Shtraight Talk on S-Backing

I believe peak s-backing was reached on August 1, 2018. In a segment of NPR’s All Things Considered that day, the host, Audie Cornish; the NPR correspondent she was speaking with, Ayesha Rascoe; and the news figure being discussed, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, all engaged in s-backing, which is a term for pronouncing the s in a word as if it were sh. It’s called s-backing because you move your tongue toward the back of your mouth in order to do it.

Here’s the segment. Rascoe says “shtrongly” at the 0...