Arnold Zwicky (Language Log) has an excellent post:
Philip Gourevitch's "The State of Sarah Palin" (New Yorker, 22 September, p. 66-7) quotes from an interview with the vice-presidential candidate:
"We're not just gonna concede to three big oil companies of this monopoly –- Exxon, B.P., ConocoPhillips –- and beg them to do this [build a natural gas pipeline] for Alaska," Palin told me last month in Juneau. "We're gonna say, 'O.K., this is so economic that we don't have to incentivize you to build this. In fact, this has got to be a mutually beneficial partnership here as we build it. We're gonna lay out Alaska's must-haves. Parameters are gonna be set, rules are gonna be laid out, a law will encompass what it is that Alaska needs to protect our sovereignty, to insure it's jobs first for Alaskans, and in-state use of gas'" –- her list went on.
What stands out here — for a linguist, anyway — is the five occurrences of the spelling gonna for written standard going to. I'll take Gourevitch's word that this is the way Palin pronounced the expression, but why did he transcribe it that way? ....
First point: gonna is an entirely standard, though informal variant of going to, at least in American English.... Instances of gonna from standard-English American speakers in relaxed contexts are all over the place, and it's not hard to find the occasional instance from such speakers (even prestigious ones) in formal contexts. Normally we'd expect such occurrences of gonna to to be represented as going to in print.
Fourth point: ... using non-standard spellings like gonna for standard (but informal) phonological variants paints the speaker as folksy, rustic, etc.... The writer thus covertly injects a social judgment about the speaker into what is framed as a report of an interview about experiences and opinions. In the pages of the New Yorker, N variants convey a negative judgment (because the magazine's readers are likely to hold to the belief that the N variants are, if not simply non-standard, that is, "incorrect", then at least rough, "hick", variants). In other publications, N variants might be understood differently....
The rest of the post is much worth reading as well (as is characteristic of Language Log, which does a great job of applying its authors' scholarly and professional knowledge to lay topics).
My quick thought on the situation: People have both personal and regional variants in their pronunciations, such as the Southern "Ah" for "I," some people's preference for "cyoopon," particular people's lingering foreign accents (like, er, maybe mine), and the like. The speakers are still using the same words as everyone else — they're just pronouncing them slightly differently.
It seems to me that written quotes ought to capture the words used, and not the pronunciation. We wouldn't normally quote a lisper as saying, "We're going to thay, 'OK, thith ..." (at least unless the lisp is the focus of the story). We wouldn't quote a Southerner as saying "Ah buhlieve ...." We shouldn't quote someone as saying "Febyooary" when he means February.
Likewise, it seems to me that "going to" should be quoted as "going to" even when it acoustically resembles "gonna," at least setting aside unusual circumstances (for instance, if the argument is generally about the speaker's deliberately folksy pronunciations, something Zwicky reports this article is not). Such phonetic spelling strikes me as sometimes distracting to readers. And it strikes me as generally unfair to the speaker, whose regional background, speech impediment, or foreignness the phonetic spelling unduly emphasizes.
UPDATE: Here's the entire New Yorker piece.
For instance, the pace of "gonna" vs. "going to" affects the entire pace of the passage. If she was rattling this off, then "gonna" is appropriate if that's what she said.
(What was that about over-correcting prose?)
Now that, I must say, is just stupid. If Quentin Tarantino were being quoted -- and saying "gonna" -- are we supposed to imagine a negative judgment on the part of New Yorker readers, that Tarantino is a hick who can't speak correctly?
Zwicky's stereotype of the readers is a bit hypocritical, given that he's attributing to them (on zero evidence) a stereotypical belief.
What do you think about people who interview lispers? Should they phonetically record the lisps as "th" rather than using the standard spelling of the words that are being used? Should quotes of some Southerners have "Ah"'s instead of "I"'s?
In this case, I'd use "going to," though; using "gonna" sort of looks like he's trying to make her look bad.
Depends on the passage; I'm a Mississippian and don't see any need to pretend that heavy Southern accents don't exist.
Palin's appeal to many voters is inseparable from her being a peppy, "gonna do this, gonna do that" kind of person ... versus the elitists (New Yorker readers presumably) who believe that everyone should say "going to." So it's very odd to suggest that this aspect of her character should be corrected through copyediting lenses.
Where does the hypercorrection end? We in the South say we are "fixing to" do this or that. On Zwicky's theory, it's biased to transcribe that actual expression; one should write down "going to" lest one impute a negatively-charged variant to the speaker.
I'd recommend reading the article, which is pretty fair-minded. The portion quoted, as G. notes, testifies to her "populist" appeal ... again, people who say "gonna."
Note also Zwicky's observation that Palin comes across as much more fluent, with her "gonnas," in Gourevitch's transcription than she did with Katie Couric.
