Soldier’s Home: Dialect 1 key example

One sign of this dialect is the frequent use of contractions. Another example is the use of now-obsolete slang. For example, Hemingway writes "muss up" meaning "to treat roughly," as opposed to its more modern meaning of "to tousle one's hair." Similarly, Helen asks if Krebs is her "beau," and Krebs refers to her as "my girl," antiquated words used to convey one's significant other, which in the context of their family dynamic underscores Krebs's disinterest in finding a girl and starting his own family. The fact that the story is told from a third person perspective further highlights the dialect by establishing a sharp contrast between the diction of the dialogue and the diction of the narrator. 

By locating Krebs in time and place and drawing a commonality between Krebs and his family, the dialect in "Soldier's Home" juxtaposes the surface-level similarities between Krebs and his family against Krebs's mental and emotional isolation, existing in solitude both compared to his family and compared to the rest of the world.