That Nucular Thing

Look.

I know you don't like the woman.  I understand that her pronunciation of nuclear bothers you, and makes you think of Bush.

But give it a rest.

Saying "nucular" rather than "nuclear" doesn't mean you're an idiot.  It doesn't inevitably mean that you're trying to be folksy (or as some have put it, "fauxksy").

I say "nucular."  My father says "nucular" - hell, when he's under stress, or spends time with his relatives, he'll even say "Warshington."  I also drop final "g"s, say "kinda" and "gonna" and "you know" and "like."

It requires effort and concentration for me to pronounce words in a way that people have decided is the way that intelligent people speak.

I have a Master's degree, and a Ph.D.  So does my father. 

We are not stupid. 

We understand that the way we both grew up speaking is considered the intonation of hicks and imbeciles.  We both, as a result, try to speak "better" especially when we are in public.

But you know what?  How you pronounce a word says nothing about your character, your intelligence, your values, or your education.

All it says is whether you are (a) one of the lucky people who grew up speaking "the right way" as your native accent, (b) one of the people who did not, or (c) one of the people who did not and makes a conscious effort to abandon the speech patterns of their childhood to fit in with the expectations of others.

I get that people have linguistic pet peeves.  I hate the misuse of apostrophes, and of their/there/they're, and I dislike the use of words like "utilize" and "impact."

But that's because there are established linguistic rules of grammar that are required for educated writing.

English has established rules of spelling - essential in a language where the pronunciation of words is all over the place.  I'm never going to spell "nuclear" "nucular" unless I'm making a point about the word's phonetics.  My father and I both know that the word "Washington" doesn't have an "R" in it, and that the word for a small stream is not spelled like the word for a pain in the neck.

But that's spelling.

Again, it requires effort and conscious attention - repeated every time these words come up in conversation - for us to sound like intelligent people.

Because so many of you are so prejudiced against regional and working-class accents that you assume that anyone who has them must be an ignorant hick. 

Now, Palin's doing this in reverse - she's using her accent to distance herself from her upper-middle-class lifestyle, her position of power, and her lofty ambitions. 

And you know what?  For some people, it may work.  Because for years we have all been told that a person with imperfect language must be stupid, just as a person from a small town must be a clueless rube, and you know what?  It gets old.

I don't want to sympathize with Palin.  She is selfish, power-hungry, and opposed to everything I value.  But some days, like now, it's pretty hard not to.

Comments

[Lorianne]

Where were you raised? It sounds like you & I share the same dialect, and the same attitude toward "nucular," etc. (For the record, I was raised in Columbus, Ohio, where my folks still say "nucular," "warsh," and occasionally "crick.")

In high school, I taught myself to say "wash" rather than "warsh," and in college, I switched from "acyoostic" to "acoostic" after a classmate ridiculed me whenever I'd refer to a non-electric guitar. When Bush was elected and everyone started giving him heck over "nucular," I retrained myself on that one.

But I still drop g's, say "kinda" and "gonna," refer to my parents as my "folks," etc. And even in my classes, I sometimes use colloquialisms such as "ain't" just to get my students' attention...and because I believe the value in having a PhD (and a damned good knowledge of "proper" grammar) is knowing when you can BREAK the rules.

So, I'll forgive Palin for "nucular" since that's how I was raised to say it, too. But the folksy winks are a whole other story...

[New Kid on the Hallway]

The dropping Gs really bothered me because I would swear she was doing it on purpose. I don't care if she has the accent because that's what she grew up with. But I do care if she manipulates it to present herself a certain way. In fact, my problems with her speaking patterns weren't so much the accent as the informality. Why are you saying "kinda" on national television?? I mean, I say "kinda" all the time in ordinary life. When I'm making a presentation? I say "kind of." And the debates are so scripted, I don't think she's exactly thinking on her feet.

That said, your overall point is excellent and I need to remember it.

[Anastasia]

Sarah Palin talks *exactly* like my mother. Well, a slightly exaggerated version of my mother. But I hear it and I don't think it's affected. It sounds like a more pronounced pacific northwest accent to me, which is to say it sounds completely frakking normal to me.

So thanks for this post because people need to dial down the regional ugly already.

[Rana]

Well, my parents are both Midwesterners - Mom's from central Illinois, and Dad's from Kentucky and Indiana. Since I was raised mostly in California, I can't lay all of my speaking habits on my childhood upbringing, but as a kid who moved around a lot, I tended to stick closer to my family than my peers. I'm a bit of an accent chameleon, in that I can pick up some things easily, but there are a lot of vocal tics that I share with my parents (my father especially) that are deeply embedded.

