I do not think people much put on their speech habits, and for some reason I am stuck on Senators to make my point. Why on earth would Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, and Bill Gates all get the same whine if it weren't a generalized affliction around these parts?
Then there is MT. If you ever have the misfortune to catch Conrad Burns on the cable teevee speaking on the Senate floor, his diction is A LITTLE toned down compared to stumping at home, but he will sound exactly like he should be giving the livestock report about pig futures and what all. This would be because that is exactly what he did FOREVER before getting to politics. Sen Baucus on the other hand manages A LITTLE more urbane delivery, but his diction still wanders pretty close to the movie Fargo when compared to, say, Ted Kennedy or Al D'Amato.
Speaking for myself, I think the chameleon effect only goes so far and then gets darned tiresome in the bargain. I ran away from home in MT to go to college on the east coast. At the time, I thought I had no accent and all those Easterners just talked funny. My college friends assured me that it was I who talked funny, especially when talking on the phone to MT. The on breaks, my high-school friends would razz me about talking like an Easterner. (Think of the NYT as your basic schooyard, only maybe better dressed.)
So I fixed them all and moved to the southern Indiana for awhile. The only lasting thing I got out of that is a "Y'all" I keep around for when I need to pretend to speak "hayseed" or when I need a good non-gender-specific substitute for "you guys," "youz guys," etc.
And maybe we got no call objectin' to "nu ku lar" on account of Sequim (Skwim) WA, Puyallup (PEW all up) WA, and Peru (PEE ru) IN. Doesn't make listening to Shrub any more pleasant, but that's a different problem.
DoreneC
In a message dated 1/31/2003 3:43:29 PM Pacific Standard Time,
budge at el-pleasant.org writes:
>
> But the cornpone shit, isn't just him, a lot of politicians
> here talk like that. Hell, there's a pretty well known
> trauma physician here that runs the level one nationally
> recognized trauma dept. and does spots on local teevee.
> His name is Dr. Red Duke (i'm not making this up), and
> he sounds a lot like Hightower.
>
> > I've always suspected that Hightower's act was mainly
> > designed to impress Yankees (Ivins too). Is it? Or does
> > he have fans in Texas?
>
> Hightower, I think, comes by it a little more honestly, but
> yes, I think he plays it up for Yankees. Ivins, OTOH, grew
> up here in Houston, in a very nice neighborhood, the
> daughter of a corporate lawyer. She went to Smith, and
> worked at the NYT. I'n very confident she didn't talk or
> write that way when she applied to either of those august
> institutions. Her's is definitely 100% put on.
>
>
>
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