M&D--so to speak

[Bill Millard]

Among various readings of Dixon's vocal mannerisms...

> "> I'm having trouble deciding how to hear Dixon's tendency to end
> > sentences with an ellipsis and a question mark, like this...?  Any
> > suggestions?
>  
> I'm hearing a drop in volume and a rise in pitch, a sort of trailing
> off...?  (I also visualize the speaker failing to make eye contact with
> the speakee -- textually justifiable? Ennh.)"
 
...comes Don Larsson's:

> I've just cracked the book, but my immediate visualization/audiation is
> of eyebrows rising at the end of a sentence spoken in a patrician
> accent, not unlike that of William F. Buckley.  But I need more context
> to be sure.

Raised Eyebrows definitely makes sense to me, but a patrician
Accent? Eeh,-- beg to differ here: Would Dixon, a relatively low-born
Geordie with a fairly unmistakable Awareness of Class -- had his
early Life taken different directions, he might conceivably have
ended up in the Pits -- be likely to display the notorious Buckleyite
Hauteur? I hear rougher, broader Vowels (e.g. "popish" rendered as
"Poapish") and a tone that often expresses the combination of
Skepticism and Amazement, or maybe Aghastness. Things Mason says
frequently seem to strike him as Absurdities, or at least Grounds for
Astonishment, and I see him raising his Eyebrows in Alarm (or mayhaps
Mock-Alarm) rather than patrician Condescension.

Y'r ob'd't, etc.
Bill Millard



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Bill Millard, Editor
21stC: The World of Research at Columbia
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