WSJ: The Election Past, President's Message Gets a New Accent

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The Election Past, President's Message Gets a New Accent

His Speech Gains Precision, Even French References; Trying to 'Turn the Page'

By JOHN D. MCKINNON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 21, 2005; Page A1

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Linguists and longtime watchers of Mr. Bush say it is evidence of a subtle but unmistakable change the 43rd president has undergone in speaking style. He is enunciating more clearly and dotting his remarks with more literary references. Gone is much of the verbal swagger, which produced such memorable first-term phrases as "bring 'em on" (said of Iraqi insurgents) and "dead or alive" (said of catching Osama bin Laden). Some linguists even say they detect a dialing-down of Mr. Bush's Texas accent, at least in his formal speeches.

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In his 2004 and 2005 State of the Union addresses, Mr. Bush reported, as presidents pretty much always do, that the "state of our union is confident and strong." But in 2004, the word "our" sounded like "are," a typical pronunciation for Mr. Bush, who speaks in what linguists describe generally as an Inland Southern accent. In this year's address, "our" sounded more like "hour." And in a word like "my," which Mr. Bush often pronounced somewhat like "mah" in the past, he partly reformed this "non-gliding vowel," as linguists call it. In his 2005 speech, Mr. Bush also generally pronounced the words ending in "ing" without dropping the "g," unlike in 2004. He largely overcame his tendency to say "hunnerd" for "hundred," and started pronouncing the word "government" more precisely. Still proliferating, though, are pronunciations of "nuclear" as "nu-kyoo-lar."

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The Texas strut and drawl may have worked well to win votes and given Mr. Bush a regular-Joe appeal in his first four years when he still faced re-election. Now that he is trying to sell an ambitious second-term agenda -- overhauling Social Security and the tax system, in addition to helping bring democracy to the Middle East -- his remarks are often more conciliatory and appear to be targeted more at congressional critics and European leaders. Playing to that crowd means Mr. Bush portrays himself a bit less as a Texas Ranger and more as an Ivy League-educated chief executive -- which of course he is.

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In addition to linguistic tweaks, some presidential scholars claim to detect a dash of what Mr. Bush himself might once have dismissed as highfalutin talk. For a president who was mocked by some abroad and in the intelligentsia for not reading newspapers, Mr. Bush now seems to emphasize his reading habits. "I'm downing quite a few books," he told C-SPAN in an interview in January.. In recent speeches, Mr. Bush often has dropped in references to the 19th-century French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, in a move some Bush watchers interpret as another subtle overture to France. The makeover is far from extreme. In his less-formal appearances, Mr. Bush certainly still invokes colloquialisms. The baby-boom generation, he often reminds audiences in talking about Social Security, "is fixin' to retire." But in a speech Tuesday night, he said "getting ready to retire."


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Write to John D. McKinnon at [email protected]

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