Speech patterns

[tigerfort]

I don't think I've previously mentioned my occasional reading of Language Log, which has a range of interesting articles on various language-related themes (linguistics, philology, translation and more!).

Today, I discovered this article, on the speech patterns of the last three contenders in the US party-nominations process, which amused me. I listened to the three candidates' "melodies", and was immediately able to (correctly) identify which was which candidate despite never having heard any of them speak*. This interested me enough that I got stripey_cat to have a go; she got Clinton without hesitation (the only one who sounds female, which was my test, too), but had much more difficulty distinguishing the two men. McCain sounds to me much more like someone trying to be reassuring - slow, steady speech, with very even pace and an almost monotonous tone - while Obama has the more interesting rhythms (and pitch changes) of a practiced (and skilled) orator who wants to get his audience excited and interested. stripey_cat identified McCain, on the same grounds, as being almost certainly a man from the southern states while Obama was probably from further north, but wasn't sure about where either of the men came from, so....

I'd be interested to know how other people do, and whose explanation of the Obama/McCain difference they find more convincing....

* this is probably untrue; there's a good chance that I heard Clinton speak at some point back when her husband was president and I still lived in a house with a TV. McCain has been in politics long enough that I might have heard him for the same reason, although it's less likely. But I've certainly not heard any of them recently; I get my news from reading text on the internet.

Comments

[naath.livejournal.com]

I couldn't differentiate Clinton and Obama but noticed the slow speech patterns characteristic of the American South in McCain's accent (via the synthesiser process).

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Mmn, very interesting. I don't remember ever hearing any of them speak either, but I also got them all right. Not immediately and automatically, but after listening to each a couple of times I plumped on an answer for each and then checked to find I was right. Like stripey_cat I didn't know where either man hailed from (I *think*, though it's possible I have unconsciously taken this info in) and I wasn't consciously thinking about geography during the identification process, so I think my 'reasoning' is closer to yours than hers. I basically pegged no.3 as 'slower and more boring', and no.1 as more 'optimistic'. I add that I haven't even read any of their speeches, and barely followed any of the news at all, so my perceptions can only be based on very broad and superficial steroetypes, which either makes my right answers a lucky guess or says something interesting about the speech patterns of people one knows almost nothing about.