comment on Language and Meaning

Twain does not hesitate to use complex words in his writing, and often does so in an amusing and unexpected way. He does not worry about alienating the reader through these strange choices in vocabulary, but very often plays upon words in funny ways. Twain also presents many of his characters by showing the way that they really spoke: whether they used slang, had an accent, or other peculiarities, he writes in dialect often. This is particularly true during the excerpt from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as his early descriptions of the language aboard the steamboats. Later, he discusses the language of the South and how it developed over the years. While Twain has a particular fondness for the Southern accent, he has no patience for what he sees as faults in grammar and other issues of syntax and diction that he attributes to the South and, indeed, readers will not necessarily pick up on a "Southern" flavor to the narrative, except insofar ad the subject matter is concerned.