Why do politicians talk like that?

Flora Lichtman (0:02)

Hey, it's Flora, and you're listening to Science Friday.

With the midterms approaching in less than a month, politicians are out in full force trying to convince voters to elect them. And that means that we are hearing a lot of this. All right.

SPEAKER_2 (0:21)

I know this crowd loves freedom. Everywhere I went, people told me the same thing.

SPEAKER_3 (0:25)

It just shouldn't be this hard.

Valerie Fridland (0:27)

Shouldn't be this hard to afford a second bag of groceries. You see, Georgia is where I built my business. It's where I raised my family. It's where I learned the hard lessons that helped me to deliver every day in Washington.

SPEAKER_2 (0:39)

I'll go into the Lions Den because I know what I believe.

Flora Lichtman (0:44)

Politicians speak. I know you know it when you hear it. It's those folksy turns of phrase, the vague promises. But what do linguists have to say about this vocal register? Has politicians speak changed over time? Does how someone pronounce their A's signal something about their values?

Here to help us decode politicians speak is Dr. Valerie Fridland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno. Welcome back, Valerie.

Valerie Fridland (1:16)

Oh, thank you. So excited to be here because there's just so much to talk about. It's where to start, not what to say.

Flora Lichtman (1:22)

Absolutely. And so glad to have you back. I mean, last time we had you on, we asked you about Sports Announcer Register. Is there a political register?

Valerie Fridland (1:34)

I think everybody knows the answer to that, and we're hearing a lot of it these days. Absolutely. And in fact, I think there's not just a political register that defines more general political speak. There's actually a partisan register that even defines the way Democrats versus Republicans speak.

Flora Lichtman (1:52)

Well, let's get into the details. First of all, just the broad political register, what characterizes it in terms of cadence or sentence structure or word choice?

Valerie Fridland (2:05)

Well, word choice is obviously very, very important because messaging is so important. And so there's a lot of repetition, right? Especially as you get closer to elections, we find that actually the register shifts slightly, where you might get into more complex explanations of issues earlier in a campaign or when there's really election looming. As you get closer to elections, the messaging gets shorter, it gets simpler, it's more direct, it gets more emotional in tone. So it's sort of trying to drive up and galvanize the people that need to get out there and vote. And certainly, I think what we're hearing a lot of in this election cycle, particularly over the Republican Party, this cycle is things about radical beliefs and extremism and socialism and communism. And then on the flip side, it's really the Democrats homing in on the affordability issues. So we're hearing a lot about that food, gas prices, housing. So the words change, but the sort of repetition and driving home of whatever the talking points for that election cycle doesn't.

Flora Lichtman (3:07)

But I mean, even on things like affordability, sometimes the words change, but often they don't. I feel like there are these stock phrases like money in your pocket. But like, why is it always money in your pocket or bag of groceries? You know, they're these, they just feel like cliches, like verbal tics almost.

Valerie Fridland (3:28)

Well, they're cliches, but they're also highly relatable. And one thing that we've seen that has really been driven home to both Republican and Democratic candidates is that they have to be relatable, authentic and believable. And that's actually changed over time. So since the 90s, we really see this bigger attention paid to making sure that they come across as honest, relatable sort of storytellers instead of elitist, you know, sage on the stage kinds of people. And what's been fascinating is the trends in the last century in terms of what's happening with that kind of language. We have a lot of both written and orally recorded evidence from presidential state of the union addresses and inaugural speeches, but also we have hundreds of thousands of data points from congressional speeches over the last 140 years. So I think it's starting in maybe 1873 We have congressional speeches so we can analyze that. And a lot of data scientists have done exactly that. One key finding is it's becoming simpler.

It's becoming less complex. But the basic thing we're finding is that we are becoming more about relatable politicians and less about politicians that debate the issues themselves and come up with a lot of empirical evidence to support their arguments.