There are very few speaking roles in The Emperor Jones, but those characters who do speak do so in varying dialects that reflect their status and cultural background. Language is not only a potent signifier for those watching the play—the characters themselves are aware of the power in their words, and they utilize their linguistic knowledge and skills deliberately when interacting with each other. Jones’s remarks to Smithers in Scene 1 about their ability (or inability) to communicate with the native inhabitants of the island is particularly illuminating:
I knows I kin fool ’em—I knows it—and dat’s backin’ enough fo’ my game. And ain’t I got to learn deir lingo and teach some of dem English befo’ I kin talk to ’em? Ain’t dat wuk? You ain’t never learned ary word er it, Smithers, in de ten years you been heah, dough yo’ knows it’s money in yo’ pocket tradin’ wid ’em if you does.
Clearly, in Jones’s view, controlling the means of communication between himself and the natives is paramount to his ability to maintain power over the island—only by understanding some of their language can he impress upon them his supposed godliness. Jones himself speaks in a style of African American Vernacular English, while the natives of the island communicate in a pidgin combination of grunts and the smattering of English taught to them by Jones.
Smithers, by contrast, speaks in a Cockney accent that heralds both his foreignness and his lower-class upbringing off the island. As Jones points out, Smithers’s refusal to learn any of the native “lingo,” despite living on the island for a decade, demonstrates how his ignorance leads to self-sabotage, causing him to miss out on trading opportunities. For Jones, Lem, and the natives, language is a tool to both weaponize and foster communication, while Smithers views his language as a finite resource which gives him power. Thus, each character’s brand of dialect reveals their individual relationship to the hierarchical structure of the island and the larger colonial systems under which they operate.
