Harass selfless Sarah
Like every other paid-up coastal elitist, I've been reading up on the fascinating subject of Palinology.
The go-to place on the web for discussion of Palin's regional accent seems to be Mr. Verb, where the comment thread turns up gems like this one from James Crippen, a linguistics student (and Tlingit!) from the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. Apparently her dialect is characteristic of the Mat-Su Valley, where plenty of people maintain the distinctive dialect in spite of pressure from Anchorage, about 25 "air miles" to the southwest. And her husband's speech bears traces of so-called "village English" varieties found among Alaskan Natives in Western Alaska.
On the subject of her children's names, I've found the Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing site hilarious for years, but with the uneasy suspicion that the names I was sneering at were just as characteristic of a certain culture (in this case, working-class whites) as Jawaharlal or Windradyne. Apparently it's true. But I had never realized just how regionally-based some names are. The popularity of the names "Jack" and "Jackson" also exhibits fascinating regional trends.
The go-to place on the web for discussion of Palin's regional accent seems to be Mr. Verb, where the comment thread turns up gems like this one from James Crippen, a linguistics student (and Tlingit!) from the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. Apparently her dialect is characteristic of the Mat-Su Valley, where plenty of people maintain the distinctive dialect in spite of pressure from Anchorage, about 25 "air miles" to the southwest. And her husband's speech bears traces of so-called "village English" varieties found among Alaskan Natives in Western Alaska.
On the subject of her children's names, I've found the Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing site hilarious for years, but with the uneasy suspicion that the names I was sneering at were just as characteristic of a certain culture (in this case, working-class whites) as Jawaharlal or Windradyne. Apparently it's true. But I had never realized just how regionally-based some names are. The popularity of the names "Jack" and "Jackson" also exhibits fascinating regional trends.