[lbo-talk] quick and dirty debate linguistics

snit snat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Fri Oct 1 16:16:16 PDT 2004


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'



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