It’s the grammar. I’m talkin’ ’bout Palin, of course, who’s certainly gotten her fair share of comment from the media on both her accent and her grammar, though most pundits seem to focus on the phonological features of her dialect (see posts elsewhere on Politico, Slate, and numerous linguablogs that I’m sure you’ve already read if you’re reading here, this, today). The other day, Language Log finally hit on something that I *actually* find interesting about Palin’s speech, which is her common use of also as some kind of discourse marker. But there are two other aspects of Palin’s grammar that astonish me even more, making me wonder what’s going on linguistically up there in Alaska.
First is her use of what seem to me like unnecessary demonstratives where definite articles (or no article) would do, and I’m not really sure what they’re doing semantically or stylistically for her. I noticed this first, I think, after she gave reports of her meeting with Hamid Karzai, saying that she asked him, “Is that what you are seeking, also? That strategy that has been so successful in Iraq?” Why the that, there? “The strategy” would’ve worked just fine. In her interviews with Katie Couric she produced them the whole way through, and the VP debate showed no shortage either.
Second is her use of the conditional mood, using the modal would in instances where I wouldn’t (!) expect it. It seems to turn up most often in foreign policy-related phrases of the form X who would Y / [Noun] who would [Verb] and I’m not sure where this comes from. Today’s NYT article about her new attacks on Obama conveniently gives some quotes that demonstrate these features:
If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for all of us. [ed's note: anyone know what this *means*?]
Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.
Here are some examples from the VP Debate transcript of the demonstratives:
Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) reform measures. He sounded that warning bell.
I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight…
Now, what I’ve done as a governor and as a mayor is (inaudible) I’ve had that track record of reform.
And that’s why, with all due respect, I do respect your years in the U.S. Senate, but I think Americans are craving something new and different and that new energy and that new commitment that’s going to come with reform.
I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you.
Maliki and Talabani also in working with us are knowing again that we are getting closer and closer to that point, that victory that’s within sight.
What is the rhetorical effect of these?
Also, the conditionals:
A statement that he made like that is downright dangerous because leaders like Ahmadinejad who would seek to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe off the face of the earth an ally like we have in Israel should not be met with without preconditions and diplomatic efforts being undertaken first.
But again, with some of these dictators who hate America and hate what we stand for, with our freedoms, our democracy, our tolerance, our respect for women’s rights, those who would try to destroy what we stand for cannot be met with just sitting down on a presidential level as Barack Obama had said he would be willing to do.
We have got to assure them that we will never allow a second Holocaust, despite, again, warnings from Iran and any other country that would seek to destroy Israel, that that is what they would like to see.
You get the picture. In what hypothetical world are these things going to happen?
Anyway, DAMMIT! Language Log just stole my topic. Damn you Language Log. Just when I think I have something *else* to say, it turns out I don’t. Maybe this is why I don’t blog much anymore….
Also long-time readers might be interested to know that a few weeks ago was my four year blogiversary! Whoah! I’m like a geriatric blogger at this point.
as someone commented on ll: it sounds like ads that talk about “that new car” or “that vacation” that you’ve always wanted. the purpose, i guess, is to make them seem more personal and informal, like they really know ya.
like that commenter, i find the use hokey and annoying, as i do palin.
Comment by schizo — October 5, 2008 @ 4:56 pm
You know those Language Loggers are more generous than damnable–you get mentioned in an update!
(But they *do* get more interesting comments than this one.)
Keep posting!
Comment by ZephyrProcess — October 6, 2008 @ 12:50 am
I haven’t read the LL post yet, but here’s my 2 cents:
It seems like they way she uses “that” implies certain things are a given, when they aren’t necessarily. What warning bell? That warning bell that McCain rang. What track record of reform? That track record of reform that I have. What new energy and commitment? That new energy and commitment we (McCain/Palin) bring.
The conditionals all seem to imply things that would happen if someone wasn’t there to stop them: “. . . any other country that would seek to destroy Israel [if McCain/Palin are not elected/if Obama/Biden are elected/America is not there to stop it]”
You can add one of those to pretty much any of the quotes you cite and I think it gets to what she means.
Comment by Timm — October 7, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
Happy blogiversary!
Comment by Skullturf Q. Beavispants — October 7, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
AND they never touched on the conditionals!