I do think that Palin's particular speaking style during the debate was at least partly exaggerated for effect, and that she was hoping to manipulate her audience by refusing to speak in a more conventional "voice" that was appropriate for the forum (I've heard her speak on other occasions, and all those "dangs" and "doggones" aren't part of her normal speech).

But, the thing is, that sort of speaking style works for her in that she's distancing herself from the "Washington elites" or even just "liberals" who tend to make fun of people who speak like that (and some people do, even in the exaggerated version).

I guess my point here is that (1) it's arrogant to assume things about a person's intelligence based on his or her accent, and (2) this arrogance has alienated a number of people and Palin is attempting to tap into that feeling of resentment with her exaggerated folksy shtick.

Basically, if you make fun of her for her accent, all you're doing is alienating people who share that accent, and giving her ammunition to use in the so-called culture war between "latte-sipping urban liberals" and "ordinary Americans."

Of course, the media tends to play right into this, since they appear to honestly believe that "ordinary Americans" are folksy and slightly dim people from small rural towns. I've seen several of these people claiming that Palin's folksy ways are going to appeal to that demographic - while the actual members of that demographic are far more doubtful (some are even offended by what they see as her mocking them).

I think it's an annoying and counterproductive habit on the part of too many self-proclaimed progressives to froth up a lather about "nucular" and "you betcha" and "kinda" and "gonna" and the like as if that were substantive criticism.

Instead, it's classist and regionalist, and reinforces the notion of liberals as snotty elitists who make fun of ordinary people.

And on a personal level, I find it insulting.

[Anastasia]

I agree that during the debate she was exaggerating a bit with all the dangs and what not. Dropping the g, though, is just part of her normal speech pattern--and totally something my mom does, as part of a regional dialect.

[pat thistlethwaite]

I agree with you absolutely. Never judge a book by its cover, never judge a person by the way they speak - up here in North Yorkshire the dialect is so strong that "between natives" it is hard for an outsider to hear what is being said! But out here in the countryside you are judged for what you DO not for what you say - actions speak louder than words!

[jo(e)]

Well said.

And let's face it. We don't need to attack the way she talks. Taking a hard look at her ideas on just about any important issue is enough.

[Lance Mannion]

Yep! And yep again! And what jo(e)said too. Frankly, I never understood the snickering at Bush's pronunciation of nuclear either. My father is a physicist and worked at a nuclear research lab where they designed the engines for nuclear submarines and I'm sure I heard plenty of his friends and colleagues, all scientists too, say "nucular." And it's not as though we Democrats only vote for people who learned to speak from 'enry 'iggins. As I recall we had a President we all liked a lot who called that island 90 miles off Florida Cuber.

[Amanda]

Hear, hear. Enough with the prescriptivism already. A friend who trained as a linguist once told me that people with southern accents have to deal with the assumption that they're stupid or lazy or ignorant every time they open their mouths. Ever since then, I've tried not to make assumptions based on what someone's accent sounds like.

I'm curious about the geographic reach of "warsh" -- I'd always assumed it was a mid-Atlantic thing, because people say it in Baltimore, where I grew up. (I lost my Bawlmer accent somewhere along the line, but people who know what it sounds like say they can still hear it in my speech if they listen hard.)

[Rana]

lisa, Liz Ben, you're both at the wrong site.

I'm blocking you unless you email me and make a good case as to why I should let you comment here. I'm looking for conversations and thoughtful disagreement - and one-line non sequiturs and link-flogging don't count as either.

[sailnmuffin]

You answered your own question. You said that Palin is "...using her accent to distance herself from her upper-middle-class lifestyle, her position of power, and her lofty ambitions...." Other people who have posted here have stated they find her sppech "exaggerated." It is. It is an affectation. It is contrived. It is as false as her folksy winks to the camera. That is what is objectionable.

As far as her speech being some kind of dialect, it is not. It is neither an "Alaskan" pattern of speech nor a "Pacific Northwest" pattern of speech. I know Alaskans, and I lived in Seattle for 16 years; people in both places simply do not sound like Palin.

Much as Palin has kicked it up a notch when playing to the cameras, she could tone it down if she wanted. I can. I'm a native Texan, and with effort I can twang with the best of them. I normally drop the ending consonants off of participles and slur verbs together -- but in polite society I can dress up my speech yet still sound natural, the way I can comfortably wear clothing more formal than T-shirts and sweats when the occasion demands. So I call shenanigans on Palin's speech. She can do better and in my opinion the way she speaks is a conscious decision with years of practice behind it.

