Sorchia's Universe

I’m venting today about obtrusive dialogue tags. But first—a story: Back in the day when I taught the King’s English to the masses, I worked at a small school in deepest, darkest southern Missouri. The native language of the area is a combination of Scotch-Irish Appalachian, a little Elizabethan, and a smattering of modern slang and inventive metaphors and is known as the Ozarkian dialect. I grew up in the area but my folks were from ‘away’, so I speak two languages—English and Ozark. The two are not always interchangeable. If you want to talk to locals and get anything done, you better sound like they do.  If you want to get gainful employment outside of the area…well, there’s no accounting for people’s prejudices, but an Ozarks accent tends to give other people delusions of grandeur. For a Tale within a Tale, go HERE . Anyway, one of my favorite kids—a large, young man of the redneck persuasion—got suspended. I ran into him in the hallway and asked about the incident, hoping to provi