• Monthly Archives: September 2019

Vacillation in the Stress of Ukraine

September 29, 2019

Because of the current hoo-ha over Trumpus’s attempts to undermine Biden in next year’s presidential election, the word “Ukraine” has been uttered ad nauseam in all the media reports on the situation. More often than not, the various reporters and hosts cannot seem to decide which vowel gets the stress in this word, to the point where both initial and medial stress can occur in the same sentence. Little do the utterers of the word realize that the variant with initial stress is non-standard, even dialectal. It follows the pattern established by such items as guitar and insurance in Southern American English.

In this era of universal media saturation, one cannot but be gobsmacked by the fact that speakers of Standard American English falter when it comes to uttering Ukraine. What homunculus possesses them to mispronounce it thus [NOT “thusly”!]?

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

Language as an Aesthetic Object

September 13, 2019

Language is primarily conceived of as a vehicle of thought and a tool for human communication. Secondarily, however, language is also an aesthetic object, admired for its use in poetry and in accompaniment of song. Poetic devices like alliteration and rhyme are to be found as well in ordinary speech as an enhancement of communicative role. These are all instances of language use involving aesthetics as well as the referential function.

One further aesthetic aspect of language use is authenticity. This was illustrated to Y-H-B yesterday on a flight between NY/JFK and LAX, when I heard the pilot making an announcement to the passengers aboard. He spoke in a perfect Boston accent, of the sort I used to hear all around me when I lived in Cambridge, Mass. As a graduate student and research fellow. The aesthetic appeal of hearing an authentic Boston accent, with all its deviations from Standard American English, was what captured my attention, not the content of the announcement. I silently congratulated the pilot for adhering to the variety of speech that he had grown up with.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO