Which anthropologist and folklorist included dialect and dying cultures in her works, including Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jonah's Gourd Vine?

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Multiple Choice

Which anthropologist and folklorist included dialect and dying cultures in her works, including Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jonah's Gourd Vine?

This question is about recognizing an author who blends anthropology and folklore with fiction, using authentic speech to preserve fading cultural patterns. Zora Neale Hurston did exactly that. She was both an anthropologist and a folklorist who collected Black oral traditions in the American South and the Caribbean, and she wove that voice and material into her novels. Their Eyes Were Watching God uses dialect to give Janie’s story an almost oral-told quality, reflecting the speech and rhythms of the community. Jonah's Gourd Vine, her first novel, draws on her fieldwork experiences and the lives of Black Floridians, incorporating folkways and local voice into the narrative. This combination of ethnographic listening, preservation of vernacular speech, and storytelling about communities facing change is what makes Hurston the right fit. The others are known for different kinds of work—Jane Goodall with primates, Margaret Mead with broader cultural studies, and Ruth Benedict with cultural patterns—so they don’t match this specific blend of dialect-focused writing and folk-cultural portrayal.

This question is about recognizing an author who blends anthropology and folklore with fiction, using authentic speech to preserve fading cultural patterns. Zora Neale Hurston did exactly that. She was both an anthropologist and a folklorist who collected Black oral traditions in the American South and the Caribbean, and she wove that voice and material into her novels. Their Eyes Were Watching God uses dialect to give Janie’s story an almost oral-told quality, reflecting the speech and rhythms of the community. Jonah's Gourd Vine, her first novel, draws on her fieldwork experiences and the lives of Black Floridians, incorporating folkways and local voice into the narrative. This combination of ethnographic listening, preservation of vernacular speech, and storytelling about communities facing change is what makes Hurston the right fit. The others are known for different kinds of work—Jane Goodall with primates, Margaret Mead with broader cultural studies, and Ruth Benedict with cultural patterns—so they don’t match this specific blend of dialect-focused writing and folk-cultural portrayal.

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