G. directly addresses how she speaks:
Palin, who studied journalism in college and worked for a time as a sportscaster, has an informal manner of speech, simultaneously chatty and urgent, and she reinforces her words with winks and nods and wrinklings of her nose that seem meant to telegraph intimacy and ease. Speaking recently at her former church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, she said, “It was so cool growing up in this church and getting saved here, getting baptized by Pastor Riley in Little Beaver Lake Camp, freezing-cold summer days that we had at camp--my whole family getting baptized when we were little.” She sounded the same when we met, high-spirited, irrepressible, and not in the least self-conscious. On the contrary, she is supremely self-confident, in the way of someone who believes that there is nothing she can’t talk her way into, or out of, or around or through. There was never a hesitation before speaking, or between phrases, no time for thought or reflection. The words kept coming--engaging, lulling, distracting--a commanding flow, but without weight. Yet, for all the cozy colloquialism, she cannot be called relaxed. She’s on--full on.
Mind you, I still think she's a horrible VP choice, but I think there's something to that observation. She can perform a lot better than she did on CBS.
Several years ago, the Times ran a jokey piece on good ol' boy stock car racers "come up" to New York City. The article was heavy on demeaning dialect and mispronunciations.
I wrote the paper's editor on this point: of course, no reply or acknowledgement.
Or: would you also argue that speakers' contractions (another informalism quite similar to "gonna") should always be represented by the two-word version? Should Palin's "We're"s and "can't"s all be represented as "We are" and "can not"? If not, what do you think is the difference?
Of course, transcripts regularly, and appropriately, "clean up" what speakers actually say, because everyone's speech looks idiotic when rendered in writing. People repeat themselves, stumble over their words, say "um," etc., so regularly that we don't even notice it most of the time. So literalism is not a desirable goal, but I don't see why that necessarily excludes "gonna."
And whether he's ever interviewed Barney Frank...
Hate to mis-attribute whompin'.
Preview is, indeed, our friend.
Excuse me?
Have you seen the Couric interviews?
Do you think that anyone need do anything to make her sound "rube-ish"?
Hopefully you meant this as a joking tagline because it's clearly off base. This isn't prose we're talking about, it's a quotation. The writer doesn't get to inject his own style into quotes.
Whether it's a fair transcription of her quote is a different question. I tend to agree with Eugene and suspect that the political opinions of the writer and magazine may have influenced the choice. But there have been some reasonable counter arguments made.
And, that is exactly why he wrote it that way. Thanks for proving Zwicky's point.
I reread what she said, I fail to see anything" jaw-dropping stupid". She did something that no one else has managed to do in Alaska for 30 years. Not so stupid it seems to me.
You need to pour yourself a strong drink this weekend and sit down and watch the Couric interviews with Ms. Palin.
Seriously.
Of course Gourevitch's reporting of 'gonna' is deliberate political spin. Sure, plenty of folks use "gonna". Maybe half the country. Tarantino says it. So do I. But we're not running for VP.
The easy way to check for liberal spin is to read Gourevitch's prior reports, and see if he did the same thing every time others said "gonna."
Instead of trying to latch onto something this lame, look at what Gov. Palin has accomplished. She makes Obama look like the real out of it rube -- and he's running for president.
Veritably.
And incidentally, if a lisper says "thith" then that's what the reporter should put down. He can always clarify the meaning later.
How about Bill Clinton. He's a "gonna" guy if there ever was one.
The Couric interview did nothing but make Couric look biased and vindictive.
``Occasionally, writers will use eye dialect, as in wuz for was, or wimmin for women - spellings which describe pronunciations used by all or nearly all English speakers in colloquial speech, and which therefore serve no other purpose than to indicate to readers that a character is a speaker of nonstandard, lower-class, or `hick' dialect...''
A short and entertaining booklet. I must be the only person in the world who has a copy.
I will, however, take your advice re the strong drink.
But that's from an author's viewpoint, not from the reporter's viewpoint. In audio, the distinction between "going to", "goin' ta", and "gonna" are arguable. Likewise, the biases a person develops about these phrases can vary dramatically from one locale to the next, and unlike in a novel, generating such a bias improperly is unacceptable.
The purpose of quotation marks -- of reporting itself -- is to present what a person said, not your own biases of what that person sounded like. Using phonetic phrasing edges far too close to the second aspect.
Google hits on 'going to': 630,000,000
versus, for example,
Google hits on 'cyoopon': 132
Google hits on 'coupon': 89,400,000
Actually "gonna" is a Standard English word that for the past several centuries has served as a modal auxiliary for indicating the future tense. It's been steadily replacing the alternative modal auxilliary "going to" in spoken speech.
To demonstrate this, consider the two expressions
(1) "I'm going to San Francisco." and
(2) "I'm going to go to San Francisco."
