Voice into Text: the Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Orality in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Ellison’s Invisible Man

Abstract

This research work entitled “Voice into Text: the Linguistic and Cultural Aspects of Orality in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Ellison’s Invisible Man" endeavors to study the linguistic and cultural aspects of orality throughout the novels of Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Ellison’s Invisible Man. This five-chapter thesis focuses on the key concepts of orality and Ebonics as an African-American dialect. The first part of the work recalls some aspects of the African-American literature. The second part includes a literary analysis of both novels, accompanied by a thematic and a stylistic study for each. The third part deals with the analysis of Ebonics at the phonological, grammatical and lexical levels as well as with the different aspects of the Black oral culture within both novels. A comparative study between the two novels concludes this thesis. In brief, this thesis shows how Hurston and Ellison; by integrating orality into their novels, were able on one hand to preserve their Black oral culture and on the other hand to enrich the American literature.