Parodying incompetence in (I)europa: Hearing glide insertion and communism in a Romanian politician's speech

Abstract

My paper asks which linguistic features become enregistered to a politician's image, and how this process occurs. I examine glide insertion in the speech of former Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă and parodies of her. As parody requires exaggeration of salient features in order to be legible, I use it to investigate what is heard as salient in Dăncilă's speech. Although glide insertion is uncharacteristic of Dăncilă's speech, parodies overrepresent Dăncilă's use of the feature. To explain this, I investigate social meanings of glide insertion through metalinguistic commentary and historical memory, finding that glide insertion links Dăncilă to Romania's Communist era. Though Dăncilă rarely uses glide insertion, the feature emblematizes her political persona. Treating parodic performance as reflecting a wider listening subject, I show the listening subject's ideologies influence the enregisterment of a feature to an individual; the process by which a politician's linguistic image arises is dialogic and heavily involves listeners.