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TV Talk Discussion Group
I have to say, one of the biggest things I've taken away from the Biden-Palin debate tonight is ... sorry, I just don't think I'll be able to bear another 4 years of hearing the White House say "nucular" !! (Sarah Palin kept saying it.)
What's wrong with politicians getting a few lessons in common pronunciation before they run for high office?? It already grinds on my nerves to hear some folks say "I rack" for Iraq - wouldn't we feel disrespected if we heard an Iraqi call us "Emuracans" or something?? What's wrong with calling different peoples by their own names?
Of all the politicians I've been most impressed with Barack Obama, who even calls the Taliban "the Tall-EE-bon" when others don't. I think if we want to be respected by the world, we need to show it some respect and pronounce their names as given (without going to any extreme, of course).
Just my 2 cents about pronunciations for the day ...
Here's what really gets me about "nucular" in particular: How can she be so oblivious to the fact that Dubya has been ridiculed for this particular mispronunciation ever since he entered office? Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but I can't believe that either honestly doesn't know how to pronounce the word. In Bush's case, I'm sure it started out that way, but there's no way this error has not been pointed out to him at various times. I attribute his continued use of the metathesis to sheer refusal to acknowledge or correct error. In Palin's case, I get the impression that this and any number of other colloquialisms in her public speech are intentional affectations designed to project this "folksy" image.
Another thing (apart from her politics and ideas about the role of a vice president) that really bothered me about Palin in the debate was the "Can I call you Joe?" line that she used to set up her scripted "Say it ain't so, Joe!" remark. I was pleased to see that Biden always addressed her as "Governor".
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Well, if you want to get technical, then you'd have to alter an awful lot of country (and city, etc.) pronunciations. For instance, Spain would not be pronounced S-p-a-n-e. In Spanish the country name is Espana (with a tilde over the n) so it's more or less 'Esponya' in pronunciation. Yet in Spanish, the United States is Los Estados Unidos, so they also don't say the name we call our country. I really don't think it's a big deal. I've always said I-rack and I-ron, or close enough to those pronunciations, and so has just about everyone I know, including history professors in college. I think most people in most countries--not just the U.S.--probably do adapt the pronunciations of other country and city and that's just how it is.
Nu-cu-lar really irritates me, though. That's just plain wrong.
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Updated Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008, at 7:07 PM ET
There are plenty of people out there—not only English teachers but also amateur language buffs like me—who believe that diagramming a sentence provides insight into the mind of its perpetrator. The more the diagram is forced to wander around the page, loop back on itself, and generally stretch its capabilities, the more it reveals that the mind that created the sentence is either a richly educated one—with a Proustian grasp of language that pushes the limits of expression—or such an impoverished one that it can produce only hot air, baloney, and twaddle.
I found myself considering this paradox once again when confronted with the sentences of Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. No one but a Republican denial specialist could argue with the fact that Sarah Palin's recent TV appearances have scaled the heights of inanity. The sentences she uttered in interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and Katie Couric seem to twitter all over the place like mourning doves frightened at the feeder. Which left me wondering: What can we learn from diagramming them?
One thing we can't learn, of course, is whether her words are true or make sense. Part of the appeal of diagramming is the fact that just about any sentence can be diagrammed, even when it is gibberish. Cats chase mice and Mice chase cats present the same kind of entity to the diagrammer. So does Muffins bludgeon bookcases. If it's a string of words containing a certain number of parts of speech arranged in reasonably coherent order, it can be hacked and beaten into a diagram.
Once we start diagramming political sentences, the diagram's indifference to meaning can be especially striking. Stirring words like "I have a dream," the magisterial Declaration of Independence (a staple of diagramming teachers), bald-faced lies ("I am not a crook"), and crafty shadings of the truth ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman") can be diagrammed with equal ease. But some politicians—our current president included—offer meanderings in the higher realms of drivel that leave the diagrammer groping for the Tylenol ("Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream") or the gin bottle ("I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office").
So let's take a crack at a few of Palin's doozies. From the Katie Couric interview:
It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where—where do they go?
A diagrammer doesn't care about who "they" are in that last stuttered question or fuss over the problem of the head-rearing Putin coming into our "air space." A diagrammer simply diagrams. I didn't have a clue about what to do with the question that ends it. Otherwise, in its mice chase cats way, the sentence is perfectly diagrammable.
Other Palinisms are not so tractable. From the Charlie Gibson interview:
I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.
I didn't stop to marvel at the mad thrusting of that pet political watchword "families" into the text. I just rolled up my sleeves and attempted to bring order out of the chaos:
I had to give up. This sentence is not for diagramming lightweights. If there's anyone out there who can kick this sucker into line, I'd be delighted to hear from you. To me, it's not English—it's a collection of words strung together to elicit a reaction, floating ands and prepositional phrases ("with that vote of the American people") be damned. It requires not a diagram but a selection of push buttons.
