A Comparative Study of the Linguistic and Other Prejudices in the Selected Works of Margaret Mitchell and Margaret Walker

In this paper, we talk about the representation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in literary works. Up till the early nineteenth century AAVE was represented by non-native speakers, who were mostly white authors (Minnick, 2004). The approach of these authors towards the dialect is claimed to be derogatory. The linguistic prejudice against AAVE was a result of the social prestige attached not with the language variety but with its speakers, who had their origins in slavery. It was after Harlem Renaissance, when the African American writers started representing themselves that people got to know the real plight of the African Americans through their own stories. These writers also did a fairly authentic representation of the variety used by the African Americans and common people in the American South. Thus, this paper does a comparative analysis of one novel each, of an African-American and a European (White) American Author. It stylistically analyses the text of two authors coming from different racial backgrounds and studies and compares the linguistic features of their dialectal representation of AAE. This research work is a literary survey of data collected that tries to look at the biases for or against the African-American speech community. The works analysed are Walker (1966) by Margaret Walker and Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell. The two authors will also be analysed through the lens of Tajfel’s (1979) “social identity theory” which deals with in-group and out-group racism.