The Exceptional Electoral Style of Barack Obama
Year: 2009
Type: preprint
Abstract: This study reports certain lexical patterns produced during the general election of Campaign 2008 by presidential candidate Barack Obama, with contrasting data also presented about Senator John McCain. As such, it continues a series of tracings begun a dozen years ago under the rubric of the Campaign Mapping Project (Hart, 2002). This is largely a descriptive project employing computerized language analysis, making specific use of the DICTION 5.0 program. We examine some 700 speech passages delivered during the primaries of 2007 and the general election of 2008 and compare them to around 4,000 passages from the 1948 through 2004 presidential campaigns. Overall, we find that popular understanding of the Obama Style – that he is fiery, poetic, optimistic, and grandiloquent – to be wrong. Instead, we find Obama to be cautious, grounded, and highly focused. McCain, in contrast, was personal in style, quite partisan (as are most losing presidential candidates), and highly embellished. Obama’s “cool” style differed dramatically from McCain’s “emotional” style, thereby providing both a political and rhetorical contrast for voters during the 2008 campaign.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Authors: Roderick P. Hart, Colene J. Lind
Institution: The University of Texas at Austin
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1624926867