Sixteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The words people use to express their ideas and interests can reveal important aspects of their social and psychological orientations, and text analysis allows researchers to reliably and quickly assess features of what people say. In this exploratory study, we investigate the question of whether there are significant differences in the linguistic styles that Democrat and Republican presidents use to express themselves and their concerns in their speeches and whether these have changed over time. We specifically look at their State of the Union speeches, analyzing the last 60 years of speechmaking based on party affiliation and across time. Our findings show significant differences between Republican and Democratic presidents. Republicans use more language indicating analytical thought, language associated with affective and morality while democrats use more language indicating cognitive processes, language oriented to the present, and work. Analyses show that Republican presidents have increased their use of analytic language, moral language and emotional language over time, while their language indicating cognitive processes has decreased. In contrast, Democrats have decreased their use of analytic language and emotional language, and have increased their use of language indicating cognitive processes, language oriented to the present, and work over time. The implications of these findings and limitations of the present study are explored.