds himself keeping time with the music and. Tensing up for the fight. It's a convincing insinuation." (Hurston, 835) This for Hurston is the embodiment of drama. Basically, Hurston believes that African Americans are a tragedy. There is a sense that every aspect of black life is dramatized, elevated above the banal and enacted, not lived. In conclusion, it studies the development of AAVE in conjunction with the changing social atmosphere of the Harlem Renaissance, and the conversion of Hurston's short story to a dramatic work greatly increased the significance of the text as an act of self-proclamation for the early African American of the 20th century. The combination of Hurston's anthropological expertise and Hughes' firm grip on his culture reaches new heights in crafting a realistic depiction of African-American life. "Place was important to Zora Neale Hurston: She would spend much of her adult life searching for a place that she could claim as her own, that would uphold, with fervor equal to her own, her cultural nationalism, that would respect the heritage represented in the voices he had recorded, voices that testified to the traditions of the world.",, 1986.