Communication is critical for Palin, since she mangles the English
language so consistently that she’s become the subject of ridicule.
(Zirin 2008)But Palin is also alarmingly unskilled when it comes to a more
indigenous matter: speaking the English language.
(Maura Kelly, an American freelance journalist writing for The
Guardian)There is a broader perspective to take into account when looking at the
variety of media commentary. Thinking in terms of the linguistic
marketplace, mockery and parody are not all powerful and do not
transcend every social barrier. Many observers dismissed out of hand the
recasting and parody of Palin’s language and ideas. For such persons, the
parody may not have discredited Palin, but it certainly further cemented
sky-high social class animosities. Commentators who ridiculed Palin’s
accent or pronunciation of certain words were offending a large part of
their audience, because the features of Palin’s speech that were mocked
were features prominent in a wide variety of regional accents closely
allied to working class communities and individuals.
CNN commentators and Keith Olberman (MSNBC) drew attention to
Palin’s pronunciation of nuclear (4 October 2008) and openly mocked her
informal style (7 October 2008); writing in The New York Times, Maureen
Dowd went into detail about what she saw as Palin’s grammatical errors:
She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns
and verbs and also – “also” is her favorite vamping word – uses verbs
better left as nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us
with the opportunity of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress
the agenda.”
(October 4)Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News and World Report went so far as to point
out a typo in one of Palin’s mailings.
Commentators and news reporters who were openly critical of the way
Palin expressed herself (instead of, or in addition to, commentary on the
ideas she was trying to communicate) were gatekeeping. That is, they drew
attention to Palin’s pronunciation or style in order to bolster the argument