The vanity was a good one. I didn’t get to see the Couric interview or even read much news in the last week as I just had a baby :) - so I’ve been trying to find out what the reaction to this interview was, as my husband assures me it was universally panned.
As an Alaskan I can tell you that the sing songy form of speech you mentioned is something that I’ve long been perplexed by - it is not an intonation/accent/dialect that is native to Wasilla - where we had a house when I was a kid - or this part of Alaska. Her sister Heather doesn’t speak like this either - in her intv. with Greta on Fox I noticed that Heather pretty much sounds like your average Alaskan. A bit of Canadian sound to it I suppose - as well as probably some native influence on certain words.
When I first heard the new governor giving a speech I was really surprised at her speech pattern and thought she sounded incredibly squeaky - she often lets her voice get into a high pitch that people just don’t take seriously. One of my thoughts when she joined the ticket was that they better get a LINGUIST to work with her, fast!
I say this as a McCain/Palin supporter who certainly wants to see them beat Obama, and does certainly hope that Palin can rise to the occasion and perform well as VP despite her shortcomings.
She was born in Idaho..a lot of scandinavians settled in that whole area...scandinavians speak with a kind of sing song inflection in their voices. It’s possible she picked up the inflections from her parents as well as from her peers where she attended college.
It has been my personal observation that some who use inflections like that in their voices tend to run their thoughts thru a kind of internally weighted thought dialectic balancing personal knowledge and personal opinion while guaging the possible emotional impacts upon their listeners. If the listeners engage in a kind of poker faced, “gotcha” kinds of conversation with such folks, shading their emotional reactions, then the “sing song” most forcefully shows itself as the speaker is attempting to emotionally reach and is in a sense “radar ranging” trying to “sense” where the listener is!
In observing Palin you see differences in her public speaking verses 1 on 1 conversations. In the Gibson interview, he struck a kind of “disapproving” tone which allowed Palin to range in on Gibson and she gave a much more
forceful interview. Couric was disingenuous and snaky in a way that only women can be with each other. Palin sensed it but was at a loss as she could not “range” in on where Couric was coming from. Palin was also constrained by “Bush” preppers so you sensed she wasn’t being as forthright in her responses as she wanted to be. You could sense the strain...the ossilations between who truly was versus what her ‘handlers” were trying to mold her into vs. skeptical disingenuousness on the count of Couric. This “cognitive” ossilation I think may explain the “singy songy” ( perhaps better to call it see-saw speech) evasiveness that crept into her interviews with Couric!
Palin will be better off speaking with crowds and with male interviewers. She’ll need to learn how to cope with female interviewers like Couric who hide daggers behind their lip sticked smiles!