Wordwatchers

Words in language need each other – they even depend on each other! For example, in the sentence We do everything we can, the noun, everything depends on the verb, do. These are called dependencies. Dependencies in language are a signature of more complex language. If a speaker uses a greater number of dependencies, then their language is more complex. Dependencies are a way to syntactically analyze language.

In this blog, we ask Who is more complex? Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? click here to read it 

By VR and the IIS WordWatchers

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s 376 word resignation speech was linguistically simple and and personal.  Overall, 10.6% of his words were 1st person singular (I, me, my) which puts him in the depression range.  Although on the borderline of depression, he used a high number of positive emotion words (4.8%) and relatively few negative emotion words (1.6%) — almost all of which were part of our sadness/depression category (1.3%).

He clearly is someone with a very high need for achievement (4.0% of he words are from this category — almost a record).  This dimension of his personality can be seen in his phrases such as “my private failings with my wife…”  “…I tried to stand for…”  “I go forward with the belief…”  “…which I believe can build a future of hope and opportunity…”

As a side note, many people in the midst of a scandal or emotional upheavals avoid 1st person singular, as in “mistakes were made.”  This is particularly true in the first days after it has become public.

JWP

After each primary election, the candidates all appear on television and rally their troups.  Particularly revealing is how each person changes his or her language after winning versus losing.  There is some evidence in social psychology and business that if people succeed they tend to take credit. When they fail, they deflect the experience.  “I win; we lost.”

This pattern probably occurs as an ego-defensive maneuver. Because losing can be so painful, we do whatever we can to avoid misery and pain by turning our attention away from ourselves.

After the March 5 primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont, Clinton and McCain emerged as striking winners with Obama losing.  Since the early January Iowa caucus, all three of these candidates have experienced both stunning wins and losses. An analysis of their pronoun usage can help to tell us how they are psychologically steady versus, hmmm, less steady.

Check out the graph below.  The blue bars refer to word use in post-election comments after winning.  The red bars refer to language use after losing.  You will note that Hillary Clinton is breathtakingly stable. She uses both “I” words and “we” words at virtually identical rates whether she has just won or just lost.  McCain, too, is quite stable with “I” words whether winning or losing.  He does show an increase in “we” words after losing compared with winning.

But look at Obama.  After losing, he drops in his “I” words to almost zero. At the same time, he switches to exceptionally high rates of “we” words after losing.  This pattern was virtually identical in Obama after losing March 5th as it was after he lost in New Hampshire.

What does all of this mean?  One interpretation is that Obama is more emotionally labile than either Clinton or McCain.  An alternative interpretation is that Obama is a normal human being who responds the ways most of us would to such large wins and losses. More striking is how psychologically resilient both McCain and Clinton appear to be.

As a final note, these analyses are based on canned speeches by the candidates. It’s not clear if their words reflect their personalities or their election team’s psychological states.

JWP

What do you say … what do you mean? 

What do the candidates say most?

Actually, what the candidates say most can be a little boring … that is, most of the words that they use (like all of use) are little words like the, and, of, a, and in.

To be sure, we can learn A LOT about people from those words … and many blogs here show that point very well.

But maybe we’d still like to have a better idea of what candidates say most that is a little more than and and the and of?

One way to see more of what candidates are saying is to use an approach called clustering …

If you ‘d like to see how that works - and what the results are … then click the link below.

what-do-you-say-what-do-you-mean.pdf

from PMM and the IIS_WordWatchers

The We/You have challenge  

If you saw my recent post (below) on you-have-to and we-have-to then you’ll know that I’m very interested in why Obama and Clinton use these phrases with such different frequencies and how Obama and Clinton use these phrases in the first place.

From some recent research that we’ve conducted, we’ve learned that the majority of people only need three words in order to be able to tell the genre of a text. That is, if I give you three words then you’ll be able to tell me whether that text is from a science book, a history book, or whether it is from a story. Let’s try extending that approach to Obama-speak and Clinton-speak …

Below you’ll see a table of parts of sentences used by Clinton and Obama. Each entry features either you-have-to or we-have-to PLUS the next three words in the sentence. All you have to do is write down whether you think those 6 words (i.e., you have to/we have to + three words) came from Obama or from Clinton.

Write O if you think Obama.

Write C if you think Clinton.

(The answers come later …)

OK … check your answers here …

How did you do?

