Biden’s Speech: Slips Not Abnormalities
Language as a cognitive barometer (or not)
John McWhorter in the New York Times on July 11, speculates about Biden’s poor performance at the CNN so-called debate with Trump. McWhorter, who is a linguist (as am I) pronounces from his pulpit about the character of Biden’s linguistic performance. In a nutshell he sees indications that Biden’s language is regressing from the performance peak of a fully fluent, educated version of English to a sort of pidgin variety of English.
Pidgins are forms of language that emerge in situations where people speaking mutually unintelligible languages are put into close contact, typically where they are underlings to some overseers who speak a prestige language. None of the underlings speak the prestige language. They compromise by developing a new, simplified form of language that strips down the grammatical and lexical complexity of the prestige language. That compromise is “designed” to be relatively easy to acquire for everybody. These are pidgins. A number of colonial languages, such as Haitian (based on French) or Tok Pisin in New Guinea (based on English), are now fully developed languages. Both started out as pidgins, evolved into creoles, and are now complex literary languages in their own right.
McWhorter is saying that Biden’s language shows the kinds of simplifications suggestive of pidgins, and he gives several examples. He surmises that Biden might be losing his control over the English language, a sign that McWhorter equates with dementia onset. Aside from the fact that his debate performance was admittedly poor, do you think there could be other reasons to explain his performance other than tarring him with cognitive decline?
I’m surprised that McWhorter seems to focus on the silliest reasons to question someone’s mental capacity. There are, in fact, other ways to look at Biden’s speech issues. First of all, the fact that the press and the political opposition put so much negative emphasis on his speech makes Biden hyper aware of what he’s saying and that’s a sure recipe for someone to make mistakes.
Instead of letting his thoughts carry his speech, he pays closer attention to how he’s putting his words together. It puts his brain and tongue into a fight for executive control and this can detract from getting the message across fluently. It’s a classic problem you see with second language learners and people recovering from speech defects — like stuttering. Too much self monitoring.
I’d be more concerned with his speech if he showed a lack of fluency in situations where his listeners are supportive and where he can go off script and still make sense. In these situations, he does not have much trouble. His phrasing and articulation and intonation are near perfect and he’s quick with a response. When he reads from a teleprompter, for instance, he can forget about monitoring his words and his delivery is perfectly fluent. Or, when at the State of the Union, he got interrupted by taunts from the likes of Margorie Taylor Green, his comebacks were quick and more punchy than her barbs.
Trump, however, does have a problem with cohesion. He topic jumps and tosses out disconnected word salads. The fluency he seems to have largely comes from his reliance on a large reservoir of well practiced insults and rote “facts” he’s memorized and the fake news he’s fed from his preferred media. There is little that indicates there’s a creative language forming process driving his mouth. This indicates a more serious linguistic problem. Maintaining a coherent discourse requires high level control over language and strongly suggests a firm cognitive grip. That’s something that McWhorter should have thought about. But pidgins are his specialty, so they provide an easier answer.
Biden is a stutterer and his speech reflects that fact. Although his condition is largely controlled, he relapses from time to time. He is getting older and you’ll see and hear the kinds of linguistic lapses that older people show, mainly trouble in finding the right word and a slowing rate of speech.
What the pundits should be looking at are the more serious signs of cognitive decline — problems with forming a coherent narrative. The errors include repeating sentence fragments; unmotivated, sudden, and frequent changes in topic; and, especially, unclear pronoun references. Let’s assume a speech you hear causes the following reactions in you: “Didn’t he just say that already?”, “I lost track of who he’s talking about”, “I thought he was talking about trade with China. Why is he talking about sharks now?” (Sound like anyone you know running for president?) In these cases you have more compelling grounds for a linguistic deficit.
Overall it’s more important to look beyond the language slips to the substantive details. Biden has comported himself as well as any president in our history, especially given the extreme polarization of the country and the heat he faces from a Republican party that demonizes his actions and brands him as incompetent and even criminal.
In contrast to Republican legislatures, Biden has directed his policies more toward the social and financial betterment of struggling people than to the rich who think ten million is not enough to get by on. The latter are the Republicans’ hands-down favorites to receive goodies.
Biden is a good guy and a good soul, if you want and need good government. But if you’re someone who wants to be free of government, he’s not your friend. He doesn’t want to make you any richer than you already are.
Fay Wylde here on Medium makes the point that the good president that Biden was for the last four years is still intact and worthy of another tour of duty. She’s going to vote for him and so am I.
