Trademark Speech Pattern
Boomhauer’s speech patterns are nearly incomprehensible to the untrained audience and serve as a recurring theme. He mumbles, usually quite fast, and invariably uses the words "dang ol’" as an all-purpose adjective, sometimes several times in a single sentence. He also uses the phrases "I tell ya what" and "man" frequently. His heavy Southern accent sometimes leads to misunderstandings about his mental capacity. In one episode, he was admitted to a mental hospital in downtown Houston after he drifted in on the river in a tube and was found in his Speedos, sunburned, drunk, and dehydrated, while his speech pattern was misinterpreted by a police officer as incoherent babbling. All of the regular characters on the show understand most of what he says. There is a recurring joke in which Hank occasionally cannot understand Boomhauer due to extenuating circumstances such as the complexity of the vocabulary being used (i.e. "legalese mumbo jumbo"), a bad telephone connection or an echo. Often, the closed caption texts of Boomhauer’s mumblings are clearer than his spoken words. An example of a typical line of dialog:
| “ | Yeah man, I tell ya what, man, that dang ol’ internet, man, you just go in on there and point and click, talk about w-w-dot-w-com, mean you got the naked chicks on there, man, just go click, click, click, click, click, it’s real easy, man. | ” |
Boomhauer’s speech is satirical of “rednecks” using phrases such as "dang ol'", “dad gum” and “yeah, man talkin’ ’bout” and has the cadence and style of a Cajun accent. Nevertheless, he sings clearly, as evidenced by his rendition of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in Episode 113 (“The Bluegrass Is Always Greener”); this same episode reveals that he also has a talent for the banjo and the accordion. The singing was done by country star Vince Gill. Mike Judge has stated that the inspiration for Boomhauer’s voice came from a message left on his answering machine by an irate viewer of Beavis & Butt-Head as well as the voice patterns of an acquaintance in Dallas and an Oklahoma City resident reciting directions over the telephone. The season 1 episode "Hank's Got the Willies" shows Boomhauer and the famously incomprehensible Bob Dylan conversing with one another. In “A Fire Fighting We Will Go,” when a story is presented from Boomhauer's point of view, he speaks clearly while the other characters have his usual speech pattern, indicating that Boomhauer sees his speech as normal and that of his associates as difficult to understand.
Early promotional spots for the series featured clips of Boomhauer speaking, intercut with text that presented the term "Boombonics" in the style of a dictionary entry, as a reference to "Ebonics" (AAVE). The word was broken down into syllables, with proper pronunciation and the definition (see gibberish).
Although he only mumbles when speaking English, he is fluent in both Spanish and French.
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Famous quotes containing the words speech and/or pattern:
“Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.”
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“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
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