Washington Post columnist Richard Morin highlights a University of Texas research project on candidate speech patterns which may help explain why the 2004 presidential contest turned out the way it did.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin collected transcripts of 271 televised interviews, news conferences, town hall meetings and candidate debates conducted in 2004. The speech samples -- more than 400,000 words in all -- were run through a computer text-analysis program. The team included lead author Richard B. Slatcher, a doctoral candidate in psychology, and professor James W. Pennebaker.

....they rated each candidate's use of language along six dimensions: cognitive complexity (marked by sophisticated sentence structure and word choice); femininity (use of words and speech patterns favored by women); depression (use of words that are markers for depression or known "indicators of suicidality"); age (preference for words favored by young or old people); presidentiality (speech patterns and frequently occurring words favored by presidents since FDR in their speeches); and honesty (based on analyses of samples of truthful and deceptive language).

Cheney easily sounded the smartest of the four, while Edwards and Bush favored the least sophisticated language patterns, Slatcher and his colleagues report in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Research in Personality. When it came to sounding presidential, both Bush and his running mate scored considerably higher than Kerry or Edwards....The vice president sounded the most honest of the four, and Kerry the least. Kerry's language also was most like that of a depressed person, followed by Edwards. Perhaps that's inevitable; after all, challengers must sound gloomy and doomy about their opponents' records, though in doing so they run clear risks. "Voters are most favorable toward those candidates who are the most optimistic," Slatcher said. "The depressive language that Kerry and Edwards used during the campaign may have contributed negatively to the way in which they were perceived by the public."

Kerry sounded the least honest of the four because he was; a problem even his own advisors acknowledged. Hillary has already faced similar critiques, for the way she has danced around Iraq. Whomever gains the Democratic nomination in '08 had better box up the bummer vibes. Paramount will be conveying strength and conviction on national security, always a challenge for the erstwhile champions of "punitive liberalism."

TECHNORATI TAGS: GEORGE W. BUSH, DICK CHENEY, PRESIDENTIAL, JOHN KERRY, DISHONEST, DEPRESSED, JOHN EDWARDS, FEMININITY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN, CANDIDATE SPEECH PATTERNS, PUNITIVE LIBERALISM

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at April 4, 2006 01:12 PM