Black women’s dialect used by the main character in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God

This study focuses on analyzing the dialect patterns, including grammatical features and vocabulary variations, and revealing the socio-cultural background of black women’s dialect in Hurston’s novel entitled “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” This study aimed to investigate the different dialect patterns in the grammatical features according to Rickford’s theory (1999) and vocabulary variations of the black women’s dialect based on Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyam (2010) compared to Standard English through Hurston’s novel. In addition, this study proposed to provide information on the factors that may represent the socio-cultural background of Black English people in Hurston’s novel according to Rickford and Rickford’s theory (2000). The researcher applied a descriptive-qualitative approach in this analysis. The research data are in the form of words, phrases, and sentences uttered by Janie as the black woman in Hurston’s novel. The data were analyzed through classification, identification, and interpretation of the black women’s dialect patterns uttered by Janie Mae Crawford as the main character in the novel.