Annotations - William Dean Howells, "Turkeys Turning the Tables" (1892)

chickledren

The word "chickledren" is Howells' coinage, a neologism created by joining the words that describe the young offspring  of turkeys and humans respectively: "chicks" and "children." The phrase "chick-chickledren" presumably represents not only First Premium's dialect but also his gobbler-inflected accent. His speech is reported directly, enclosed in quotation marks, signifying that his exact words are being quoted, rather than being mediated through the human narrator or another human character. In this way, the narrative stresses that First Premium has possession of language and the same technique of direct report of speech is used to record the words uttered by the turkey chicks and hen-turkeys.