Language In S.E.Hintons The Outsiders

1
Language In S.E.HintonsThe Outsiders

• Eeva Niklander
• Jenny Perttola

2
The Novel

• The Outsiders tells the story of 14-year-old
  Ponyboy Curtis, his brothers and the gang of
  friends they belong to.
• Set in the 1960s in the rough part of an
  American city, the story is a convincing
  description of the social and ideological
  conflicts between East Side Greasers and West
  Side Socials.
• The Outsiders is the first novel by S.E.Hinton,
  and was published in 1967. She was then eighteen.
• The story was inspired by Hintons own high
  school experiences in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• The novel has also been published in Finnish by
  Otava in 1969, as Me kolme ja jengi.
• The Outsiders was adapted into a movie by Francis
  Ford Coppola and was released in 1983.

3
The Story

• Were poorer than the Socs and the middle class.
  I reckon were wilder too. Not like the Socs, who
  jump greasers and wreck houses and throw beer
  blasts for kicks, and get editorials in the paper
  for being a public disgrace one day and a asset
  to society the next. Greasers are almost like
  hoods we steal things and drive old souped-up
  cars and hold up gas stations and have a gang
  fight once in a while.
• In Ponyboys world, there are no ordinary people,
  there are only Socials and Greasers. And being a
  Greaser means that you have it rougher than
  others or at least, thats what Ponyboy thinks.
• When the story begins, Ponyboy and his two older
  brothers, Darry and Sodapop, have been orphaned
  less than a year ago, when both their parents
  were killed in a car accident. As Darry strives
  to hold two jobs to support his underaged
  brothers and Sodapop drops out of high school to
  help him, Ponyboy is going through a mental
  crisis. He is painfully aware of the barriers his
  social status puts in his way and which any
  amount of hard work and study fails to eradicate.
  

4
The Story

• In the course of one evening, Ponyboys life
  takes a tragic turn, when his friend, Johnny,
  inadvertently kills a Soc in self-defense. The
  two boys have to go in hiding, and this is the
  beginning of an avalanche of events, that finally
  leads to Ponyboys writing of his lifes story.
• It was too vast a problem to be just a personal
  thing. There should be some help, someone should
  tell them before it was too late. Someone should
  tell their side of the story, and maybe people
  would understand then and wouldnt be so quick to
  judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore.

5
Language

• The story is narrated by Ponyboy, and the
  language in the novel reflects the way Greasers
  speak and think. Ponyboy is more educated than
  most of his friends, and his writing is likewise
  more literary. However, in describing his
  everyday life, Ponyboy uses everyday vocabulary,
  and this makes his writing a bit more speech-like
  than in novels in general.
• In the following slides, we will cover the books
  vocabulary (arranged thematically), syntactic
  structures (for example Adjective in place of
  adverb) and other points of interest.
• The page numbers given refer to the HarperCollins
  edition, thirty-fourth impression of The
  Outsiders from 1991.

6
Language - Vocabulary

• Words relating to violence

7
Language - Vocabulary

• Words relating to drinking and smoking
• Some words have gained additional meaning over
  the years or else have changed their meaning.
• For example, the word weed would nowadays mean
  marihuana rather than cigarette. Also, the word
  stoned now refers more often to drugs than to
  alcohol, as in the book.

8
Language - Vocabulary

• Words relating to gangster life

9
Language - Vocabulary

• Other words

10
Language Syntactic structures

• Adjective in place of adverb 
• I sweated something fierce. (9)
• I was scared so bad. (10)
• I kept my mouth shut good. (12)
• I liked Sandy just fine. (17)
• Don't take him serious. (18)
• He's been hurt bad sometime. (28)
• Darry is awful sorry he hit you. (62)
• You sure can cuss good. (62)

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Language Syntactic structures

• Double negative
•  
• He don't mean nothin'. (18)
• I ain't got nobody. (42)
• Dally won't tell me nothing. (62)
• I ain't never been in the country before. (65)
•  
• Leaving out the verb
• You cold, Ponyboy? (18)
• You in love with Sandy? (18)
• Where you headed? (38)

12
Language Other

• Lonesome, lone it
• What were you doin', walking by your lonesome?
  (15)
• I've stayed by my lonesome before. (82)
• I usually lone it anyway. (7)
•  
• Make
•  
• Make like a farm boy taking a walk.
• You don't need to make like every mouthful's
  your last.

13
Language Other

• Exclamations
• Glory!
• Gosh!
• Golly!
• Gee!
• Boy-howdy!
• Shoot!
• Welup!

14
Language Names

• Many of the Greasers have unusual given names in
  the book - given either by parents in the birth
  certificate or given by friends as better fitted
  than the official name. The Curtis boys -
  Ponyboy, Sodapop and Darrel Shaynne - were named
  by their father, "an original person", as Ponyboy
  describes him. And Sodapop's petname is, of
  course, Pepsi-Cola.
• Keith "Two-Bit" Mathews is never called by his
  real name Ponyboy thinks even his teachers have
  forgotten what it is. His name gives the reader
  an insight into his personality. "You couldn't
  shut up that guy," Ponyboy writes, "he always had
  to get his two-bits worth in." Among the East
  Side characters are also Dallas and Curly, as
  opposed to Bob, Randy and Paul of the Socials.
• Johnny Cade, Ponyboy's best friend and the
  unofficial little brother of the whole gang, is
  often called Johnnycake or Johnnykid by his
  friends - a marker of affection. Some kind of
  abbreviation of the official name is used for
  nearly every member of the gang Pony, Soda,
  Darry and Dally.

15
References

• Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders. London HarperCollins
  Publishers Ltd, 1991.
• Biography. 21 November 2007. URL
  www.sehinton.com/bio.html
• On this YouTube clip http//www.youtube.com/watch
  ?v6T1Cx2JbTEg
• you will find a sample of the language as used
  in the Coppola movie The Outsiders (1983).