How does John Steinbeck use language in different ways in “Of mice and men?” Essay

John Steinbeck uses language in different ways throughout the story. It creates imagery and helps you understand the story even better. Also it indicates differences in characters and the setting of the story. Steinbeck uses non-standard English for dialogue. Lennie is portrayed to be a slow childish character; he acts like a child asking George lots of questions about there ‘dream’. Lennie repeats this quite a lot â€Å"George how longs it gonna be till we get the rabbits?† This is Lennies dream to have rabbits, and Steinbeck repeats this dream it’s a kind of rhythm throughout the book. Also Lennie is more of a listener he doesn’t speak much to other characters apart from George unless he has too. He asks George frequently to â€Å"tell† him â€Å"about that place† where they are planning to move to when they have enough money, Lennie listens to George as though he was a parent or guardian and gets excited while George tell him. This gives us the impression that George looks after Lennie and keeps him safe. Steinbeck makes George seem rather parent like. George is a talker, he tells the story of him and Lennie moving away to a place of there own often to Lennie. We get the impression that George sometimes gets rather sick of Lennie as he repeats things and asks George to tell him â€Å"the story† we can see this by â€Å"I jus’ tol’ you, jus’ las’ night† this is wrote in an American way of speaking, he uses imagery as when you read this you say it to yourself in your head and you can imagine the way George is speaking. Also George seems to swear quite a lot and mainly towards Lennie where he calls him a â€Å"crazy bastard† this use of profanity and pronunciation portrays George to be rather uneducated, we can expect this as Steinbeck was a farm labourer for a time. The story was set in the 1930’s black people where very disrespected and used for slaves in these days. Also they wouldn’t be referred to as ‘black people’ it would be much more racial as we can see from what they call Crooks â€Å"nigger†. When crooks addresses Slim he calls him â€Å"Mr slim† none of the other characters address him in this way, this shows us that he has respect for Slim and that he believes Slim is a man of importance rather like the boss. Slim is portrayed to be â€Å"almighty† we get the impression that Slim is looked up to by the other men, they respect him and when they need answers or advice it is usually Slim to whom they turn to. As when Curley and Lennie fight it is Slim who everyone turns to. George asks him â€Å"Slim will we get canned now?† This shows he has power and the men believe he can take authority in situations like this. Steinbeck makes the characters dialogue very brief and it lacks detail they say what is necessary without detail, whereas when Steinbeck is describing a character or a place he uses descriptive language and Standard English, also he uses American dialect for certain words. Throughout the book there is few long sentences he uses short sentences. The way he describes places and characters is very different to the dialogue, he uses imagery in both but in different ways in dialogue he uses the shortening of words and there simple ways to help us imagine, whereas in his exposition he describes things in much detail and uses colours effectively. Also for certain words he uses an American dialect to replace them.