Apprentice phonology

Reality TV seems to generate good linguistic data. A case in point came last December, but this was on the part of a viewer rather than a cast member. But the casts of reality shows offer gems of their own, because of the nature of the production: despite the contrived premise of (nearly) any reality show, there are prototypical features that distinguish reality-based TV from fictional TV. For example, reality TV is unscripted, and the participants are not actors (except in the celebrity-reality subgenre, where the participants are celebrities, but not “on”, or not in character). Much of the footage is also candid and never re-shot.

The result of this formula is a lot of natural speech in reality-based TV. In contrast, fictional TV shows don’t have speech errors or malapropisms (unless it’s a scripted character trait), or counterexamples to things like crossover effects or subjacency restrictions. Broadcast news or talk shows may have some, but broadcasters are trained to avoid them. And accent data from both is pretty well retricted to (a) how bad a job someone is doing hiding their own accent and (b) how bad a job someone is doing adopting some other accent.

So how is linguistic data from reality TV any different from eavesdropping on a conversation on the bus? It’s not, except it’s amplified (and keeping a notepad on the coffee table is much less conspicuous than using one on the bus).

Which brings me to two recent data points extracted from season 3 of NBC’s The Apprentice, a program in which participants vie to win a job working for Donald Trump. I need to give some background, so here’s the premise: participants are split into two teams, and each week the teams compete in a particular task. The losing team goes to ‘the boardroom’ to deconstruct their failure with Trump. A technicality is that teams choose a ‘project manager’ for each task, and the losing manager stays in the boardroom with two teammates – Trump than fires one of these three. Since it is a risk to be manager, the show provides incentive to take the position, in that the winning manager is fully exempt from being fired if their team loses the subsequent task.

Fair enough. But the exemption a few weeks ago generated some lingering controversy on one team (the so-called “Book Smarts” team, which named itself Magna). Having been manager on a winning task, Michael (who, like most reality cast members, has no last name) was exempt from being fired the following week. It may have been a matter of editing, but in the episode in which he was exempt, it really seemed like he took advantage of the benefit; he contributed little and even seemed disruptive in the new task. Naturally, his teammates took note of this. His defense for this behaviour was that nobody liked his idea in the new task, so he felt unappreciated and dismissed, all the while believing that the approach they did adopt was stupid. (Yes, people tend to be pretty childish on these shows).

Anyway, to our first data point: in a “confessional” (a soliloquy-like segment in which the contestant shares thoughts with the viewers, away from other participants), Michael explained his point of view:

If I was happy with mediocri[s]y, then yeah, fine.

OK, not that eloquent, but apparently what he meant was, “If I was OK with being involved in poorly-executed task, then yeah, fine, I would have put in a full effort”. The real point here is his term for what he perceived to be a state of lameness: mediocri[s]y, which seems to be a classic malapropism, aiming for mediocrity but somehow getting interference either from jealousy, hypocrisy, or -ocracy.

I have to say mediocracy actually sounds like a Fox News nightmare — government by the media. But as a neologism it does show up in webspace and bloggery to refer to “democracy of the mediocre”:

Democracy – Part 3: Mediocracy. … The meme authorises, and then by the same logic mandates, the rule of the mediocre: — mediocracy. …

January 16, 2005. Mediocracy. … An essay on mediocracy, leaves you with a lot to think about. New ideas always start out being held by a minority. …

… Email address: Subject: Mediocracy. Johnic is a true mediocracy, where all things average float to the top. … Mediocracy (On Lindsay and other matters) . . . …

…A “mediocracy” is an organization in which the mediocre prevails. Most people in a mediocracy are mediocre in both mind and soul…

Mediocrousy is absent from the record, but mediocrisy is not:


… See? Where do you draw the line with such thinking? Why strive for mediocrisy? …

… DESTINATION : EXCELLENCE. In our business strategy – we say “We are set to create an island of excellence in the sea of mediocrisy”. …

… As for the Tories, their slide into mediocrisy only serves as an amusing sideshow to the grand scope of real politics. Though Boris does rule. …

… new york minute, he felt like a million Cause he knew somebody cared and said I have but anation in me for evryone to see I am but a tribute to mediocrisy I’m …

… hopefully, this ruling with spur artists to make an effort and think of something original – and end the dreadful cycle of hip-hop mediocrisy. …

It seems like this kind of malapropism, intentional or not, is more likely when the two components share some sequence, e.g. [medi(ocr)isy].

To the next data point; it came out of the same subplot, this controversy over Michael’s exemption. See, Danny (the manager during the task in which Michael was exempt) had Michael stay in the boardroom, even though the latter was exempt. This was bold, but dumb; the team wrongly thought they could appeal to Trump to ignore the exemption. Then, in another confessional, a participant (I forget which one) adds to the rhetoric:

Exemption, schmejemption.

This was also bold: as far as candidates for schm- reduplication go, exemption is brutal: vowel-initial, stress on the pen-initial syllable, [m] later in the word. These all make people hesitate on producing a schm- form. I would have opted for the null parse myself, or better yet, “exemption my ass”. But this reality TV cast member went right for it, and somehow ended up with [j] in the reduplicated form.

[Update 16 Feb 2005: apparently I noticed another data point worth jotting down several weeks ago, which I found in a cell of an MS-Excel document (I guess I had it open in front of the TV). Again, it was from a confessional, but this time from a member of the “Street Smarts” team, NetWorth. Not quite a phonological issue, but a linguistic data point nonetheless:

If people don’t like it, they can go frig themself.

Note the singular they, which usually takes plural verbal agreement. Verbal number agreement is obscured by the modal here, but the anaphor is singular. In spite of the plural people in the same sentence! Maybe he thought a plural anaphor would have too much of a distributive reading.]