Using Language To Set The Times…linguistic adventures in historical writing

A novelist is always conscious that how language is used sets the tone of a book and this is even more important when that book is historical.  Nothing ruins the mood of a historical story than a lot of carelessly used modern expressions!

Lane Winslow is set in the immediate post-war period, and so I must find ways to reflect the tone of the times through how people speak,  and through the narrative writing itself.  It would, for example, be no more appropriate for me to say “he nailed it” as part of the narrative than it would be to have one of the characters say it.  How do I know how people spoke in the 1940s? Contemporary sources are a boon here.  Books, movies, old radio programs can all help to get the feel of the period.   I’m lucky to have had parents who were born in 1911, and were at their prime in the 1920s and ‘30s. They were British, privately educated, and had a very specific way of using the language…one that I imbibed from the minute I was born.  I largely hear them when I write Lane and Darling.

Another consideration is the difference between American English and British English.   My main character, Lane Winslow, is English in the way she speaks, as are a number of the older residents of Kings Cove.  This means that she is using the language she grew up with, and will sometimes say things that cause my editors to scratch their heads.  Recently Lane said, “You know what young girls in love are.”  My editor helpfully added what she assumed to be the missing ‘like’ at the end of the line.  I took it back out.    Every now and then I run into quite a fundamental difference in the two versions of the language.   I was alerted a couple of books ago by an English reader to the fact that British English speakers don’t use the word ‘gotten’.  They say ‘got’ in all the places Americans might say ‘gotten’.  I recognized immediately that it was true.  My parents and all my relations are British, and I’d never heard any of them say ‘gotten’, but as someone who learned my language in North America, ‘gotten’ is deeply embedded in how I speak..

This led me to the realization that how we the writers use contemporary English in our own speech is very unconscious. Without meaning to, we all absorb the constant changes in English, so we say things like ‘I’m going to need you to’ and ‘get my head around it’ and ‘he’s got his own agenda’ without thinking there’s anything wrong with them.  Well, obviously there isn’t anything wrong, except you can’t have people saying these things in the 1940s, because such usages didn’t exist.  But they are so ingrained that I find myself constantly having to weed out this sort of language and  find another way to say the same thing…the way someone in the 1940s would have said it.

Besides the distinctions of education and class that appear in spoken language, considerations that were more pronounced then than they are now, I have several characters whose first language is not English.   Here I think there are a couple of things to think about; one is that their English can sometimes follow the syntax of their mother tongue, (‘but of course’ spoken by a French person bringing it directly into English from ‘mais oui’ as an example) and a second is the fact that for a new Canadian, English can become a marvellous canvas of individual expression.   We had a wonderful Polish man who used to come twice a month to clean our apartment.  We often talked about world affairs, and when we’d lamented enough, he’d shrug and say ‘What you can do?’  Once I left a note with a single earring asking him to keep an eye out for its mate , and when I came back I found this regretful note, ‘to bed. I no find.”   I try to capture some of these things in characters like Lorenzo and Barisoff.

Language is a tool to build the personalities of my characters.   Are they the often exuberant Ames? The restrained Terrell? The laconic Sergeant O’Brien? The very sarcy Inspector Darling?  The optimistic Lorenzo, or his cautious wife, Olivia?  Each one of them uses language in ways that support their individuality.  Indeed, it is fair to say that I got to know these people largely by the way they use language.

A final aspect, has to do with the relationship between the speakers.  You know yourself that you are almost multi-lingual everyday of your life.  The language you use when you’re out at the bar with your friends is vastly different from the way you speak to your boss, or people you’ve just met.  Are you the boss? The way you speak to people whom you supervise will be different again from the way you speak with colleagues.  Are you in love with the person you are speaking with? Has there been a lifetime of coldness between you?  Are you speaking to a child, or a puppy?   In my books I think the way Darling and Lane speak with each other, from serious and intelligent conversation to the affectionate humour the often display, is in sharp contrast to the way Darling uses language at work.   And I think there is an interesting bit of sociology in how Ames speaks with the newly arrived Terrell.  He is a harbinger of a more modern world in his insistence on speaking with Terrell, his subordinate, as if he is one of his chums.

How to keep all these voices and uses of the languages sorted?  One way is that I am very conscious as I write, of who is speaking.  It is fair to say that I am ‘hearing’ them in my head, and they seem to be very true to themselves when they visit me.  But, if I don’t get it right someone always writes in the margin: “Would Ames say this?”

I’m lucky.  I grew up in Canada, Mexico and the US with British parents.  I learned Spanish and travelled in England, Eastern Europe, France, Italy and have heard the language used in the most delightful and intriguing ways everywhere I’ve gone.   It is this fascinating Tower of Babel that I have at the ready when I sit down to write every morning.  Language has been my central joy and fascination, and I’m so delighted to have the Lane Winslow Mysteries to play around in!

ps…I REALLY appreciate letters that I get with comments or corrections about English or American usage!