A figure of speech

The US election has come and gone, which is a pity — especially for linguists and teachers.

There were so many catchy phrases, accents and figures of speech that it was hard to keep up. Fortunately, it ended with a wonderful example of spoken English: Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

On his website, David Crystal, the respected linguist, offers a fascinating analysis of Obama’s speech. He comments that “it will rank as one of the great political speeches of our time”.  Crystal’s analysis is excellent reading for teachers and students alike.

The contrast between Sarah Palin and John McCain’s rhetoric to Obama’s couldn’t have been more dramatic. Comparing Palin’s, McCain’s and Obama’s language was a fascinating part of the election that fueled pundits and comedians alike. It was definitely an eye-opener in the third debate when McCain actually tried to convince voters that Obama’s eloquence was something to be feared. Not many cottoned on to McCain’s claim that Obama was trying to pull the wool over our eyes with his cool, calm and collected language.

Which brings me to Governor Palin. Now that she’s back up in Alaska, I’ll probably stop mentioning her in my blog (never say never), but I can’t resist this one last look. The language and dialect that Sarah Palin brought to the campaign was amazing. She had a bit of a chameleon-like quality to her, puttin’ on her folksy northern accent when speaking to crowds, and then switching to high school debate mode when speaking to reporters. Not to mention her body language (wink, wink), which spoke volumes.

On this note, I loved hearing Geoff Nunberg, a linguist from the School of Information at UC Berkley, talk about all the attention that accents were given during this campaign. Nunberg’s commentaries often come at the end of one of my favorite podcasts, NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. The Fresh Air podcast date is 15 October 2008.

If, as Nunberg says, “accents seem to offer a window on character”, what accent do you teach, if any? It’s a question worth looking into, especially with the eyes of a student. The way I see it, our students are actually creating new identities when they speak English. Many of us have had our German “tinted” by the region where we live, be it Bavaria, Saxony or Schleswig-Holstein. Stay tuned for my next blog about a little dialect experiment that I embarked on this past November. I'll also be writing about the annual BESIG conference in Bonn.