{"id":635,"date":"2008-09-26T09:07:04","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T13:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=635"},"modified":"2019-12-14T08:10:19","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T13:10:19","slug":"the-phonetics-of-flop-sweat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=635","title":{"rendered":"The phonetics of flop sweat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The general reaction to Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric has been a sort of displaced embarrassment.\u00a0 I thought that Timothy Burke expressed it well (\"Trade Secret of Teachers<\/a>\", 9\/25\/2008):<\/p>\n

Bluffing at knowledge is kind of like a bad pick-up line in a bar: it may be amusing, it\u2019s usually off-putting, and most importantly, it\u2019s almost always ineffective.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching Palin\u2019s interview with Katie Couric felt like being in a classroom with a bad bluffer. In fact, a bad bluffer at their worst moment, which is about five minutes before a final examination is about to begin. […]<\/span><\/p>\n

My first reaction to watching the video wasn\u2019t political, it was much more like how I feel seeing this as a teacher: a sympathetic wince. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

English doesn't have a good standard expression for this emotion, which is called<\/a> verg\u00fcenza ajena<\/em> in Spanish, and plaatsvervangende schaamte<\/em> in Dutch; but \"sympathetic wince\" pretty much covers it. Rod Dreher got the same \"unprepared for the final exam\" vibe, from the side of the student rather than the teacher (\"Palin debacle on CBS Evening News<\/a>\", 9\/25\/2008):<\/p>\n

I remember the morning I woke up in my college dorm room and went in to take my final exam in my Formal Logic class. I knew I was unready. Massively unready. And now I was going to be put to the ultimate test. I sat down in Dr. Sarkar's class and resolved to wing it. Of course I failed the exam and failed the class, because I had no idea what I was talking about. I wasn't a bad kid, or even a stupid kid. I was just badly unprepared, and in way over my head. Seeing the Palin interview on CBS, I thought of myself in Dr. Sarkar's exam.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers<\/a> has the same empathetic reaction:<\/p>\n

The Couric interview reminded me of an episode in the 5th grade when I tried to fake my way through an oral presentation on a book I hadn\u2019t read. Neither of us pulled it off. <\/span><\/p>\n

Others have expressed the same idea with phrases like \"cringe-inducing<\/a>\", and \"well and truly embarrassed for her<\/a>\". Kathleen Parker's empathy is more maternal (\"Time to admit it<\/a>\", 9\/26\/2008):<\/p>\n

Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some have suggested<\/a> that John McCain's puzzling<\/a> and damaging<\/a> decision to stand up David Letterman, in favor of his own last-minute interview with Katie Couric, was an attempt to keep Gov. Palin's interview off the evening news.<\/p>\n

What is it about the Couric\/Palin interview that triggers these sympathetic winces and cringes? Many people complain about the recital of irrelevant or empty talking points (Peter Sellers' Party Political Broadcast<\/em> has been quoted) — but politicians and others do that sort of thing<\/a> all the time, without reminding anyone of the embarrassing classroom failures of their students, or their children, or themselves.<\/p>\n

Others have pointed to the disfluency of some of Gov. Palin's answers, using phrases like \"Those aren't talking points; they're babbling points\". Passages like this one<\/a> get special notice:
\n

That\u2019s why I say I-
\nlike every American I\u2019m speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been
\nput in, where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out.
\nBut ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed
\nto help shore up our economy
\num, helping th- oh!
\nit\u2019s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy, and- and putting it back on the right track.
\nSo health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to
\naccompany tax reductions and tax relief
\nfor Americans.
\nAnd trade \u2014 we have st- we've got to see uh- trade as opportunity, not as
\nuh- uh- competitive um scary thing,
\nbut one in five jobs being created uh- in the trade sector today
\nwe- we-
\nwe\u2019ve got to look at that as more opportunity.
\nAll of those things under the umbrella of job creation.<\/span><\/p>\n

But in just about any unscripted conversation, you'll find filled pauses and repetitions and false starts, and sentences that start one way and end another way, and occasional non-sequiturs. And I'm generally skeptical about attempts to tag particular politicians as unusually disfluent<\/a>, and Geoff Pullum has observed <\/a>that giving incoherent and embarrassing answers in public is something that could happen to any of us. Still, it seems to me that there really is something especially cringeworthy in these passages. Like Timothy Burke and Rod Dreher and Kathleen Parker, I get the sense of someone who is trying hard to do something that she herself doesn't think she can do, or perhaps to present herself as someone that she doesn't think she is.<\/p>\n

The incoherent content, in response to questions that Gov. Palin could have anticipated and had clearly tried to prepare to answer, is certainly a large part of this. But I think that there are also things about the performance itself that suggest a bluffer who knows that the bluff isn't working very well. Unfortunately for the cogency of this post,\u00a0 I'm not sure what these features are.<\/p>\n

The emphasis on unexpected words might be one, but that's certainly not all of it. Suggestions for things to look at in more detail — or arguments that I'm entirely wrong about this — are welcome in the comments. As Sarah Palin said<\/a> cheerily about John McCain's efforts to improve regulatory oversight of financial institutions, \"I'll try to find you some, and I'll bring 'em to ya!<\/a>\"<\/p>\n

Timothy Burke again:<\/p>\n

Whoever is sitting down and trying to cram with Palin is making a bad mistake. She\u2019d be a lot better off if she didn\u2019t to try to seriously talk about how Putin is rearing his head and floating into Alaskan air space and so on. I suspect that her personal instincts about how to answer these kinds of questions are better than the staffers who are trying to infuse her with Stature [tm] at the last minute. She\u2019d be better off if she just laughed and said, \u201cNo, of course I wasn\u2019t serious that proximity to Russia gives me foreign policy experience. What\u2019s important in foreign policy isn\u2019t prior experience, it\u2019s common sense and a solid confidence in who we are as a people.\u201d If someone threw a gotcha at her, rather than bluff at an answer, she\u2019d be better off just saying, \u201cTell me a bit about what you mean?\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m not familiar with that term, I have to confess\u201d. Socratic reversals and humorous self-deprecation are stock in trade for the talented bluffer. As is knowing when you\u2019re in over your head: the skilled bluffer knows when to leave some important matters in the hands of those ready to handle them.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The general reaction to Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric has been a sort of displaced embarrassment.\u00a0 I thought that Timothy Burke expressed it well (\"Trade Secret of Teachers\", 9\/25\/2008): Bluffing at knowledge is kind of like a bad pick-up line in a bar: it may be amusing, it\u2019s usually off-putting, and most importantly, it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45377,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/45377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}