Abstract
Intercorrelations among stylistic and emotional variables and constructvalidity deduced from relationships to other ratings of U.S. presidentssuggest that power language (language that is linguistically simple,emotionally evocative, highly imaged, and rich in references to Americanvalues) is an important descriptor of inaugural addresses. Attempts topredict the use of power language in inaugural addresses from variablesrepresenting the times (year, media, economic factors) and the man(presidential personality) lead to the conclusion that time-basedfactors are the best predictors of the use of such language (81%prediction of variance in the criterion) while presidential personalityadds at most a small amount of prediction to the model. Changes in powerlanguage are discussed as the outcome of a tendency to opt for breadthof communication over depth.
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Whissell, C., Sigelman, L. The Times and the Man as Predictors of Emotion and Style in the Inaugural Addresses of U.S. Presidents. Computers and the Humanities 35, 255–272 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017569003556
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017569003556