Through a YouTube time vacuum I got sucked into watching a bunch of videos of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and that made me wonder about her accent. I Googled "sarah palin fargo accent", because that seemed likely to get a bunch of relevant results, and what I got confused me more than I was when I started. I have an admittedly untrained ear for Northwestern accents, but to me Sarah Palin's speech is virtually indistinguishable from the speech in
Fargo. People who have lived in that part of Minnesota say that the accent in the film is actually somewhat overstated from the way people actually speak there, which, fine. It definitely displays a Scandinavian influence in its singsongy quality, as does Palin's speech.
But I've read testimonials by professional linguists that suggest that Palin's speech is actually fairly typical of Alaska, or at least her region of it. Examples can be found via
NPR,
Slate,
the Chicago Tribune, and
Language Log. Other sources such as
the Seattle Times have noted that the Wasilla accent is heavily influenced by the Minnesota accent because a lot of Wasillans were descendants of settlers from Minnesota.
However, this has been contradicted by testimonials of other commenters who claim to have lived in Alaska and in Wasilla specifically. These people have largely claimed that they have never heard anyone there speak like Palin does. It's also widely noted that, contrary to the oversimplified reporting in some of these articles, there is no such thing as an "Alaska accent", but rather a patchwork of different accents that vary widely from one another. This is not surprising given the gigantic geographical size of Alaska. Florida certainly has its share of regional accents; no one would confuse a South Florida accent for a North Florida one. (Incidentally, people
might confuse a South Florida accent for an Iowa accent, which is just one of the many bizarre linguistic quirks of this country.
This map seems to be the most comprehensive linguistic study of American dialects I've found. It appears to be generally considered that the South Florida accent, which I usually possess [due to the rather large amount of time I've spent in Britain, I can occasionally slip into Received Pronunciation if I spend too much time in the country or watching British television], is second only to the central midland accent of e.g. Iowa as being perceived as "standard" American speech).
I've also seen quite a lot of commentary suggesting that Palin's accent has changed over time; her accent was not as distinctive in her older videos as a sportscaster made during her 20s, and people have even observed that her accent is not as distinctive in her 2008 convention speech as it is in later interviews. I've also seen observations that her speech patterns seem to be less distinct when she appears to be giving rehearsed speech than when she appears to be speaking off the cuff. I'm not sure what to make of that.
I dunno. We have at least one professional linguist on this forum, I do believe. Maybe one of them can make sense of it for me.
In case you forgot just how close Fey's Couric interview came to Palin's original,
Countdown did a side-by-side comparison:
I feel like, as it concerns Palin, this post should conclude with some Palinesque word salad, so it's all about getting our clinging god guns patriotism Fannie and Freddie back on the right track know what I mean you betcha? also, too.