Talking Like Home, Cont.
On varieties of American speech (with some British as a bonus)
In my column yesterday, I spoke of John Kennedy, the 35th president. In politics today, there is a John Kennedy from Louisiana—the junior senator from that state. Man, can he talk the populist talk.
Back in 2021, I wrote an essay called “Voices from Philistia: Notes on the politics and rhetoric of populism: then, now, and always.” I quoted a redolent passage from Kennedy, talking to Sean Hannity on Fox News:
“I think the American people are so tired—so tired—of being lectured by the managerial elite: the politicians, the media, the academics, the corporate phonies, the tuna-tartare crowd who live in the expensive condos with the high ceilings and the imported art on the wall, who think they’re better than the American people.”
Tuna tartare! Imported art! The unkindest cuts.
Kennedy has a gold-plated pedigree, which includes a degree from Magdalen College, Oxford, where students have valets, called “scouts,” and a deer park. Did he talk there as he talks to the folks on the bayou?
And is he sure that the folks on the bayou would mind?
***
All of us, or most of us, have different modes of speech, depending on our audience, our mood, and so on. This is known as “code-switching.” Is it bad? Not necessarily. It can be fake and calculated, but it can also be perfectly natural.
In 1973, Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia appeared on William F. Buckley Jr.’s Firing Line. After the show, the governor’s aides told WFB that they had never heard their boss speak as he had. He had refined his accent—had toned down the southern.
In later years, WFB wrote teasingly about Carter’s “Firing Line voice.”
You can see the episode in question here. To me, Carter sounds damn southern, as he always would.
A little aside, before I move on: I always thought that Bill Clinton was underrated for his raw intelligence, because of his southern accent.
***
In the 2008 cycle, Hillary Clinton was running for president. She gave a speech at First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, on the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday. In her peroration, she quoted from a gospel song, “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.” She went very, very southern as she did so.
Across the country, many people hooted at her for this. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a white girl from the Chicago suburbs, was talkin’ black, like an ingratiating politician.
In response to this criticism, she said essentially this: Look, I’ve lived all over the place. Started in Chicago, went to college and law school in New England. Lived in Arkansas for 20 years, where I was the First Lady. Spent a lot of time in black churches. I’ve moved around, you know?
Americans do move around. Some people—not all, but some—adopt the speech patterns of their environment.
A big subject …
You know who enjoyed and cheered Clinton’s peroration? Her audience in Selma. That must be weighed in the balance, I would think.
***
“Good to be here in my home state. Hit another one yesterday.” I am going from memory, but George Bush the Elder said something like that in his 1988 campaign for president. He had moved around a lot. Had several “home states.”
Born in Massachusetts. Raised in Connecticut. Lived in California for a bit. Made his career in Texas—a business career and a political career. Summered in Maine.
I may have left out an experience or two.
His speech was hard to place, a hybrid. It was his own, by which I mean, peculiar to him.
How about his children? I’m not sure about some of them, but I’m sure about George W. and Jeb. Jeb speaks a fairly “neutral” American English, I think. He has made his life and career in Florida.
W.? He was brought up in Midland, Texas, followed by Houston, but then you have to fold in Andover, Yale, and Harvard.
Like his father, W. has his own English, I think.
***
Race is a minefield in America. A frickin’ minefield. Here is a headline from September 2024: “Republicans Accuse Kamala Harris of Changing Her Accent Again.” (The article is here.) Was the vice president “talkin’ black” in front of a black audience?
If so—did she have … a right?
***
Let me quote from a New York Times report published in January 2010—hold on to your socks:
Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, apologized on Saturday for once predicting that Barack Obama could become the country’s first black president because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
A minefield, race in America is.
***
In my Washington Post article, published on Monday, and which I have been expanding the last two days, I wrote, “If race is our minefield, class is Britain’s.” Oh, yes. Let me quote some more.
Margaret Thatcher’s English was long a work in progress. The grocer’s daughter from Grantham adopted a posh accent. Then, when advisers deemed it de trop, she went back “down” a little.
Tony Blair occasionally spoke “Estuary English,” complete with glottal stops (whereby a bottle of beer becomes a “bo’le o’ beer”). A writer in the Daily Mail asked, “Why did the Prime Minister take reverse elocution lessons?”
***
On YouTube, you may enjoy an exchange that took place in Parliament about eight years ago. See it—and, more important, hear it—here.
The member for Glasgow East, David Linden, poses a question to the member for Mole Valley (Surrey), Paul Beresford. He poses it twice. With apologies, Beresford says he cannot understand the Glaswegian.
Solomonically, the speaker of the house, Lindsay Hoyle, suggests that the men resort to writing.
***
That Washington Post article, I ended with Reagan. He spent a long time in Hollywood. His speech was neutral, to my ears. But he was an Illinoisian, and sometimes the Midwest popped out.
In 1985, at a press conference, a reporter asked Reagan about a problem with his nose—a problem you could see. Said Reagan, “I picked at it and I squoze it and so forth and messed myself up a little.”
“Squoze it.” That is pure Huck Finn.
In 1983, a piqued Reagan had said, “I’ve had it up to my keister with these leaks.” Bill Buckley told me that never before then had he heard that word. He chuckled at the memory and shook his head affectionately, as if to say, “That Reagan.”
Me? I’d grown up with “keister” (which means rear-end).
***
Bill Buckley was frequently mocked and knocked for his speech. It was “affected,” people said. It was not quite American.
Well, WFB had an unusual upbringing: in New York, Connecticut, South Carolina, Latin America, England, France …
His father was from Texas, his mother from New Orleans.
Bill had nine siblings, and they did not all have the same speech. I knew four of them. Priscilla and Reid talked like Bill. Jim sorta did, I think. Carol did not, as I recall.
They were all wonderful. You know what Bill called Carol, the youngest Buckley? “Sweetie.”
Well, don’t get me to reminiscing. Thank you for joining me, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for subscribing, if you care to. Will see you right soon. (Not sure where “right soon” comes from, but it’s in my background.)
Surprised that only a few have commented on your last two quite humorous pronunciation observations. I have several examples from my career as a middle school teacher in a district near Princeton, NJ where the large majority of students were Asian and most of them bilingual. They developed in my classroom over the years as students adapted to my Philadelphia mispronunciations (think "Mare of Easttown," though not as exaggerated).
Students often chuckled when they first heard many of my "bloopers," which I eventually stuffed into a sentence that would cause a brief moment of silliness that would enable me to bridge into the next part of a lesson. Students passing me in the hallway with friends who never sat in my classroom would sometimes ask me to "say it" and the group would laugh out loud as they passed.
Went something like this, "I gotta go to Waula Waula, Warshington to get my dawg a ball of wooder."
I knew someone who sounded pretty much the same whether he said "Mahler" or "Marlowe." It usually turned out to be "Mahler." (The highest tribute he gave to a piece of music was to call it "Mahleresque," but that's a different story.)
Also, a childhood friend of his from London mentioned to me how much my friend and his brothers got away with on account of their accent.