Good points all brought up so far. Would like to remind everyone of the front page of IS, where the following was posted on June 17th in the "How To Read Infinite Jest" topic:
Quote:
Persevere to page 200: There are several popular way stations on the road to abandoning Infinite Jest. The most heavily trafficked by far is “The Wardine Section”. Where the opening pages of IJ are among the best written in the book, page 37 (and many pages thereafter) are in a tortured, faux-Ebonics type dialect. “Wardine say her momma ain’t treat her right.” “Wardine be cry.” Potentially offensive (if one wants to be offended), and generally hard to get through. Hang in there, ignore the regional parlance, and focus on what the characters are doing. Like most things in the book, you’ll need to know this later. Likewise for the other rough patches to be found in the first fifth of the novel.
So it's a notorious passage, we all might agree, and is often a point of contention and even abandonment for readers.
I would suggest that the vernacular has some significance, but is not meant, on Wallace's part, to draw attention to itself, much less be Wallace's way of showing off what he saw as his dialectical prowess, and thus failing miserably. That seems like a mistake - I can't believe Wallace, in his linguistic genius, was so closed off as to think that the Wardine section contained particularly accurate language.
Another thing that should be considered is that this section is one of the few in the novel I can think of that seems to be narrated completely by another person other than our normal, 3rd person omniscient narrator.