Given that the default, non-quotation text is not, in general, describing sounds in the environment, why do you think a reader would interpret unquoted text as environmental sounds rather than as simply more of the author’s description of goings on in the scene? I can see that presenting spoken words in some format that allows or encourages their interpretation as environmental might be artistically useful, I just don’t see that removing the quotation marks from otherwise-quoted dialog accomplishes that.
By environment, I mean the setting of the scene. Spoken words are sounds in the setting, like the sound of the wind, a gunshot, or an animal’s cry. It just happens that a human voice box is what’s making those particular sounds. McCarthy’s central theme across all the novels of his that I’ve read is the inhumanity of the Mexican-American frontier, and treating human speech as just a sound among other sounds is a key part of how he expresses that theme in his writing style.
Bang he said they wouldn’t fire she replied it happened anyway they concurred.
If the author wants this sentence to be interpreted one way or the other, they should utilize standard punctuation. Your avant garde approach to literature notwithstanding.
Given that the default, non-quotation text is not, in general, describing sounds in the environment, why do you think a reader would interpret unquoted text as environmental sounds rather than as simply more of the author’s description of goings on in the scene? I can see that presenting spoken words in some format that allows or encourages their interpretation as environmental might be artistically useful, I just don’t see that removing the quotation marks from otherwise-quoted dialog accomplishes that.
By environment, I mean the setting of the scene. Spoken words are sounds in the setting, like the sound of the wind, a gunshot, or an animal’s cry. It just happens that a human voice box is what’s making those particular sounds. McCarthy’s central theme across all the novels of his that I’ve read is the inhumanity of the Mexican-American frontier, and treating human speech as just a sound among other sounds is a key part of how he expresses that theme in his writing style.
That still leaves the question of how the reader is to distinguish a sound (speech) from a description of sounds.
Can you give an example?
Bang he said they wouldn’t fire she replied it happened anyway they concurred.
If the author wants this sentence to be interpreted one way or the other, they should utilize standard punctuation. Your avant garde approach to literature notwithstanding.