It terrifies me to think that there's even a remote prospect of Sarah Palin becoming the next leader of the "free world", but I have to confess that there's a little asshole voice at the back of my head saying "What if she just got the Republican nomination then didn't win?... think of the comedy... and it's not your country anyway..."
Then I just think about the prospect of Americans having a chuckle at our expense over Tony Abbott and I quickly learn a thing or two about showing more empathy.
The Mail doesn't pass judgement in this article. Queensland is like a hot version of Alaska with a few less guns, so you can't say too much about Palin without running the risk of alienating a few people. It simply states that:
"Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin defended her newly-created word today, then compared herself to Shakespeare in the realm of coining new terminology. The word was "refudiate" - it was unclear if she meant refute or repudiate..."
Perhaps she meant both!
Palin noted, in her defence that "Shakespeare liked to coin new words too." Indeed he did, but she's a fair way off the mark in her comparison. Shakespeare invented words based on a vast knowledge of linguistic etymology and classical mythology and in doing so created a type of language that extended the range of expression of the English language. That's why you all got stuck reading iambic pentameter as a teenager.
Interestingly, the following phrases also create nuances of meaning*:
1. So Kate goes, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"
2. So Kate is like, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"
3. So Kate is all, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"
2. So Kate is like, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"
3. So Kate is all, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"
With the first expressing a direct quote, the second a potential paraphrasing and the third suggesting that Kate is either excited, or a pain in the ass.
What Palin has done here is not as unsophisticated as when I'm tired and decide I want to change what I want to say half way through a word ("problem" and "issue" thereby become "ishblem" or "proshue" and people tell me I'm an idiot). She's combined two similar sounding words with compatible meanings and come up with something that sounds very much like an acceptable piece of the English language. Until you think about it a bit more.
The point is that Palin may be well off the mark when comparing herself to Shakespeare's conscious construction of linguistic shades of grey, but she could equally well have argued that English is a language that has been shaped by bogans that just got things 'wrong' en mass. The work "bird" was "brid" in old English and I occasionally wonder if "ask" will become "aks" in future English.
Does this mean that Palin's on to something here? I suspect not, but only because I can't recall hearing many bogans repudiate things.
*I nabbed this example from here
No comments:
Post a Comment