It’s hilarious to hear people who speak in flat Midwestern English tones argue that they "don’t have an accent" just because they sound so much like nomadic television newscasters everywhere. In fact, everybody has an accent. But, as any 6th grader or architect transplanted from Alabama to Michigan or from Texas to Oregon can tell you, some accents have more cachet than others on the playground and at the office. Until I purged my drawl in junior high, I was seen by most of my classmates and more than a few teachers as having a brain as drowsy as my speech.
On "Fresh Air," a couple of weeks ago, Geoff Nunberg remarked that we live in an era when politicians’ speech and accents have been under the microscope. Senator Clinton got roasted for "Kentucky Fried Hillary. John Edwards was critiqued for his "carefully maintained Southern accent." And Senator Obama was tsk-tsked for using a "’blackcent’ that his upbringing didn't entitle him to. And even Michelle Obama was accused of pandering when she said ‘There ain't no blacks in Iowa.’ ..."
If authenticity is a matter of heeding your true inner voice, then it probably isn't surprising that people listen for signs of it in the way you speak. And our idea of an authentic accent reflects our idea of the authentic self. It's the natural speech you sucked up from the surroundings you grew up in, unfiltered and uncorrected. It's how you're supposed to sound when you're talking to yourself.
It's also a delusion. Or at least if your speech is like yourself, it's because both are a work in progress. ... [I]t doesn't make sense to ask what part of that is my "authentic" voice. You grow up, you meet new people, you change the way you talk. If you still sound the same way you did when you were 15, you haven't been getting out enough.
So what if George W. Bush came relatively late in life to west Texas and its g-dropping ways? It's part of who he is now, and I'd bet it's how he sounds when somebody wakes him up in the middle of the night.
So like Bill Clinton, [Sarah] Palin can signal authenticity simply by refashioning her original accent, rather than acquiring a new one. You can actually hear how this developed if you pull up the Youtube video of Palin as a 24-year-old Anchorage sportscaster fresh from her broadcasting classes in college. She wasn't in control of her accent back then: she scattered the desk with dropped g's: "Purdue was killin' Michigan"; "Look what they're doin' to Chicago."
It's strikingly different from the way she talks now in her public appearances, not just because she's much more poised, but because she's learned how to work it. When she talks about policy, her g's are decorously in place - she never says "reducin' taxes" or "cuttin' spendin.'"
Now there are clearly a lot of people who find this engaging, but I can't imagine that anybody really supposes it's artless. What it is is a stone-washed impersonation of a Mat-Su Valley girl. I wouldn't be surprised if Palin and her friends perfected this way back in high school. There's no group that's so unselfconscious that its members don't get a kick out of parodying their own speech: most Brooklynites do a very creditable Brooklyn, and every Valley girl can do a dead-on Valley girl.
At this point, let me interject a personal gripe of mine, the blasting of Mister Bush for saying nu-kuu-lar. Since arriving at the White House, he has received repeated har-de-hars from all the sophisticates who would never think of trashing Ted Kennedy for pronouncing Cuba Kyu-ber.
Nu-kuu-lar is a pronunciation widely but not exclusively used among Southerners, nuclear scientists, and people in the military. Guess who else besides Mister Bush and Governor Palin say or said nu-kuu-lar: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Not to mention Homer Simpson.
That's because of what linguists call metathesis, a shifting of nearby sounds. It happens in every language. And, although many people may think they'd personally never engage in this sort of thing, they'd be wrong. English and other languages are filled with words whose pronunciations have been PERMANENTLY changed by metathesis.
Linguist Nunberg has argued elsewhere that many people - like Mister Bush - may know the "correct" pronunciation but say nu-kuu-lar anyway as a way to thumb their noses at their critics and/or to sound "folksy." In any case, far better to spend energy criticizing nuclear policy than its pronunciation.
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The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story: Why Big Banks May End up Buying Your City's Public Water System..
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Tonight is the fifth and final asking of the same question. The previous polls were on September 4, September 19, October 3 and October 24.