Printing the Sound of Cosmopolitan Beijing: Dialect Accents in Nineteenth-Century Martial Arts Fiction

Abstract

This essay commences with a scene from The Three Knights and the Five Gallants , where two aspects draw attention. The first is the great lengths to which the printed text goes to impress upon the reader the sounds of dialect speech. The second is the self-conscious way in which it captures the sound of dialect speech. The essay explores how do we understand the remarkable interest in recording the sounds of dialect speech and, in particular, its theatrical, imitative nature? It examines the imitation of dialect accents in Beijing novels in the context of nineteenth-century cultural and social use of regional dialects. It focuses on cross talking, the oral performance of dialect accents by storytellers. Finally, this essay argues that, despite the strong oral connotations of the use of dialect in martial arts novels, the printing of regional accents should be understood as a practice of the written language. Keywords:cosmopolitan; cross talking; dialect accents; dialect speech; nineteenth-century martial arts fiction; sound; written language