If "gonna" were a contraction of "going to" then (1) could be converted to (1a) "I'm gonna to San Francisco." But no native speaker of English would accept this as a normal or correct utterance.
On the other hand, (2) converts readily to (2a) "I'm gonna go to San Francisco." The modal auxiliary "going to" is just replaced with the alternative modal auxiliary "gonna".
Except in the most formal speech most speakers of Standard English say "gonna" not "going to" to mark future action in English. Only native speakers who are nervous about their status in particular situations go to any effort to replace "gonna" with "going to" in ordinary speech.
In written Standard English "gonna" is spelled "going to" just like the word pronounced "night" is spelled "knight". That's beecause English orthography lags English speech by centuries and even as much as a millenium.
The only reason to use "gonna" in written Standard English is to mark someone as a rube or an illiterate. And clearly that's what this writer was trying to do to Palin.
Your other points are spot on.
That is simply false, as the quotation I provided above from the article demonstrates.
Obama sure does say tu for to, a lot. I have also hard him say policsay for policy. Now, he is saying gotta, quite a bit as well as gottuh.
He also says shore for sure.
Oops, now Obama is starting his uh, uh, uh, uh.
Now he is saying Taleebun. Maybe he should have had a hearing or two of that NATO Committee he is supposedly in charge of. Now, it's Pawkystun.
Now he is talking about not tolerating a nuclear Iraq when he means Iran. Can you imagine the hooting if Palin did that?
Now, has anyone ever written Obama phonetically to make him look stupid? No, but they could have.
Actually, this whole phonics thing is fun, stupid, but fun but then, the New Yorker started it, not me.
However, this is a darned good debate. The more so as they go on. I am so glad that Jim is having them to talk to each other.
This was one of the best debates ever. I am very impressed.
I think maybe a tie?
The purpose of quotation marks is to signal accuracy: that the words presented are what the speaker actually said. Sorry, EV, but you're just wrong here. "
Nope. Porlock, you're the one who's off base on this one. Which is a surprise from somone of your almost ostentatious intelligence. BUT . . . it has been mentioned already: "Black English" is NOT transcribed as spoken by the "quality press." Even between quotation marks.
If tonight's debate transcript in tomorrow's NYT shows Sen. Obama refering to nuclear "pahliferation," I'll have to assume that the standard you suggested has recently been implemented by our media outlets. Until then, nuh-uh.
I've been hearing the "PAH-kee-STAHN"-pronunciation rather frequently these days. It's a bit odd, in that many reporters do what Sen. Obama did tonight: They say "PAH-kee-STAHN," but its neighbot is Aaf-GAAN-uh-STAAN (using a double-a here to represent the Midwestern flat-a that morons like Obama use. Because they are dumb Midwesterners. Total rubes!)
Why did this shift occur? And when are these things decided? Moscow is always "MOS-koe" on TV news and NPR, even though NO ONE ELSE says it this way. When was that decided? Did David Rockefeller declare MOS-koe and PAH-kee-STAHN to be received pronunciation at Bohemian Grove?
In any event, Sen. McCain is obviously not on that email-list. I almost feel like LBJ is in the room with me when I hear him speak of "Viet-NAAM."
I didn't notice the "Taleban", but Obama's pronunciation of "Pakistan" (as "Pawkisthun") is the right way as said in that part of the world. My thought was his Indonesian residency might have helped with understanding the native/local pronunciation.
The debate was a clear 2 parter - Obama hit his points well particularly in the first half-hour dealing with the economy and McCain's inability to speak well about it was obvious. But after that he did well with the spending issues and was the winner of the foreign policy round.
I've been an editor for some 15 years now, and Gourevitch's use of "gonna" was the first thing that jumped out at me about the article. I couldn't believe the New Yorker editors permitted him to do that. It plays right into the worst stereotypes of New Yorker readers.
On a completely different note, is "commontheme" still reading this thread? He earlier wrote:
What is it about politics, or society, or life in general these days, that just brings out the asshole in people? If I met commontheme, or this guy, in "real life," would I think "Wow -- What an asshole!"? Or is it just when they sit down in front of a computer?
Man, who needs it. It's hard to get interested in a subject permeated with so much venom and vitriol. Life's just too short for that.
- Alaska Jack
I don't think you watched the link, did you? When Couric asked Palin about the fiscal bailout plan (a single question, mind you) and Palin launched into a discussion of how the Wall Street bailout was needed for healthcare reform - you think THAT makes COURIC look biased? Okay.
Why don't you tell me sport?
Grammatically, it annoys me, because he's slurring words which wouldn't be written that way. On the other hand, it captures exactly how the word would sound coming out of his mouth, and comics are all about capturing action and sound into a visual snapshot.
So, for dramatic effect, I'm alright with "gonna." Maybe not in an interview quote, but in fiction, it doesn't bother me.