Comment by The Ridger — October 7, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
I’ve noticed this odd use of demonstratives as well. In the course of reading your post, I’ve started to wonder if maybe it’s a tactic (either conscious or unconscious) to make herself feel more secure (or sound more knowledgeable) in a situation in which she’s not entirely comfortable discussing the topic at hand. LL cites the OED entry for “that,” which includes:
“Indicating a person or thing assumed to be known, or to be known to be such as is stated.”
Perhaps there’s a feeling on her part that if she uses the demonstrative in this way, referring to that new oversight and that new energy and so on, she’ll sound like part of the “in” crowd, like she knows what she’s talking about, and like this is something that people just know if they’re competent on the subject.
I’m tired and having trouble expressing what I want to say in a clear and coherent way, but hopefully I’m making some sense. Hearing her say these things, it feels a bit like there’s this undertone of “I can play this game, too! Look! I’m using the right words!” Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but the more I think about it, the more I suspect that the unorthodox use of demonstratives is something of an insta-crediblity tactic.
Comment by Anne — October 8, 2008 @ 12:46 am
ZP – true, and thanks.
Timm – interesting; I hadn’t really thought about what exactly is implied by each of the usages. I guess I thought the conditionals thing was more like evoking language of religiosity or something, but at a literal level the implicature works.
Anne – I like that theory.
Comment by squires — October 8, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
In CB lingo in the rural midwest years ago (remember the police band ten code, as in “ten-four, good buddy”?) saying “that there” before every noun made it easier to alert the listener that an important noun was coming up. What kind of communication infrastructure did that there Palin grow up with?
Comment by Nijma — October 13, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
I think Timm (#3) would be having the right take on the conditionals. Her use of them is actually quite clever: In some imaginary world, everything’s quite dangerous, but if you elect us, we’re going to keep Ameruka, Ameruka, shooting wolves from planes like we always have.
Comment by Karlo — October 17, 2008 @ 9:53 am
Whatever the weirdness of Palin’s specific habits of word usage, the most striking thing for me is the semantic implications of her fragmented phrases and the way they fail to hang together in normal grammatical relationships with each other. It’s as if she had gleaned key words and phrases that are proven to act as hot buttons for her constituency and strung them together in an ultimately content-free discourse. It seems to work as a kind of linguistic metaphor for the sports car and other ads that use images to subliminally imply the car or whatever will bring women to the men who “would” own them, or vice versa, …if they were to just buy that car and so they would own that particular thing or whatever else also.
To any linguistically competent person, however, it seems to come off as mindless rambling. She clearly doesn’t remember her previous phrase structures later on in her run-on sentences well enough to terminate or tie them together sensibly.
Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory of innate structural universals, if valid, may still hold even in cases like hers, but any development of their extension in a specific language over lengthy structures seems to be seriously, seriously lacking in her case. She seems to have cultivated what for her is a very inconvenient habit of using very lengthy structures without ever having developed the higher order structural comprehension needed to glue local phrases and clauses together properly or even make them grammatically compatible.
This leads to speculating that perhaps she intuits or knows from experience that people tend to esteem to some degree those who use extended structures in their speech. Many really don’t listen to much of anything closely or with much comprehension anyway. Without taking anything away from other speculation here about her use of demonstratives, since I find the ideas regarding this already presented in previous posts both interesting and likely valid, maybe she is also unconsciously using them to compensate for her intellectual inability to extemporaneously construct sensible lengthy structures by introducing “that” again and again to create a sense of meaningful connectedness where none actually exists. This possibly applies even more to her use of “that” not as a demonstrative, but as a relative pronoun to tie, or at least appear to tie, dependent clauses that are sometimes irrelevant to the rest of the sentence.
Substantiating earlier posts, I find this quote from her compelling as an example of otherwise meaningless wordiness that could serve as a kind of assumptive sales close on an idea, perhaps more effective than making a straight assertion that the surge has worked:
“And with the surge that has worked
we’re now down to pre-surge numbers in Iraq.”
To me it sounds utterly silly, but apparently many people buy it. I notice she uses “that” as a relative pronoun often when it could be easily omitted, as in “I thought that you could do that”, rather than “I thought you could do that.” After all, this is one way to add to length without actually adding anything to the meaning, a characteristic of speech she appears to value highly.
I can’t help but wonder whether the way her speech falls on the ears of those who hear her might serve as an interesting tool for discovering to which demographic segments of society she appeals and to which she doesn’t. This theory seems to fit what we observe, at least, about those who cherish her most and those who don’t at all. (Oh, well! I guess I need to work on making my redundant language less grammatically coherent and content-free.)
Comment by straight_talk — November 19, 2008 @ 1:40 am