WordWatchers offers an extensive and articulate linguistic analysis of the speech of the two US presidential candidates here: The Meaning of Words: Obama versus McCain.
I would have liked to see more about prescriptives. It appears that McCain (and Palin, as described in other posts on the site) both use "should" more the Obama and Biden, but WordWatchers ascribes this to "more social thinking", which I don't entirely understand.
Perhaps we can do a similar analysis on these speeches looking for prescriptives and rigid vs flexible word choice, etc.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
A Story for Our Times about Cognitive Accuracy
When you hear a political candidate label himself, you might wonder what purpose he has in mind, and whether he has done what you think would qualify him for that label.
John Schwartz of the New York Times has a history lesson for Senator McCain which makes a solid case for the claim that the senator does not practice cognitive accuracy when it comes to self-labeling.
John Schwartz of the New York Times has a history lesson for Senator McCain which makes a solid case for the claim that the senator does not practice cognitive accuracy when it comes to self-labeling.
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