fuck yeah eye dialect (which i used to not tolerate but now don’t hate so much because sarah palin exists, and because even though politics is not a vocabulary contest, etc., it totally is a vocabulary contest when you’re crafting super-coded, signifier-rich political messages. verbing weirds language, etc. and my country wears its weirdedness on its sleeve.) edit: jonathanbogart says: Fuckno to eye dialect, and fuckfuckno to furriners attempting to do eye dialects on American English. There are plenty of sticks to beat Sarah Palin with without hauling out class-based rhetoric. This is true. I should clarify that eye dialect is not a Good Thing because it renders another’s voice unintelligible in a really underhanded way: “tru” becomes “true” for no principled reason other than to shit-talk and misrepresent. But that’s how politics is!! I merely appreciate it as a piece of politico-linguistic toolbox that uses our language biases to encode lots of certain associations and feelings.

fuck yeah eye dialect (which i used to not tolerate but now don’t hate so much because sarah palin exists, and because even though politics is not a vocabulary contest, etc., it totally is a vocabulary contest when you’re crafting super-coded, signifier-rich political messages. verbing weirds language, etc. and my country wears its weirdedness on its sleeve.)

edit: jonathanbogart says:

Fuckno to eye dialect, and fuckfuckno to furriners attempting to do eye dialects on American English. There are plenty of sticks to beat Sarah Palin with without hauling out class-based rhetoric.

This is true. I should clarify that eye dialect is not a Good Thing because it renders another’s voice unintelligible in a really underhanded way: “tru” becomes “true” for no principled reason other than to shit-talk and misrepresent. But that’s how politics is!! I merely appreciate it as a piece of politico-linguistic toolbox that uses our language biases to encode lots of certain associations and feelings.