Afterthought: how does "gonna" or other slurred phrases translate in a court transcript? I suppose it depends on the court reporter. I can't recall the last time I saw "gonna" in a court record, but then, I don't remember looking for it either. I'm going to (gonna?) have to do that next time.
In spoken speech, insure and ensure sound so close together from many speakers that fairness demands that the transcriber assume the speaker used the correct word. Of course, that assumes the transcriber knows the difference between the two and which is proper under the circumstances.
Nick
The anonymity of the virtual marketplace of ideas is a prime suspect. It's just easier to be an asshole--or even, God forbid, a total douchebag--when no one is ever going to know who you are. I like to think of it as the over-15 equivalent of playing "Ding-Dong-Ditch."
"And incidentally, if a lisper says "thith" then that's what the reporter should put down. He can always clarify the meaning later."
Were you aware that the finest orator of the 20th Century had a lisp?
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tearth, and thweat."
I can see your point, Porlock. Much more accurate. Sort of like FDR's polio.
jbvv,
"When Couric asked Palin about the fiscal bailout plan (a single question, mind you) and Palin launched into a discussion of how the Wall Street bailout was needed for healthcare reform"
Sort of like Obama making the same point during the debate, you mean?
"Insure" and "ensure" are supposed to be two different words - Americans use them interchangeably and most of the times people use insure instead of ensure (even in written language). May be common usage has made them mean the same in American English, but fundamentally they are not the same.
Interestingly, I found a blog entry from Writer's Digest's online managing editor saying that The New York Times and The New Yorker are fairly anachronistic within the publishing industry for using "insure" when other publications use "ensure".
Nick
I'm with Eugene and Zwicky here, and it's because I've read 19th-century transcriptions of black persons' speech by white Southerners that did the same thing: not only "gonna," but words like "dun" (for "done") and others that I'm not recalling, but that were exact phonetic duplicates of the correctly pronounced word. The point was simply to convey that the subject was uneducated, not that they were actually pronouncing words in a non-standard fashion."
Wondering when our bigotry police will get around to walking this beat.
ensureunsure, why didn't he simply ask?One thing is for certain: Gorevitch is a partisan hack, not a professional.
Can't he be both?
I disagree. I think that "gonna" conveys enthusiasm and urgency in a way that "going to" never can. Enthusiasm and urgency are not necessarily the exclusive province of illiterates and rubes.
The former sounds like the speaker is venting in an emotional moment, and probably will back off from the threat once he/she calms down and thinks for about fifteen seconds.
The latter sounds cold, calculating, and far more dangerous.
The difference in perception has nothing to do with whether the speaker was illiterate or a rube (or both), and everything to do with the rapidity with which the sentence was uttered.
In Gourevitch's book A Cold Case he consistently uses the eye-dialect "gonna" in the speeches of his criminal characters.
In EV's initial quote of Gourevitch's article, the "gonna" jumped out at me. I immediately concluded he was trying to paint Palin as unintelligent.
Yes, it is possible to have non-insulting uses of "gonna" when quoting someone. Several commenters have noted that there are situations where such a use gives a certain emphasis or informality to one's speech, and it is fair to record that - if it seems to be the speaker's intent. A football coach, even a prep school coach who also teaches Shakespeare, can legitimately be quoted saying. "We're gonna take it to 'em on offense" without implying any lack of intelligence on his part. To quote that same coach as beginning his English III class by saying "We're gonna start with Act II, scene iv of Hamlet..." would be an immediate signal to the reader that there was something substandard about the teaching, even if the man had pronounced the words in exactly the same way.
Gourevitch's intent, in that publication, with that subject, in that speech context, was unmistakably an attempt to show Sarah Palin as rough-edged. He may have thought he was capturing the flavor of her accurately for his audience. But he took enormous liberties in doing so, and it is entirely likely he is fitting her into his stereotype.
commontheme, I wonder if you would be so quick to go on record as agreeing with such stereotypes if they were about other groups? For all your condescension, I doubt you have negotiated many agreements with the Canadian government.
NickM: Stylebooks set forth a publication's style; but they don't define what is "[l]inguistically ... the proper word" -- in fact, part of their job is to choose which among several proper words should be used in the publication (which is why, as you point out, different stylebooks sometimes make different choices). If we're going to look to authorities as the ultimate test, I would think that the verdict of several dictionaries is a better test of what is "linguistically ... proper" than is the view of stylebooks. (I'm a descriptivist, but I too look at those dictionaries, though as highly reliable expert opinion on what is standard usage, rather than as the definition of such standard usage.)
In other words, nothing about what she actually says indicates stupidity. You can only infer it from her hick dialect.
I never thought about it much, but the way I pronounce the two words is pretty much indistinguishable. But I know the difference, just as I know the difference between "merry," "marry," and "Mary," but pronounce them pretty much the same.