The June 19-25 issue of The Economist reports (p. 33
of the print edition) that Claire McCaskill, who is running for governor of
Missouri, has been documented by the St Louis Post-Dispatch as
having pronounced the state's name "Missourah" in a commercial aimed
at rural areas but "Missouree" in ads running in the cities, and (if I read
the implication right) is
being portrayed as two-faced and untrustworthy for it. Funny, it is
generally accepted as the height of sociolinguistic sophistication to shift
the shiftable aspects of your speech (vowel quality being a prime example)
in the direction of the speech of those you are speaking to. A mark of
respect, politeness, solidarity [though people may reject your attempt
at solidarity if they think you're just imitating them, as Ray Girvan
points out to me by email]. We are in awe of the Swiss when we learn
that if two of them are speaking to each other in French and an Italian
speaker joins them, they are likely to switch into Italian just to be polite.
Yet in American politics, linguistic sophistication (like almost everything
else) may actually be held against you (as I believe I
mentioned once before).
Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at June 25, 2004 07:20 PM