Parsing the State of the Union
December 7, 2005 7:11 AM   Subscribe

Compare the incidence of words in current and historical State of the Union Addresses. Other good stuff at style.org includes Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow. [via information aesthetics]
posted by Armitage Shanks (6 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: posted previously



 


Parsing tools previously linked (Feb 05). The Swallow Report also previously linked (Nov 03). Neither have changed in the meantime, so I feel justified flagging as dupe.
posted by Plutor at 7:39 AM on December 7, 2005


Damn. Searching for "style.org" only showed a comment from 2003. Ah well.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 8:03 AM on December 7, 2005


The inference is clear: stupider presidents* invoke freedom more and the ideal prez is one of who doesn't even use the 'f' word.

*Unless of course you're one of those revisionist twits who believes Ronnie was in fact a man of "great and subtle" intelligence.
posted by rhymer at 8:03 AM on December 7, 2005


"doubt" has gone out of style. And strangely enough, monkey, pancake and bunnies are never mentioned...
posted by blue_beetle at 8:31 AM on December 7, 2005


I have looked with some interest at the analysis of the speeches given by various presidents and find that nothing can be said about any of this other than the fact that there are differences. We might say, for example, that for ease of reading, the short sentences patterns appeal to the eaase of reading people. On the other hand, the styles of writing--short sentences and paragraphs--have evolved since Washington's time. Edmond Wilson in Patriotic Gore claims that Lincoln and Grand and Twain gave us a new writing style--short sentences--that replaced the more baroque styles preceding their writing, and, further, that this change was directly due to the use of the telegraph during the Civil War.
posted by Postroad at 8:44 AM on December 7, 2005


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