Even though I believe she knows what she is doing when it comes to her chosen pattern of speech, and may be clever, I do not believe she is intelligent, informed, or prepared for a high-stakes position in our government.

[Rana]

sailnmuffin - you make good points.

However, it's not Palin's speech that's really the topic of my post, nor what interests me or offends me.

It's the way that so many people - including a number of progressives who would be horrified if someone informed them that they were making sexist, homophobic, racist, ableist, fat-phobic, ageist remarks - become positively rabid about a number of her verbal tics. The "gosh" and "darn" and "doggone it" bits are overdone, and I really doubt that anyone believes that she genuinely talks that way.

But the other, less put-on ways that she speaks - the dropping of final "g"s, the "nuclear as nucular" thing, the "you betchas" - I have, as I made a point of calling attention - grown up doing several of these things myself, as have members of my family - and if you've never heard an honest "you betcha" come from a person's mouth, you've never lived in Minnesota.

Her accent is also not simply regional - it's also a class-derived, semi-rural accent.

But in any case, I'm not really interested in whether her accent is fake or not.

What I AM interested in is the way that it is apparently acceptable, even among deliberate, conscious, principled progressives, to use speech patterns as a shorthand for judging a person - and to do so not even in a thoughtful way, but by laughing, screaming in outrage, and snarking about the speaker's supposed intelligence.

It's anti-progressive in principle, and it's stupid tactically. All it does is alienate people who speak that way and make it possible for Palin's tactics to gain traction among voters who might otherwise not give her the time of day.

In other words, this isn't about Palin.

This is about people I normally respect treating ME in a way I find offensive and hurtful, because they can't be bothered to look past their own prejudices, and because it has apparently never occurred to them that people who speak in such accents might have something valuable to say.

[Rana]

That, and because they've never heard me - or any of us other accent-challenged bloggers - speak. They've only read my words as I type them, and assumed that, because I strike them as intelligent and a good writer, I must of course speak like they think an intelligent person must.

They are wrong.

[Susan Cartier Liebel]

I've read your post and all the comments and it is an interesting discussion which has merit in every manner of social interaction EXCEPT the election.

Why? Because the debates and the stumping are fully scripted and choreographed and I believe she was coached to exaggerate any and all affectations or what is perceived to be regional differences so as to be distinctly opposite from Biden's polish. It was contrived. It was dramatic. It was forced.

In addition, the one incredibly foolish (or very smart)thing she did, especially when their goal is to distance themselves from the Bush Administration is to maintain Bush's pronunciation of 'nucular' as it has come to symbolize (for Bush)a lack of intellect because people do judge, rightly or wrongly, by how one speaks.

So, to coach her so effectively to distance her from Washington and the linguistic elite, the decision to have her continue to use 'nucular' was an interesting choice.

Either way, how you or I talk in the normal course of business or where we will live and its acceptability is a far cry from the carefully coached, scripted vernacular Palin used at the debate.

[Rana]

Susan, you, like sailnmuffin, are missing the point of this post.

The point is NOT to remove Palin from the realm of criticism.

The point is NOT that we cannot comment critically on how she speaks - more specifically, how she uses speech to convey a public personna.

The point is NOT whether or not her use of "folksy" speech is a deliberate political ploy.

The point is that if you attack her - or any other politician - by shrieking "NEW-KLEE-AR! It's NEW-KLEE-AR!" or snarking "I may have fallen asleep if Palin's mispronunciation of nuclear didn't keep compelling me to jam pencils into my ears."* - you are going to hit more than Palin with those barbs.

You're basically making the same sort of argument that sexists make when called out for referring to Palin as "Caribou Barbie" - that because the candidate is herself turning discrimination to her own advantage with all her remarks about lipstick and heels, it's okay to perpetuate that discrimination, as if she were the only one affected by it.

How much clearer can I be?

If you mock Palin's speech, YOU MOCK MINE.

Think about that.

Especially since such mockery is what gives her deliberate use of such speech its power.

Her use of the pronunciation "nucular" WORKS because it has become a sign that a candidate is reaching out to those that the "liberal elite" think are stupid and talk funny.

If I - an educated person whose politics are definitely on the left, a person who loathes the idea of a religious neo-con like Palin in office - feels offended when her critics giggle and shriek about how she says certain words, how the hell do you think the people of more centrist leanings feel?

