Over at WhoRunsGov, an otherwise interesting essay on the paths-to-power of female national executives centers around the un-interesting prospects of one Sarah Palin, ending on this note:
But if Palin can find a way to position herself as the natural leader of her party, the Lady Liberty at the front of the Tea Party mass, she may yet have a shot. And if she crafted a housecleaning message that unified rather than divided, she would strengthen her cause immensely.
But if Palin crafted a message that united rather than divided, she wouldn’t be Sarah Palin. In fact, she wouldn’t even be a Republican anymore.
Meanwhile, a commenter at Roger Ebert’s blog thinks Sarah speaks in anacolutha,
a rhetorical device that can be loosely defined as a change of syntax within a sentence. More specifically, anacoluthons (or “anacolutha”) are created when a sentence abruptly changes from one structure to another. Grammatically, anacoluthon is an error; however, in rhetoric it is a figure that shows excitement, confusion, or laziness. In poetics it is sometimes used in dramatic monologues and in verse drama. In prose, anacoluthon is often used in stream of consciousness writing, such as that of James Joyce, because it is characteristic of informal human thought.
In its most restrictive meaning, anacoluthon requires that the introductory elements of a sentence lack a proper object or complement. For example, if the beginning of a sentence sets up a subject and verb, but then the sentence changes its structure so that no direct object is given, the result is anacoluthon. Essentially, it requires a change of subject or verb from the stated to an implied term. The sentence must be “without completion” (literally what “anacoluthon” means). A sentence that lacks a head, that supplies instead the complement or object without subject, is anapodoton.
As a figure, anacoluthon directs a reader’s attention, especially in poetry, to the syntax itself and highlights the mechanics of the meaning rather than the object of the meaning. It can, therefore, be a distancing technique in some poetry.
She divides her sentences the same way that the movement of which she is a creature habitually divides Americans. She does it blissfully unaware that she’s even doing it.