Granted, diagramming usually deals with written English. We don't expect speech to reach the heights of eloquence or even lucidity that the written word is capable of. In our world, politicians don't do much writing: Their preferred communication is the canned speech. But they're also forced, from time to time, to answer questions, and their answers often resemble the rambling nonsense, obfuscation, and grammatical insanity that many of us would produce when put on the spot.
Yet surely, more than most of us, politicians need to be able to think on their feet, to have a brain that works quickly and rationally under pressure. Do we really want to be led by someone who, when asked a straightforward question, flails around like an undergraduate who stayed up all night boozing instead of studying for the exam?
In a few short weeks, Sarah Palin has produced enough poppycock to keep parsers and diagrammers busy for a long time. In the end, though, out of her mass of verbiage in the Sean Hannity interview, Palin did manage to emit a perfectly lucid diagram-ready statement that sums up, albeit modestly, not the state of the economy that she was (more or less) talking about but the quality of her thinking:
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From Yahoo News:
Still, Ms. Palin's "you betcha" phrases drew a tremendous amount of search interest. In referencing the average American, she used the phrase "Joe Sixpack." The term immediately shot up in Search ("Hockey Mom" is so last month). Palin also referred to John McCain as "the maverick" several times. For viewers, this clearly inspired memories of one of Tom Cruise's greatest hits. That's right, lookups on "top gun maverick" went supersonic. Finally, Palin's mispronunciation of the word "nuclear" drew an atomic level of searches for "nuclear vs. nucular." Remember: when in doubt, just sound it out.
- by Mike Krumboltz
Beyond Dick Cheney saying he only had one beer when he shot his friend while hunting, when have we heard him speak?
Nevah!
The English language is dynamic. Regional dialects exist and change. Got Spanglish? We don't speak the English language that was spoken 200 years ago. Does anyone remember spelling with "F" for "S" as in the Constitution?
Language is dynamic, and slang becomes accepted and notated in the dictionaries of note.
To Mock Palin's Pronounciation, Intonation, Dialect, et cetera petties the issues of the U.S.A. Californians don't speak as Delawarians. Listening, understanding, graciousness is key to the future.
Pursuit of Happiness, Yeah?
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Partnered with all the dropping of the endings of words ... the cutesy so-called folksy phrases it was all too much. Palin just seemed so fake and false to me ... so rehearsed.
Biden not only pronounced things correctly - he also had the most genuine moment onstage when he got upset talking about his first wife and young daughter dying. Palin miscalculated (or perhaps I should say her handlers because we all know they wrote down the things she was to say) when talking as though Biden and by extension Obama can't really relate to us regular folks because they aren't MOTHERS. Know your opponent! Biden's history of raising two kids on his own ... one who they weren't even sure would live trumps that whole notion and he brought it home last night (and while Obama has never been a single parent ... he was raised by one and certainly knows what its like to be worried about money etc).
SNL and Tina Fey are going to have a field day with this debate come Saturday.
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Yes... since when did being "folksy" a persona she plays to the hilt ... become THE qualification you needed to become President? After 8 years of watching George Bush mangle the English language and our economy and our ability to defend ourselves and our standing in the world you would think that would be the last tactic the Republicans would want to use. The fact that the Republicans are still doing it and actually thinking it is one of their strengths proves to me once again just how much they do not get it and how 20th Century their politics are. I am sure Palin just thrilled the base, but the base was already won.
The moment I groaned the loudest during the debate was when she started to BRAG about herself and John, again rattling off a canned list of talking points, after being asked what she thought her Achilles heel was. This has always been a commonly used reference that means a weakness you have. Yes it comes from Greek mythology but it is not some obscure reference only the elite would know... it is a common short hand refering to a personal weakness that has been part of the language for a long time. And the movie Troy came out not to long ago which made it even more topical. Now I admit Palin ducked and dodged most of the questions she was asked and looked down at her notes for a talking point on any topic of her choice no matter the question, but it is my feeling she actually did not understand this question. Even after Biden gave a simple answer about what he perceived to be his flaw she did not stop and correct herself. She was like a train traveling down the track at high speed ignoring all that was before her ... in other words a train wreck waiting to happen and portraying herself as speaking for "average Americans" whatever that is supposed to me (and it sure was not me). Again, after 8 years of a President who so many Americans felt they would like to have a beer with, why would we want to go down that path again, especially given the very dangerous and COMPLEX world out next President and Vice President will need to deal with? So I could forgive her the mangled English if there was a there there, but frankly I don't see it at all.
And as a mother... I would never drag my baby out of bed in the middle of the night for a political get together. What is up with that?
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I love your pronounciation posts..
I watched the beginning of the debate. Palin's voice to me is like nails on a chalkboard. I decided I could watch The View this morning and learn all I needed to re: the debate. LOL
The "I-Rack" and "nucular" are beyond annoying.
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