I love sentence diagrams, and have ever since the (one) year I learned them in junior high. So I’m all over this analysis of Obama’s speech patterns, including using sentence diagrams.
The diagram, though, offers several insights. First, the elegant balance of the central construction (My view is that x, and that y, but also that z) shows that Obama has a good memory for where he’s been, grammatically, and a strong sense of where he’s going. His tripartite analysis of the problem is clearly reflected in the structure of the sentence, and thus in the three main branches of the diagram. (Turn it on its side and it could be a mobile.) The third “that” – thrown in 29 words into a 43-word sentence – creates three parallel predicate nouns. And then there’s a little parallel flourish at the end: “I am more interested in looking forward than I am in looking back.”
Nothing feels tacked on; the “ums” and “ahs” Obama sometimes inserts into his speeches are not meant to buy time to think about substance, or to long for a teleprompter (sorry, conservative bloggers), but to make sure his long sentences stay on solid grammatical terrain. At the same time, Obama’s confidence in the basic architecture of his sentences allows him to throw in some syntactically varied riffs and qualifiers: an absolute phrase here, a correlative conjunction or comparative adjective there.
The article goes on to point out some other interesting things — e.g., despite the complex structure, Obama uses a straightforward and powerful vocabulary to make “complexity and caution sound bold and active, even masculine.”
Interesting stuff.
(via BoingBoing)
Then there’s Sarah Palin, whose sentences were diagrammed on Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2201158/
(Did you blog about this? I thought so, but I couldn’t find it?)
I didn’t. That’s great. (And the article is referenced at the top of the one I linked to.)
That’s brilliant.