{"id":13797,"date":"2009-02-19T11:20:22","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T18:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=13797"},"modified":"2009-02-19T11:20:14","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T18:20:14","slug":"the-well-spoken-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/02\/19\/the-well-spoken-president.html","title":{"rendered":"The Well-Spoken President"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, including using sentence diagrams.<\/p>\n

\n

The diagram, though, offers several insights. First, the elegant balance of the central construction (My view is that x<\/i>, and that y<\/i>, but also that z<\/i>) 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.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a>), 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Interesting stuff.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(via BoingBoing<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “The Well-Spoken President”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-and-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7738,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/24\/wordstructure_m.html","url_meta":{"origin":13797,"position":0},"title":"Words(tructure) Mean Things","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 24-Aug-05 3:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I only encountered sentence diagrams once in my life, in the 8th grade, where my English teacher used them drawing on old books she'd recovered from the closets of the...","rel":"","context":"In "Writing and Language"","block_context":{"text":"Writing and Language","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/writing-and-language"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7574,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/02\/01\/things_that_are.html","url_meta":{"origin":13797,"position":1},"title":"Things That Are Bad","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 1-Feb-05 1:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A fine instruction in how to use a Venn Diagram. 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It's not, though, for everyone (any more than any teaching\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10761,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/02\/the_law_order_party.html","url_meta":{"origin":13797,"position":3},"title":"The Law & Order Party","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 2-Jul-07 6:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Bush commutes Scooter Libby's sentence.\u00a0 President Bush commuted Monday the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis \"Scooter\" Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128129,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/22\/math-methodology-mediocrity-and-common-core-gasp.html","url_meta":{"origin":13797,"position":4},"title":"Math, Methodology, Mediocrity … and Common Core (gasp!)","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-Sep-15 7:14am","format":false,"excerpt":"I entered elementary school just as the New Math (1960s style -- the one Tom Lehrer sang about [https:\/\/youtu.be\/UIKGV2cTgqA]) was coming in. 2nd Grade? Long pages of exercises. 3rd Grade? Venn diagrams and Commutative \/ Associative \/ Distributive Properties.Know what my folks did? They figured out how to help me.When\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11012,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/25\/there_theyre_and_their.html","url_meta":{"origin":13797,"position":5},"title":"There, They’re and Their","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 25-Apr-07 9:34am","format":false,"excerpt":"Yeah, this one bugs Doyce as much as it bugs me.\u00a0 How to Use There, Their and They're.\u00a0 A nice test: Test your usage. When you use any of these...","rel":"","context":"In "Writing and Language"","block_context":{"text":"Writing and Language","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/writing-and-language"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}