Was it just me or did President Obama lose his drawl?
You know that way he had during the campaign of hitting the word hard in the first syllable and then letting up as he approached the end of the world. Kind of like a fade jump shot. In like a lion and out like a lamb.
But in his speech today, and hat's off to the President and his writers for inspired and inspiring oratory, he seemed to giving each word the same emphasis right the way through.
The office makes the man?
Wasn’t just you, I noticed the same thing, though I’d call it more of a drop-off than a drawl. Like the new style better, as I found the drop-off distracting.
“kind of like a fade jump shot.” i love it. 🙂
as for the speech’s author, he’s my age (!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/barack-obama-inauguration-us-speech
Perhaps it’s the occasion that makes the man?
I know that I change my accent/words/speech patterns slightly (more American, more English) depending on whether I’m on the phone to my parents or talking to friends here. He was probably stuck in a particular mode on the campaign trail which he had the time and occasion to “fix” before the speech today.
“as he approached the end of the world”
As from now on, guess he decides if the world ends or not…
What a great night anyway 🙂
I’ve noticed it before, it seems to come and go, depending on the speech. I wonder if one comes more naturally than the other. At least it’s not like when Hilary Clinton visited a Selma church early in the campaign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaDQ1vIuvZI)
I noticed the same thing, and wondered whether it was the effect of seeing Jamie Foxx impersonate him so well.
It’s something Foxx has been doing for a while in a more exaggerated form, but at the Sunday pre-inaugural concert he imitated a short portion of Obama’s Chicago speech, and made Obama laugh, too:
A friend of mine noted that he almost sounded like a preacher at times. Maybe it was the moment that carried him? Was he channeling MLK?
he did lose his drawl. he has made several major phonological (sing-songy phonology) shifts since springfield. and some shifts are audience-dependent.