MoJo Audio: Linguist Robin Lakoff Analyzes Sarah Palin’s Accent

Last night after the veep debate, my friends and I couldn’t stop doing the Sarah Palin accent. But is she the only candidate on the campaign trail who sounds like where she comes from? And does she do it on purpose? I called on Robin Lakoff, a professor of sociolinguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, for some straight talk about the speech patterns of Sarah Palin, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Barack Obama.

In this podcast, Lakoff explains how Obama and McCain’s speech have evolved since we talked last year during primary season—and why there’s more to Palin’s speech than her Wasilla ways.