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FeedsSarah Palin made a linguistic splash on 18 July by using the non-word “refudiate” in one of her Twitter posts:
Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate (@SarahPalinUSA, original post modified)
The topic of the post, a planned mosque near Ground Zero in NYC, is worthy of a frank discussion on freedom, sensitivity, and ongoing relations between the mainstream and Muslim communities in America, but that conversation took a backseat to a burst of commentary on her creative vocabulization. In a backfiring attempt to quiet the chorus of mockers, she tweeted a defense of her not-quite-poetic license:
“Refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee’d up.” English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!
I rarely defend Sarah Palin (then again, she rarely needs it) but I’m on her side on this one. A language needs room to breathe, and a steady evolvification allows it capture the intentions of the people using it. As with any effective tool, the user should be a part of the design process. If the linguistic scholars at Oxford American College Dictionary can deem EVOO worthy of dictionary ink (for those who have escaped the verbal reach of Rachel Ray, that’s short for “extra virgin olive oil,”) surely there is room for a realish, logical sounding word like “refudiate”.
Because the fact is, even though it’s not a word, you knew what Palin meant. Isn’t that the essence of communication, to make someone understand what you’re trying to say? No one read that tweet and thought, “Wait, refudiate isn’t a word, so I’m confused: did she mean she wants the mosque to be built?” Weren’t we all supposed to have graduated high school with an innate ability to glean definicity from context? (We certainly should have, considering the ridiculous price of public education.)
Besides, Palin is the not the first great American leader to make a rare blunderation of the language:
- Ronald Reagan once said, “We are trying to get unemployment to go up, and I think we’re going to succeed”, and the blogerati didn’t explode with damnation of his political inequities; they knew that he simply used “unemployment” where he meant “employment”.
- George W Bush’s “they misunderestimated me” is the second reference in Palin’s tweet, an insignificant linguistic error and one of a couple of Bush’s minor misstatements that can be found on the “Internets”.
- Even the highly eloquacious Barack Obama has suffered a slip of the tongue now and then, including making reference to Nancy Reagan having “seances” in the White House. (Of course, he was referring to Nancy Reagan’s consultions with astronomers.)
The hubbub surrounding this minor gaffe reveals the political angst festering just below the epidural of American voters. Americans are knee-jerk apologists for those leaders who representify our ideas, yet we watch the opposing partiests like film school students looking for anachronisms in period films, completely obfuscating the meaning of the dialogue because they’re trying to catch 18th century Russell Crowe wearing a wristwatch.
America is a nation of ideas more than words. Colleges do not reap steady alumni fiscality from future poet laureates who publish ethereal odes in obscure, overpriced literacy journals – they get it when the inexplicably-upright fullback once again drags three defenders into the end zone. Sorry, Ira Glass fans, but this is American Life. Any pontiflation about the inequity of reality sounds like so many ill-hatted marching band members complaining about the football teams’ new helmets.
Palin was a point guard in high school, not a member of the debate team, and that shows in her communicatative style: it’s not about soliliquization, it’s about short bursts to get the team organized and set up to score. Let’s focus on her intelligence as a political leader, not irreverencia like her familiarity with the most obscure nuances of the world’s most complicated language. To bend a phrase from that word-coining bard, “critics, you doth protest too much.” We have more important things to worry about.
I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE
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as a non-interested (in theory) non-American, may I gently suggest that there are reasons to worry if a future Presidential candidate has a less-than-firm grip of her own language? There’s several simple words she could’ve used correctly and with confidence, but she went for a word she couldn’t have been confident about using (because it isnae a word) anyway. That’s stretching for the appearance of intelligence, whereas genuinely intelligent communicators stay away from difficult words. And non-existent words, obviously. Articulacy is a function of intelligence; if she isn’t good at forming sentences, how can you be sure she’s good at forming ideas?
Yes there are far more important things to worry about, and generally people are worrying about them. But “Palin was a point guard in high school, not a member of the debate team” is not a positive for a politician, and if you think it’s a valid defence for being inarticulate then you’ve got incredibly low standards for your leaders.
Posted by Ally on July 22, 2010 at 9:29 am
How you write reflects how you think. Plain and simple.
I understand that, in general, criticizing spelling in something informal and extemporaneous like a “tweet” would be pedantic and nitpicky. But in the case of a would-be Vice President of the United States talking about something serious, I think such criticism is fair and relevant. Important on the grand scale of things? No. But “compared to the big stuff, this isn’t really that important” is not a valid argument.
Use of a malapropism like “refudiate” is a direct indicator of either imprecise thought, poor communication skills, or both. It is patently absurd- and kind of scary- that anyone could take seriously the notion that it is somehow elitist or irrelevant to want the (would-be) VP of the United States to be well-read, well-spoken, and intelligent- all of which Sarah Palin has proven she isn’t. It’s not as though she is some brillant savant who somehow just never had the opportunity to be formally educated.
