Dialect and Colloquialisms

There was no consensus on the use of black or rural dialect in the work of Harlem Renaissance writers; some authors used it liberally while others shunned it entirely. Hurston used dialect in Their Eyes Were Watching God to reflect the atmosphere and tone of the language she heard when collecting folktales. For this, Richard Wright later condemned the novel and claimed that she was painting a negative and stereotypical image of blacks for white readers.

Johnson used dialect verse and misspellings in some of his poetry but decided to discard these techniques when writing his collection of rural sermons turned into verse, God's Trombones, considered to be, far and away, his best work. He is reported to have said that dialect restricted what he wanted to do in God's Trombones. The sermons maintain the rhythm and pacing of speech he admired in black preachers but...