Palin's Sentences Lack Transparency And Accountability

Of all the things one might observe about last night's VP debate, the most striking to me was the total breakdown of language. When Sarah Palin told the moderator and her opponent that she didn't intend to answer their questions, she meant it on such a deep, structural level that even her grammar complied. Many of Palin's sentences failed to answer the fundamental question that language serves to answer: who is doing what to whom?

In his book The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker says that language is fundamentally gossipy. Think about the most common pattern of an English sentence: subject, verb, object. He kissed her. She hung up the phone. Even as a sentence becomes more complex and embellished--In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child in a princedom by the sea--it is fundamentally telling a story about a character doing something to someone else ("I loved a girl-child").

As English speakers, we have ways of getting around this--notably, the passive voice. Consider one of my favorite lines of political discourse: Mistakes were made. Who is doing what to whom? Well, we don't really know. That's the whole point--no one is responsible and nothing was affected. As readers and listeners, we intuitively understand that the speaker is using language to obfuscate information rather than clarify it.

But Sarah Palin's language is a whole order of magnitude beyond usual political discourse. Consider this:

There have been so many changes in the conditions of our economy in just even these past weeks that there has been more and more revelation made aware now to Americans about the corruption and the greed on Wall Street.

Okay, so we know there have been changes in the economy. We don't know exactly who made them, but that's understandable--a lot of people and factors made them.

"There has been more and more revelation..." Now we're getting fuzzy. Revelation pretty much requires someone to reveal something--that's the point of revelation--but we have neither a character nor an object.

"...made aware now to Americans..." Whoa. What? It sounds like Americans are being made aware of something, but we don't know who or what, and the sentence pattern is reversed.

"...about the corruption and the greed on Wall Street." Aha! So that's it! Someone is doing something about these vices. But we don't know who. And we don't know what.

Now, I admit it can be mean to pick apart someone's sentences--God forbid any of us should have a transcript of our words published on the New York Times--and we are much looser in our speech than we are in our written language. However, paying close attention to someone's syntax can tell you a lot about the shape of their thoughts. When I hear Sarah Palin consistently fail to answer who is doing what to whom, it makes me suspicious that a) she doesn't know; b) she doesn't want to say; or c), the most terrifying option given that her finger may be very close to the button, she simply doesn't think in terms of cause and effect.

Let's look at two examples that would seem to be innocuous, at least in their content. To Joe Biden, she said, "I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you."

I think we can intuit her meaning to be, "I take issue with the redistribution of wealth principle you seem to espouse." That would seem to be a point of fair disagreement and a slight jab at her opponent, but the words are tossed and jumbled like a salad. It can't be because Sarah Palin is afraid to take a swing--it seems just to take her a long time to figure out who is actually responsible. The last word in the sentence, "you," is the most important one, and a cause-and-effect thinker would likely put it first.

How about this. In speaking about herself, she said,

"My experience as an executive will be put to good use [BY WHOM?] as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator [WAIT, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? WE HAVE NOT YET SEEN A CHARACTER IN THIS SENTENCE] and then as governor of a huge state, an energy producing state that is accounting ["THAT IS ACCOUNTING FOR" SERVES AS A VERB, BUT IT'S NOT REALLY AN ACTION] for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence, and that's [WHAT'S?] extremely important. "

A fifty-word sentence without a single clear agent or action. For a politician, whose job it is to communicate, such a failure to meet the basic requirements of language would seem to be reason enough to be barred from the profession. Alas, our current president shows this to not to be true--after the last eight years, we may even have come to expect that mangled syntax and meaningless phrases are a prerequisite for the executive office.

But the example of George W. Bush is pertinent here for another reason, too. This administration has been consistently disingenuous or dangerously ignorant on who was doing what to whom on 9/11, in Iraq, in New Orleans, and on Wall Street.

Make no mistake. Language is political, and if one's sentences lack transparency, accountability, and inclination to acknowledge the consequences of one's actions, then one's policies and governance are likely to be characterized by the same.

Comments

[SisterSoul-08]

Well, thank you! I thought I was the only one who had a serious problem with this. I would genuinely like to understand what she is saying. Anyone who holds any type of college degree should be able to communicate effectively. In my opinion, this very evidence reveals that she has glided her way through life- ALL of her life. It also suggests that she may have used her looks/privilege. And now, she is trying to glide her way right to the office of the Vice Presidency.

Either that--or she is just unintelligent.

[fuzzywuzzy6]

In the early 1970's I had a German class taught by a professor who had been reared in Germany and taken his undergraduate and graduate courses in Germany. He spoke of studies done by German linguists (he did not have a copy, nor did he cite sources) on the public speeches of Adolf Hitler.

While I think Palin is a despicable woman, she is not in Hitler's league. The point of the professor's comments were that Hitler's grammar was so tortured and the meaning of his utterances so impenetrable that they had a mesmerizing effect upon his crowds. The listeners were also able to project their own meanings onto everything he said. Ms. Palin's nonsensical misstatements seem to have a similar effect on some of her less sophisticated listeners. As to the right wing pundits and spinmeisters, they know she is uttering total nonsense, but pretend that she is making forceful policy statements and inspiring speeches.

[uniquelyme]

I know most people are not, but personally I am somewhat of a stickler for language usage too. I've definitely thought these same things that you point out in this article. I'd read about one of the candidates who she debated in the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial election saying that she uses "glittering generalities" during debates. Indeed, she does.

Her sentence structures are often not only awkward, but she uses the "passive voice." Rather than saying using the "active voice" of a noun and verb (i.e. "I approved...") when she is asked questions, she tends to say what "is done,' but not by whom. For a so-called "Washington outsider" not of the "elite," she tends to have a political-speak down pretty good.

Hope, not fear. GObama '08!

[CharlesJ]

Kelly, I honesty do not believe Palin has the ability to form a complete thought let along convey it, thus her rambling, incomplete thought process comes through.