Sarah Palin speaks like a high-school drop out, dropping the "Gs" from her ING's.
I think it's genuine, not affectation. But it is also something highly noticeable. It may actually be attractive to some of those Hillary voters-- the blue collar, over 50 folks. And it's surely attractive to those southern core, redneck voters.
But what's fascinating is we are starting to see Fox news anchors and right wing talking heads and pundits dropping their Gs as well.
Now, why would well spoken professionals start dropping their Gs? I speculate that by dropping down to her linguistic level, they are normalizing what would otherwise, for them, be an embarassing lapse. By talkin' like her, they turn a use of language that usually connotes lack of education and polish as something more acceptable.
The thing is, this is another great example of how the right has sold out. Just propagating the lie that she is a competent, ready to be president candidate is a despicable lie and a sellout of America-- a huge one. But now, they are also selling out the American language. America has millions who speak like Sarah and that's fine. I drop my 'Gs' occasionally. But when you speak in public, you use your best English, except for ocassional emphases.
Adopting Palin's de-G-ed "speakin'" is an assault on the language, just like perpetrating the lie that she's ready to lead is an assault on the future of the nation.
But I digress. I'm talking about Sarah's ability to speak... or not.
It's one more reason I wince and cringe when thinking of her engaging in discussions with leaders of foreign states. Her perky, folksy talk won't mean much when dealing with serious international issues.
Even if, as it appears, the MCain Palin ticket is on its way into the trashcan of defeat, I fear that her injection into the media mainstream may have lasting untoward effects upon American English.
I guess we should call it the Sarah Palinization of the nation, or at least, the nation's tongue. Hmm Palintongue. Nah. Make it Palintonue.
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)