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

[David Bowie]

Doug_Harris <cats22 at stny.rr.com> wrote:

> 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.

I don't know that her g-dropping is a "folksy bit"--some people
pronounce unstressed word-final /IN/ as [In] nearly 100% of the time as
a natural matter of course, even in semi-formal situations, after all.
(And i'm not convinced that a political speech is, for most national
politicians, anything more than a vaguely formal speaking event, if that
much.) If she's one of these, it's not "folksy", but simply natural speech.

Anyway, i've been listening to Palin speaking on the news, and i've
wondered whether there's ever been any systematic dialect atlas-type
work done in Alaska, since (along with sounding like she's part of the
cast of Fargo) some of her intonation patterns remind me strongly of
what i used to hear from middle- and upper-class women from southern
Idaho and northern Utah in formal situations, in that Palin's is a more
extreme version of that.

--
David Bowie                               University of Central Florida
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org