I don't believe in abandoning my principles for political expediency, and in this case both are in agreement.

Mock her speech, and you mock the speech of others at the same time.

There are ways to call out her rhetorical choices without dragging a bunch of other people into it, and I'm pissed that this is apparently so hard for so many so-called liberals and progressives to grasp.

There is also so much more of SUBSTANCE on which to challenge her on that focusing on her speech strikes me as lazy and shallow.

Mocking her speech - easy, lazy, shallow, simplistic - and offensive to many other unintended (?) victims of the mockery.

Calling out her record and plans - harder, but more persuasive in the long run - at least if her detractors believe that people on the fence about her are reasonable, thoughtful individuals like themselves, instead of dumb hicks who can't speak properly and who respond only to pandering and shallow emotional appeals.

*http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/10/move-along-nothing-to-see-here.html

[sailnmuffin]

Rana, I think *you* missed the point. I'm not mocking Palin's way of speaking. I am criticizing it for what I perceive it is. I am criticizing her as an individual. I did not include you in the criticism and I thought I'd made clear all the reasons I didn't. Bottom line: don't assume that because I'm criticizing one person, that I'm criticizing (or mocking, if you want to use that word) all people who speak in a similar way, as a group. That's the same kind of thinking that leads people to, for example, accuse Palin's critics of being sexist -- because by their logic if you criticize one woman, regardless of the merits of your criticism you're just making slurs against us all.

[Rana]

sailnmuffin, we're clearly talking past each other.

If you want to criticize Palin's speech, go for it.

I never said that you can't do it.

But you need to ask why - or if - it is really important that you do it, and, also, how you go about it.

I am not talking about people who are making thoughtful critiques of her rhetorical strategy.

(i.e. you)

I am not interested in that issue.

I AM interested in the question of why progressives think that giggling at, or using slurs on her - and my - accent is useful, productive, or progressive.

To use your own analogy about sexism, I am not interested in how this particular woman uses her sexuality to advance her political agendas.

I am instead interested in challenging those who use slurs like Caribou Barbie or who post pictures of her in an American flag bikini with gun.

So, sure, go ahead and talk about her rhetorical tactics and why they are or are not appropriate. But think carefully about whether, in doing so, you are using approaches that reinforce the very dynamics she's manipulating, or which injure innocent bystanders.

But that's not the same thing as laughing about her accent, even her put-on folksy accent (because some people do, in fact, speak that way, too) as a shorthand for "she's a such a stupid hick, omigawd!"

Don't assume that because I think she should be given the benefit of the doubt on her accent that she should be free from all criticism.

Go after her POLICIES, her WORDS (not their pronunciation), her EXPERIENCE, her ACTIONS.

There are so many more significant points to attack from - why focus on smaller surface issues? That's playing HER game, not defending progressive values.

[sailnmuffin]

You're right, Rana - we're agreeing, yet talking past each other. OK. Maybe I'm getting on track now. I too am...concerned (irritated? offended?)...about the reaction not just of some so-called progressives but everybody else to Palin's speech patterns and, OK, appearance. You said it best when you said that if you confront a person's position by focusing on something like their speech pattern, you need to "...think carefully about whether, in doing so, you are using *approaches* that reinforce the very dynamics she's manipulating, or which injure innocent bystanders." That's a very delicate matter - the confronter either chooses an attack that is totally superficial, or legitimately criticizes the position but has to remain mindful of the approach.

Pardon me in advance if what follows looks like I'm drunk-driving on the Internet superhighway.

Using Palin's accent and vocabulary to define her or anyone else as a hick: in my opinion? Accent = unfair; vocabulary = go for it (we seem to agree on that point - but I'll belabor it anyway). I'm not talking only about the "you betchas"; I'm talking about all the words, inflections and mannerisms a person chooses - because in my experience no matter how classy or unsophisticated a person is, no matter what phrases someone says to give the mind a rest between thoughts ("ummm'; "I tell ya what"; "dude"; "like"; etc.), she says what she means. You just have to get past the brain-pauses and pay attention long enough to learn the speaker's unique style. Consider Henry Kissinger - a few people derided his accent back in the day (I recall people calling him a "Nazi" because of how he spoke), but most people took his words seriously. As well they should have. If he used the word "negotiate" in a sentence instead of "discuss," it meant something. It's like that with everybody.

