see also, the debate in pictures at http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/2004/10/debate-in-pictures.html (it's a fridge magnet!)
My friend Anatole did a quick but revealing linguistic analysis of last night's debate: http://gonze.com/weblog/index.cgi/10-1-4.writeback
.................................... Bush's use of contractions: 4.4% of words. Kerry's use of contractions: 3.6% of words.
Bush's average sentence length: 12.681 words. Kerry's average sentence length: 14.896 words.
Bush's average sentence fragment length: 7.251 words. Kerry's average sentence fragment length: 7.677 words.
Bush's spoken words: 6332 words. Kerry's spoken words: 6696 words.
Bush's vocabulary: 1032 unique words (de-stemmed). Kerry's vocabulary: 1076 unique words (de-stemmed).
Bush's exact sentences repeated:
4 (And) It's hard work.
2 We're making progress.
2 I sit down with the world leaders frequently and talk to them
on the phone frequently.
2 I know how these people think.
2 I deal with them all the time.
2 But it's necessary work.
2 And our alliance is strong.
Kerry's exact sentences repeated:
2 Nuclear proliferation.
Bush's repeated vocabulary words not used by Kerry (selected):
19 opponent
11 hope
10 must
9 defeat
6 hoping
6 citizens
5 decisions
4 opinion
4 liberty
4 grave
4 diversion
3 progress
3 politics
3 optimistic
3 disagree
2 suffering
2 prison
Kerry's repeated vocabulary words not used by Bush (selected):
4 parents
3 oil
3 fuel
3 fix
3 families
2 smart
2 share
2 proud
2 person
2 obviously
2 moment
2 loss
Top 3-grams from Kerry:
16 the united states
11 im going to
10 percent of the
9 we need to
9 osama bin laden
9 in the world
7 we have to
7 war on terror
7 the president is
6 were going to
6 we can do
6 weapons of mass
6 the war on
6 the american people
6 of mass destruction
6 i have a
6 i believe that
6 go to war
6 90 percent of
5 youve got to
Top 3-grams from Bush:
11 war on terror
11 a free iraq
10 at the wrong
9 the war on
8 not going to
7 kim jong il
7 its hard work
7 i dont think
7 free iraq will
6 weapons of mass
6 the american people
6 of mass destruction
6 a lot of
5 wrong war at
5 war at the
5 to do so
5 this is a
5 the wrong war
5 the wrong time
5 the wrong place
[And Anatole's caveats] I applied some creative editing to the lists because they're long with a few gems. For example, Kerry uniquely used (and repeated) "fresh," "pushed," and "subway," which I thought were rather insignificant, though I could be wrong. One thing I totally missed is that Kerry mentioned 9/11 five times, and Bush not once. Complete lists attached. [...] The great shortcoming of my tools is a lack of fuzziness. I tried to find 'phrases' by splitting on common transitive constructions, but it didn't work very well. Also, my de-stemming technique is way sub-standard, and I think it's not quite publish-worthy given that. ....................................
(my comments on this) Notice that (1) Bush used a smaller number of different words and (2) the candidates had exactly the same amount of talk time. So how did Bush fill the time? By repeating himself: on every measure of repetitiveness, Bush won easily. He's so consistent that he always answers the question "Why should I vote for you?" with "Vote for me because I repeat myself."
Bush kept repeating the phrase "hard work", referring to the presidency, which was bizarre and disconnected. Of course it's hard work, but it's a lot harder to get shot than to read casualty reports. To me this reinforced the general perception that Bush is out of it, because it is such a deeply strange way of describing the life of the most powerful man in the world.
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'