Let us know what you’re score was by using the comment box … and maybe let us know what led you to your decisions …

And you can see a much larger chunk of where those 6 words came from here …

by PMM and the IIS-WordWatchers

In the political debates prior to the first elections, the most interesting pronoun + verb combination that I have come across is the tri-grams of we have to and you have to. It seems that Obama was very much a we have to person and seldom a you have to person. Clinton was also more of a we have to person but much less so than Obama. Critically, Clinton was also much more of a you have to person than Obama.

If you want to see some figures, some examples of what these phrases occur with, and read some speculation on what these differences might mean, then click the link below … 

We have to … you have to …?

It is often said that you can tell a person’s character by the company the person keeps. In some ways, “words” are pretty similar. The words that tend to occur most frequently with any given word tells you something about the word that you’re looking at. To see how we do this - and to see what the candidates REALLY mean … click the link below …

Your Neighbors Know Who You Are! 

from LM, PMM, and the IIS-WordWatchers

Finally … we have the answer to the question that America has so deeply (not) cared about over the last 4 months … “How different is Clinton’s plan from Obama’s health care plan?”

Using relative semantic analysis (see link to relative semantic analysis) “his plan” and “her plan” have a similarity rating of 0.545. And that’s quite high, semantically speaking …

How high is 0.545? Well, let’s compare it to some other semantic comparisons.

It’s higher than Republicans consider the similarity between the words “the government” and “Washington” (0.513).

It’s higher than Republicans consider the similarity between the words “amnesty” and “illegal immigration” (0.521).

It’s also higher than Democrats consider the similarity between the words “bad idea” and “war in Iraq” (0.388). And, reassuringly, it’s much higher than Democrats consider the similarity between the words “good idea” and “War in Iraq” (0.154).

To learn more about relative semantic similarity, see our link.

from PMM and the IIS-WordWatchers!

The February 26 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama resulted in the two candidates’ talking in very similar ways. As a refresher, speakers are generally thought to be closer to the audience if they use high rates of “I” words, low rates of “we” words, lots of positive emotion and low levels of negative emotion words.

Compared to the Austin debate of last week, Clinton has lost whatever advantage she may have had over Obama within the debate itself. Check out the graphs below. The results are self-explanatory.

Two aspects of these analyses stand out. First, Clinton and Obama are converging on every dimension of language compared to earlier debates. This is an example of Language Style Matching (or LSM) — something that happens when both people are directly talking with and to each other.

Second, both candidates are showing spectacular drops in 1st person singular, 1st person plural, and both positive and negative emotions compared to other debates. As was apparent from the television images, this was a much more sober, less theatrical performance by both candidates.

Given the similarity in the word use of Obama and Clinton in pronouns and emotion words, the WordWatchers team officially concludes that this debate was a tie.

For the last month, the stump speeches for Clinton and Obama have shifted in Obama’s favor.  Most striking have been Obama’s increase in 1st person singular pronouns (I, me, my) — which suggest warmth, honesty, and vulnerability — with corresponding decreases in 1st person plural (we, us, our).  We-words hint at the Royal We where the speaker is distant and perhaps a bit condescending.  Just as Obama was becoming more personal, Clinton was going the other way — fewer I’s and more We’s (see the February 18 post).

Particularly perplexing has been how the two speak in debates.  For the January debates, Clinton has used somewhat fewer “I” words and has been fairly similar to Obama in the We-category.  The February 21 debate in Austin, Texas suggests some interesting shifts in both candidates’ speech patterns. 

As you can see in the first graph, the most recent debate shows that Clinton (in red) has evidenced a large jump in I-words whereas Obama (in blue) has dropped.  Psychologically, this hints that Clinton is showing a more vulnerable and perhaps human side at the same time that Obama is becoming somewhat more formal and less personal.

Use of we words continues to be a bit ambiguous. Clinton is still using we-words at high rates whereas Obama is dropping in them.  As a general rule, the more a politician uses we-words, the less positively he or she is viewed.

Finally, check out the emotional language trends for both candidates.  For the last two debates, Clinton has been far more positive and optimistic than Obama.  Similarly, Clinton is using far fewer negative emotion words.

Indeed, in the debates themselves, Obama has been consistently more negative in his emotional tone that Clinton.  As a general rule, people prefer speakers who use high rates of positive emotion words and low rates of negative emotions words.

In the Linguistic Playoffs, then, we pronounce the Winner of the Texas Democratic Debate to be Hillary Clinton.  Keep in mind that the patterns for the debates aren’t closely matching those of the stump speeches nor the T.V. ads you may be watching.  But if you were absolutely truly uncommitted and had no preconceptions of the candidates and you didn’t listen to the subtance of what they were talking about (oh, and you ignored their tone of voice and what they looked like), we feel that you would agree with our conclusions.

JWP