Washington Post on Alaskan accents ... if there is such a thing

[Andrea Morrow]

You might be interested in this link:
http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/state_AK.html

For those who haven't seen this before, then-Harvard professor Bert
Vaux created an online dialect survey and made it available from 2000-2005.
People who were interested in participating did so, and the results were
gathered and mapped.  The link above takes you to the results from those who
identified themselves as being from Alaska.

One unfortunate thing about the maps on the site is that they don't include
Alaska, so you can't get the data visually, but you can still compare the
numerical results from Alaska to the data from other states.  Another caveat
is that there are any number of sources of potential error and/or unresolved
questions. (Are repondents REALLY from Alaska?  How long have they lived in
Alaska?  What is their age, gender, and/or educational level and how did
that affect their responses?  How did their perception of the survey's
formality or informality affect their responses?  Etc.)

But it's kind of interesting anyway, and you can then look at video of Palin
and see if she is exhibiting any characteristics the survey identified as
being typical of Alaskans.

Andrea

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 9:20 AM, Doug_Harris <cats22 at stny.rr.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Doug_Harris <cats22 at STNY.RR.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Washington Post on Alaskan accents ... if there is such a
>              thing
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> She also referred to her audience, on at least one occasion (re-presented
> by Jon Stewart on 'The Daily Show') as "guys and gals". Is _that_ an
> Alaskanism or, as I suspect her g-stripping is, a 'folksy bit' by a
> politician.
> dh
>
>
> William Salmon wrote:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091903
> 524_pf.html
>
> If there's such a thing as an Alaskan accent, it sounds on Palin a lot
> like the Upper Midwest, a more subtle version of the actress Frances
> McDormand in the movie "Fargo."
>
> Palin regularly and seemingly deliberately rounds off words that end in
> "g" -- the economy is "hurtin' " and needs "fixin.' " After McCain
> answered a question the other night, she asked, "Can I add somethin'?"
>
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>

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