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Allusions
Act 2
Explanation and Analysis—American Southern English:
Williams works to capture the dialect of the American South in the 1950s, especially in the older characters of Big Daddy and Big Mama. Take this example from Act 2:
BIG DADDY: QUIET!—I ast you, Brick, if you was cuttin' you'self a piece o' poon-tang last night on that cinder track? I thought maybe you were chasin' poon-tang on that track an' tripped over something in the heat of the chase—'sthat it?
Here, Big Daddy exhibits multiple features of Southern English: shortened words like "ast," "chasin'," and "cuttin'," the use of "was" rather than "were," the falling away of the "d" in "and" to make "an'," and the shortening of the words "is that" to become "'sthat." There is major overlap between Southern English and African American Vernacular English. Phrases like "poon-tang," which is a crude slang term for sexual intercourse, began in AAVE but later became common in Southern English.
Big Mama also displays the Southern dialect, especially in her use of the "ai" sound in place of many others; "dead" becomes "daid" and "can't" becomes "cain't." Other characters use dialect less, reflecting the way language changes in each subsequent generation. Generally, by writing dialect into his plays, Williams makes his characters seem all the more realistic.
