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โครงการรวบรวมและจัดทําเอกสารวารสารอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์

วารสารมนุษยศาสตร์ ปีที่ 21 ฉบับที่ 1 (มกราคม-มิถุนายน 2557) 183

Kirkpatrick, 2007). Southern dialect is also spoken by people in some part of
California where migrants from the south-central states settled. The
distinctiveness of southern region has also been noticed through written
language, as it has been examined through fiction (Wood, 2009).

To explore Southern American English through literature in this
study, the researcher chose the works of John Steinbeck who is the
America’s iconic writer of the twentieth century and the Nobel Prize award
winner in literature. In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of
Wrath were analyzed in terms of phonology, syntax, and, lexicon. These
novels are considered the Dustbowl trilogy which explores the lives of
migrant labors in California during the Great Depression who moved from the

south. The characters in the novels, therefore, speak with Southern
American English. Although Steinbeck is not originally from the south, the
southern voices in his novels are accepted by many critics as they are
regarded as resemblance to the works of William Faulkner—a famous Nobel
Prize Southern writer (N.J., 1974). His novel is an ideal to learn about
language in the south as he introduced readers to realistic casts of
characters and told intriguing story of the lives of real people.

2. Review of Literature
2.1 Dialect in Literature
One of the approaches in studying a dialect in literature is stylistic
which considers how effective of the speech of particular texts is and to

considered a role of that dialect as a whole. In the context of literature,
folklore, and other written forms, the speech of an individual is
orthographically marked as differing from a perceived standard language.
Though no one single linguistic feature characterizes a dialect, and although
particular features tend not to occur categorically in a dialect, a writer can