Obama’s Uptalk

Barack Obama’s recent attempt at his administration’s promised transparency with reporter John McCormick revealed an interesting tendency on the PE’s part.  He occasionally engages in a practice sometimes referred to as “uptalk.”

Uptalk is the use of a rising inflection at the end of a statement.  This is normal for interrogatory statements, but not for declarative statements.  Although this practice is fairly common among Left coast residents, it is not the norm for the Midwest.  Also of note is that he doesn’t use this speech pattern very often.  In many speeches and interviews he ended his declaratives with the even inflection that denotes the completion of the statement.  When comfortable with the subject, or when interviewed by anyone left of Fox News, he rarely used uptalk.

Outside of those who use this speech pattern regularly, engaging in uptalk is potentially a sign of internal dissonance.  Most often, it indicates discomfort with, or unsureness about the statement being made.  Another common reason it comes out is that the speaker is unconsciously making a question out of the statement.  Think about when a child is questioned about doing something naughty, like the hand in the cookie jar.  When asked why or if he or she did it, the child will often try out answers, ending his or her statement with the rising inflection of a question.  Its as though the child is trying out the answer to see if the adult will bite.

I don’t think that I’m biting on this one.  Let’s see who left their prints on the Blagojevich cookie jar.

This entry was posted on 18. December 2008 at 15:08 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

| Print