The Words for Everyone

Everyone's way of speaking is the perfect and easiest to crush them with satire. Whether it's a man's alternating diction and thus personality, the author's dramatical Shakespearean way of speaking or his Greek grandmother's crappy grammar, David Sedaris focuses all throughout the book on the essence of spoken language, or how our brains spit out who we are. 

"Something for everyone," that's what Dupont, Sedaris' coworker as handymen, meant as he shaped his personality, to please give the best for everyone. For Sedaris, who he spotted as a gay sex maniac, Dupont was a playboy who often shared with him the latest sex adventures with his upper class girlfriend who wanted thrill with a badass black man, a role he adapted to play. With their boss, Uta, the author's coworker was a slave from the nineteenth century, maintaining the language as he sympathized with their common interest in progress. "I don't wanna get me no casah [cancer]... No ma'am, I don't want nothin' preventing' me from achievin' my goals" (pg. 218), "Dat dere bees the exact typo music I listens to at homes" (pg. 218), or "I reckon there will, Miz Uta...I's hoping' I could go to medical school...real soon so maybe I could operate on my mother" (pg. 225) are all examples of Dupont's language as an influence on others. Sedaris is able to show that how we communicate shows who we are, in Dupont's case a psycho.

While some seek to deteriorate their word choice to suit others, Sedaris as a child found his superior diction in Shakespeare's plays. Already a drama aficionado, he decided to change his complete way of speaking in order to "reintroduce" archaic English to Raleigh, NC. "Perchance, fair lady, thou dost think me unduly vexed by the sorrowful state of thine quarters," Sedaris said to his mother. The essay where he talks about this, and overall his general obsession with drama, beneath the humor and self-ridicule, shows that language exhibits our personality. 

Ya Ya, the author's Greek grandmother, complained that her fish "had" a suicide. Sedaris' mom quickly corrected her, but Ya Ya didn't care about what "the girl" said. "The girl go away now," said Ya Ya (pg. 26). In the essay "Get Your Ya-Ya's Out!" Sedaris mocks the cultural clash between his mom and her mother-in-law, examining details ranging from Ya Ya's inability to connect with anyone to her death, showing that diction, again, plays a huge role in satire. The only way the reader gets to know how Ya Ya was, and therefore laugh, is by knowing how she spoke. Although Sedaris' essays have very varied themes, people's vocabulary and phrasing are the base for his ability to crush them with satire. For the readers to be amused by the people he describes, they must know them. It sounds obvious, that words are important for communication, but it's more than that. Each person's diction is what their minds can express, showing how their minds are. By reading Naked, I've understood more the role of diction in rhetoric and communication.