Sarah Palin is a totem; she represents a perceived solution to the crude, illogical fears of well-meaning but mostly ignorant Americans. People do not support her because they actually think she has expertise in governance; they support her because she embodies their semi-informed, reactionary pseudo-worldview. Such people will of course try to say that things like actually speaking and writing well are egg-headed, “intellectual” luxuries. They are wrong. And I, for one, am not going to feel defensive or sheepish about saying so. “Intellectual” is not a dirty word- especially when it comes to the people who are supposed to be governing our country.
Posted by Donny from Omaha on July 22, 2010 at 2:00 pm
As much as I’m personally in favor of flexible language, I’m in favor of it when it is used intentionally, not when used as a retroactive defense for using what you honestly thought was a word when it wasn’t. I would say that she should own her mistake (a little ‘whoops’ goes a long way), but that’s obviously not something that politicians can do.
Also, Obama was referring to Nancy Reagan’s consultations with astrologers, not astronomers. Toy with words all you like, but when you start swapping them out wholesale for other real words, you invite confusion. Thus defining the edge of the linguistic grey area where it ceases being an art and starts becoming a quantifiable, definable science. (As an aside, I think you’re trying a little too hard to be even-handed when you’re comparing the analogization of seances and astrologers with “misunderestimate” and “refudiate”. At least for the latter your can argue that the analogy was intentional, if in poor taste.)
@Ally: You’re basing a lot of your comments off of a particular idea of “intelligence” that many people, myself included, take issue with. There are just as many people that are slick with words, and would fail an IQ test, as there are individuals who have difficulty with the spoken word but who are incredibly competent (even genius) in other areas. “Intelligence” is a very tricky beast. Better to judge the quality of her ideas off the merits of her ideas, and not her choice of linguistic approach to those ideas.
Posted by Geoffrey on July 22, 2010 at 2:30 pm
You think any of the previous commentators maybe caught on to the fact that Bill Reagan is pulling a “Colbert”-ism here? Surely the guy must be purposely and slyly obfuscating his own argument! Otherwise, he is as big a moron as Palin herself is.
Posted by Ramin Dadmanesh on July 22, 2010 at 5:16 pm
This was written (typed to be exact) and thus wasn’t a “slip of the tongue” akin “misunderestimate” and all that. She simply mixed up “repudiate” and “refute.” She, however momentarily, thought it was a word. Is it the biggest fricking deal in the world? No I suppose not. And if you want to argue that Palin lacks the sparkling intelligence necessary to be president, you don’t really need her tweets (though the tweets certainly don’t HELP the case for her intelligence). Invoking Shakespeare is what upset me the most. I doubt she has read a word of him since high school. Even Bush read “three Shakespeares.”
Really, I’m just impressed that she clearly does her own tweets. You may remember McCain getting in trouble for something on his twitter, and he admitted that he like most other politicians just has a staffer do it. But I suppose she has a lot of free time to tweet these days, after resigning from her office.
Posted by Bravo from Chicago on July 22, 2010 at 8:49 pm
The real issue here, that Bill mentions early on, is that there’s a real problem with the coverage of slip-ups like this. The cultural issue at hand with the proposed mosque is what should be talked about. But that is a much more slippery, uncertain conversation to have, as individuals, as members of the media, and as a country. So we’ll fall back on the easy Palin-screwed-up-again story, because it’s one we know how we feel about right off the bat, and we start to defend our own stances—for her or against her—instead of talking about an important issue.
But while some of this is surely a pandemic problem with media coverage, and political discourse today, part of the reason this happens falls right in line with what Palin—and pundits like her—are doing. I am all for letting language evolve and breath, but as long as it is always moving towards precision. Do we know what Palin means when she says “refudiate”. Yes, basically we do. But we don’t know precisely what she means. Because she is not using precise language. Instead, pundits on both sides are often intentionally vague in ways that both placate their base and illogically rile their opposition. So while this one slip-up is not a big deal—and in fact takes the place of a much more important issue this time out—it is part of a larger tactic that, intentional or not, planned-out or not, is a huge part of political discourse and media coverage today.
So kudos to Bill for trying to point us toward the more important issue at hand, but I do think that Palin’s mistake (while not a huge deal on its own) could be part of a larger problem worth discussing.
Posted by Matthew Fiander from Greensboro, NC on July 22, 2010 at 11:08 pm
If the blogerati had jumped on Reagen for using “unemployment,” I would have been impressed. Seeing as how they didn’t exist at the time.
Posted by Ian Mathers on July 23, 2010 at 8:27 am