Steinbeck's dialogue throughout Of Mice and Men is written in a distinctive regional dialect that reflects the working-class, migrant labor setting of the 1930s Salinas Valley. This gives students an opportunity to analyze language choice as a characterization and setting device, a skill that gets less attention than theme or symbolism but is just as central to strong literary analysis.

Grading essays on this topic requires a rubric that pushes students beyond simply noticing that the dialogue "sounds different" from standard written English, toward explaining what specific features of the dialect, dropped word endings, particular slang terms, sentence rhythm, accomplish for characterization or setting.

A useful angle for this assignment is comparing how dialect is used differently across characters. Slim's dialogue, for instance, often carries a more measured, authoritative rhythm compared to Curley's more clipped, aggressive speech patterns, and essays that notice these distinctions demonstrate a more attentive ear for language than essays treating all the dialogue as uniformly "rough" or "informal."

It also helps to require students to consider the effect of dialect on the reader's experience of authenticity and immersion, since this is ultimately what dialect accomplishes stylistically, grounding the reader convincingly in a specific time, place, and social class.

Rubric Criteria for Language Analysis

Because this assignment focuses on a technical aspect of craft, the rubric should require specific quoted examples of dialect features rather than general commentary about the dialogue's overall tone or feel.

• Identifies specific dialect features with direct quotations from the text
• Distinguishes how dialect varies between at least two different characters
• Explains the effect of dialect on characterization or setting authenticity
• Connects language choices to the novella's historical and regional context
• Avoids vague commentary about dialogue being simply informal or rough

Providing Historical Context for Stronger Analysis

A brief lesson on the historical migrant labor context behind the dialect Steinbeck uses gives students useful grounding for this assignment, helping them understand the dialect as a deliberate, historically informed craft choice rather than simply how Steinbeck happened to write dialogue.

This context also helps prevent essays from treating the dialect dismissively or as a marker of characters' intelligence, a misreading that sometimes emerges without this background discussion beforehand.

Handling Sensitive Territory Around Regional and Class-Based Language

Discussions of dialect can inadvertently drift into judgments about the perceived correctness of non-standard English if not carefully framed. Setting clear expectations that this assignment analyzes craft and authenticity, not the relative sophistication of different English varieties, helps keep student writing respectful and analytically precise.

This framing is worth revisiting briefly if student essays drift toward language that implies non-standard dialect reflects lesser intelligence or education, a misconception worth correcting directly and specifically.

Why This Skill Deserves More Classroom Time

Attention to dialogue and dialect as a craft element is a skill that pays off across a wide range of texts, since dialogue is one of the primary tools authors use to establish character and setting throughout fiction generally, not just within this particular novella.

Giving this analytical skill dedicated assignment time, rather than treating it as a minor aside within a broader essay, tends to build a more well-rounded set of close reading skills across the unit as a whole.