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In
this July 26, 2009, file photo, then-Alaska Gov.
Sarah Palin speaks in
Fairbanks
,
Alaska
. Oh, how the tables have turned. Nervous Democrats
are on defense and emboldened Republicans sense
opportunity heading into 2010 and the midterm
elections. It was just three years ago that the GOP
lost the House and Senate as well as governor's
mansions in a cross-country Democratic wave.
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This
Nov. 10 photo taken in
Madison
, shows, from left, University of Wisconsin-Madison
linguists Eric Raimy, Joe Salmons and Thomas Purnell.
The three are authors of a research paper to be
published in the Journal of English Linguistics next
month on Sarah Palin's speech.
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MADISON -
When Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage
there was a lot of talk about her distinctive way of talkin',
you betcha.
Heck, she moved to Alaska
when she was too young to speak and grew up in the small
town of Wasilla, but doggone it, why did she talk like
someone from the movie "Fargo"?
Three University of
Wisconsin-Madison linguists tackled the conundrum in a
research article to be published in the Journal of English
Linguistics next month. The answer lies in something that
happened in the 1930s.
During the presidential
campaign, almost every aspect of Palin's life, including how
she talked, was dissected by everyone from curious voters to
political pundits. Many noted that for someone who grew up
in Alaska, she talked a lot like she had been raised in
Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota.
The UW researchers said
people living in Alaska's Matanuska and Susitna valleys,
where Wasilla is located, are largely descendants of farmers
who moved there in the 1930s from the Upper Midwest. More
than 200 farm families moved to the Wasilla area in 1935 as
part of a government program to start a new farming
community.
"Everybody's ear was
basically right, but there's a little complexity there that
you don't get until you go through and hack through it
systematically," said Joe Salmons, director of UW's
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. He wrote
the paper along with UW linguistics professors Thomas
Purnell and Eric Raimy after they parsed the 7,640 words
Palin spoke during the 2008 vice presidential debate.
While Palin has the expected
Upper Midwestern speech patterns, she also has what Salmons
called "screaming hallmarks of western speech."
For example, Palin pronounces
the word "feel" like "fill" and
"peel" like "pill." Those inflections
were not picked up on by the media or those who lampooned
Palin, including Tina Fey on "Saturday Night
Live," Salmons said.
"It wasn't part of the
stereotype," he said.
They found that she dropped
the -ing at the end of words nearly 12 percent of the time,
said the words "darn" and heck" two times
each, referred to her grandmother as "gramma" and
offered a "shout out" to a third-grade class in
Alaska.
That type of informal speech
is jarring to listeners attuned to hearing formal political
talk and led many to question whether Palin was doing it for
effect, Purnell said.
"This is a situation
where you really expect someone to be using the most formal
grammar," Salmons said.
No matter how natural it may
sound, some of what Palin says is probably cultivated to
appeal to a certain demographic, said Carl Shepro, a
political science professor at the University of Alaska
Anchorage.
David Bowie, an English
professor specializing in linguistics at the same
university, said Palin didn't use so many informalities
before she ran for national office.
"She doesn't sound like
that when she's speaking to Alaskans," Bowie said.
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