The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Literary Devices

Explanation and Analysis—Spanglish:

Spanish is a language, not a dialect. But in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the blend of English and Spanish functions somewhat as a dialect. Characters—including the narrator, Yunior—often slip seamlessly between English and Spanish. For example, in Chapter 3, La Inca says,

Ay, hija, no seas ridícula. La Inca put her hands, awkward hyphens, around the girl. Lowered her mouth to her ear: It’s Trujillo.

Here, as throughout the novel, the Spanish is not translated in either the text or in the footnotes. This accomplishes a few things. First, it realistically represents how the characters speak and interact. In their Dominican American communities, such switches between English and Spanish would be natural, whereas a novel told only in English would be unnatural and unrealistic. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, their typical way of speaking and living is not changed for the prototypical reader of English. It's written by them and for them. In addition to the principled sense of belonging this creates, it also allows all readers to feel that they're stepping into a genuine community.

Additionally, the lack of translation means that the non-Spanish-speaking reader must either look the phrases up or miss out on meaning. This creates a formal representation of Yunior’s—and Diaz’s—unwillingness to yield to the English language and unilingual English-speaking reader.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Dialect 1 key example