Thursday, March 03, 2011

Scott Walker's vowels, formant values

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that some linguists here at Wisconsin did a lot of analysis of Sarah Palin's speech when she appeared on the national scene. The same crew, now with a bunch of students, is following up with Governor Scott Walker's vowels. Based on the analysis of hundreds of tokens from the budget speech this week, they have assembled the vowel chart below:
It appears, in short, that for every measurement, NO VALUE was recorded. More to follow ...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this a really nerdy way of saying that Walker's speech was worthless? Groan.

Mr. Verb said...

Well. I'll concede that we do nerdy.

Anonymous said...

If only the acoustic signal had been so nice and clean.

Jackie Schmitt said...

Actually and in all seriousness, he's got what I identify as the low back chain shift. Quintessentially New Yorker, but he never spent any time there according to his Wikipedia article. Does anyone know where his parents are from?

I need to compare this against the prank phone call; it might be a register he assumes in public. Nothing says "trustworthy politician" like a heavy Brooklyn accent in Wisconsin.

The Ridger, FCD said...

Actually did Laugh Out Loud.

Anonymous said...

Me too. Never said I didn't do nerdy.