You raised some good points about how much the blogosphere/media has reacted to Palin's words and appearance (mostly appearance) by going so far as to Photoshop her face onto the American-flag-bikini/air-rifle body; and the sexy-secretary body, to make the point of, I guess, how "hot" she is. Certainly there are people out there from all parts of the political spectrum who have told the media that they will vote for McCain only because Palin is "pretty." What does that tell the competent conservative female politicians out there? On the one hand, the obvious lowbrow humor adds distracting noise to the real issues. But on the other hand, we should not be surprised or dismayed at the "pretty" vote; human brains are wired to process the superficial on an emotional level - so it takes significant intellectual effort to overcome the visceral reaction to appearance and vocal tone. Antonio Banderas, versus Carrot Top.

Speaking of hick prejudice, the remarks I've heard many pundits make about Palin by putting down Alaska in general have rubbed me the wrong way, as I'm sure they have you. Alaska is certainly different from the lower-48, but I feel it's wrong to label all 700,000 of them as Arctic hicks the way several people have by making fun of Palin as coming from the backwoods. Perception is a function of contrast - Palin is actually an urbanite by Alaskan standards. It just shows how out of touch the lower 48 is with anything that's truly going on in Alaska. And there's a lot going on we'd all do well to learn about.

I guess to conclude all this rambling, I'll say that I wouldn't (or hope I wouldn't) focus on a so-called rural accent and nothing else to dismiss a person's opinions or marginalize a group. But I would indeed take into consideration how a person speaks - not necessarily their accent - when I evaluate what they are saying and how credibly they are saying it. And getting back to your point: how to identify the problem you have with a person's words, without reinforcing the dynamics she is manipulating in the first place? Is a very tricky thing indeed.

I *am* interested in Palin's manipulative tactics, though - and the reason it matters to me, is that by assuming an exaggerated "just folks" persona, she is selling something to a target audience that convinces them to happily vote away their homes and livelihoods for hot-button issues Palin and her platform do not even truly care about. Think about it: Bush's way of speaking is quite contrived, he's demonstrated he was never qualified to be president, yet he was sold to the voting public - not once, but twice - as a fellow you'd want to drink a beer with. And it succeeded. So, in this way, speech patterns are definitely not a surface issue.

[Rana]

Really great points there, sailnmuffin - I'm just sorry that it took us so much typing to get it all across. ;) (Perhaps it is because there isn't an established vocabulary for discussing these sorts of classist and regionalist dynamics?)

I very much agree with you about how the media portrays Alaska as this barren tundra with nothing but gun-toting sled-doggers - I have to admit that I felt (and continue to feel) a twinge of irritation about that parochialism too. (I'm a Westerner whose professional training is in the history of the region, and I grew up mostly in California, so the tendency of the Eastern-based media to make snarky comments about the country west of Ohio - hell, west of Pennsylvania tends to get on my nerves.)

I don't like to rattle on about the evil elitist Washington media, because that's an inaccurate caricature, but it often seems like a lot of the "common wisdom" about "ordinary Americans" (i.e. those authentic lower-class semi-rural folks so unlike We the Media) has its origins there.

That kind of thinking (and opining) creates a needless divide between classes, regions, and urban /suburban/rural - and it's a divide that really only benefits wealthy people in places like New York and D.C., and perhaps Los Angeles - ie. most of the pundits and the political and corporate systems that support them.

This is why - personal issues aside - it aggravates me so that progressives seem so cheerful about buying into this by getting so insane about "nucular." In some ways, it's not unlike what happened for many feminist progressives, when they suddenly realized that for many "progressive" bloggers, sexism was a valid means of attack, whether deployed against Clinton or now against Palin - that people they assumed were allies and co-believers were nothing of the sort when it came to women's rights.

Palin - and Bush - make use of this dynamic. They use that folksy, informal speech to reach out to voters who feel alienated from both the media elites, from Washington, and from progressives and Democrats.

I think calling them out on it is useful, because it makes it easier to see that this is faux authenticity instead of real, but that's a short-term fix.

The longer-term fix is to stop assuming that it is okay to judge people not by their deeds and values, but by superficial things like their speech and where they live.

Progressives used to be the voice for people like those they now mock as gun-totin', Bible-thumpin', G-droppin' hicks. Now, it seems, they're happy enough to giggle and sneer at those attributes, because Palin is an acceptable target on account of her politics, and she does these things.

But Palin isn't the only person who's harmed by attitudes like that - THAT's what I'm hoping to remind people of. They hurt people like me, and they are even more harmful to people like me who haven't had the advantages I have had.

If they're genuine progressives, they ought to feel ashamed of that behavior, instead of reveling in it.