Biden’s verbal talents have ‘unraveled’ says prime linguist claims
- Biden has taken to using ‘chunks’ of language and mixing up ‘social levels’
- Top linguist calls lack of effective communicating ‘alarming’
Joe Biden‘s verbal abilities have ‘unraveled’ so sharply that one of America’s top linguists has likened the president’s current speech to pidgin English.
Biden committed two major flubs in Washington Thursday alone – accidentally calling Volodymyr Zelensky ‘President Putin‘ and referring to Kamala Harris during his high-wire press conference as ‘Vice President Trump.’
Yet these quick slips (Biden corrected the first one but not the second) are only part of the picture.
One way to look at the way Biden speaks it to compare it to some of the mashup languages that have evolved over time, like Chinese Pidgin English that formed along the cost of China beginning in the 18th century during a time of increased trade and contact.
‘I’ve been reminded of that as the nation tries to process President Biden’s jumbled syntax during his debate with Donald Trump and in his subsequent interview with George Stephanopoulos,’ writes John McWhorter, an expert in creoles, pidgins, and other ‘vehicular’ languages who teaches at Columbia University‘s Center for American Studies.
A top linguist is comparing Biden’s short sentence chunks and missing cues on ‘social levels’ of English to compare the way he speaks to pidgin languages
McWhorter says he is struck by ‘how far his sentences had strayed from the complexities and subtleties he once controlled effortlessly,’ pointing to interviews from four years ago.
‘It is alarming to see someone who is asking to be elected president of the United States — someone who already serves as president of the United States — communicate in such an ineffective manner. But what is actually going on there, linguistically? One way to understand what is happening is to think of it as unraveling,’ he writes in a New York Times op-ed.
He points to Biden’s use of ‘chunks’ of language, like using clipped fragments in his recent ABC interview, such as ‘Large crowds, overwhelming response, no slipping.’
Bidn’s bizarre statement that he would be okay so long as ‘I did the goodest job as I know I can do’ – a comment that was disputed and changed in an ABC transcript – also drew his notice. He said it made him think of pidgin languages.
Biden seems to lose sight of ‘social levels’ of English – dropping swear words into formal interviews. Some could be a part of being a politician trying to get in with the masses. But throwing in lines like ‘Whatever the hell it is’ clash with the moment where Biden is trying to demonstrate to the public that he is up to campaigning and governing.
McWhorter observed comparisons between Biden’s speech and Pidgin English
Linguist John H. McWhorter was alarmed by some of Biden’s speech uses
He also mixes up word tenses that show his command of the language’s color ‘seems to be fading,’ writes McWhorter.
These displays appear to be distinct from Biden’s driving language issue, his childhood stutter that he mostly overcame.
Ally Rep. James C. Clyburn (D-South Carolina) leaned on that as being behind some of Biden’s train wreck performances.
‘I’ve been around that condition for a long time, and I know exactly how it operates, but he has one of the best minds that I’ve ever been around,” Clyburn said on the NBC’s ‘Today’ show Friday. ‘The people who’ve been around him will tell you that, and so I would hope that we will focus on the substance of this man, rather than these sometimes misspoken words and phrases, and how he has run this country.’
Biden’s Thursday night press conference also featured use of his trademark whisper to underline a point, with some of his comments rising to a near shout.
Biden, 81, isn’t the only candidate who boils down ideas to the very basics. During his own bizarre debate statement, bragging about water quality and environmentalism during his own term, former President Donald Trump, 78, said simply, ‘H20.’
But in the case of Biden, McWhorter is concerned about the ‘rapid decline of complex sentence structure.’ (But spoke at length about China, Russia, and diplomacy during one long answer during his press conference and quieted some of his critics).
‘Pidgins do a basic job but aren’t designed for detail, grace or suasion. Increasingly, Biden’s speech submits to an alarmingly similar judgment,’ he wrote.
