Trump's grammar in speeches 'just below 6th grade level,' study finds

[brooklynite]

Alaska Dispatch News:

Eloquence is a trait valued by debate team coaches, but not necessarily needed for the White House. Though their supporters will always defend them, George Washington and George W. Bush are just two of many presidents considered poor public speakers - and there are many commanders-in-chief in the two centuries between them who were not necessarily golden-tongued.

Now, an academic paper has put some presidents and political candidates' language on trial. "A Readability Analysis of Campaign Speeches from the 2016 US Presidential Campaign," released this week by Carnegie Mellon University, analyzed stump speeches to measure their "readability" - the reading level of an address, ranked from first grade to 12th grade. And, according to a summary from the university, the study found "most candidates using words and grammar typical of students in grades 6-8, though Donald Trump tends to lag behind the others."

The story was more complicated than "Donald Trump can't talk good," however. First, the researchers needed a way to measure readability.

"It is based on the observation that some words (and grammatical structures) appear with greater frequency at one grade level than another," Maxine Eskenazi, a scientist in the university's Language Technologies Institute, and Elliot Schumacher, a graduate student, wrote. "For example, we would expect that we could see the word 'win' fairly frequently in third grade documents while the word 'successful' would be more frequent in, say, seventh grade documents. We would not see dependent clauses very often at the second grade level whereas they would be quite frequent at the seventh grade level."

[3catwoman3]

1. "...grammar...just below 6th grade level."

Fit right in with his immature, crude and repetitious delivery style. He doesn't give speeches. He bellows and rants.

For someone who went to "the best schools," he is really low class.

[former9thward]

2. Why is the link silent on the grade levels of Clinton and Sanders?

[Fantastic Anarchist]

8. It does mention Sanders:

"The candidates' speeches mostly went from seventh grade level for Donald Trump to tenth grade level for Bernie Sanders."

[eleny]

3. Like Hannity's books...

... that level is chosen on purpose, I suppose.

[flamingdem]

4. Isstrue - he's always saying this

isstrue, isstrue.

He sounds like an idiot when he speaks, really.

[Denzil_DC]

5. Duckspeak.

What was required, above all for political purposes, was short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum of echoes in the speaker’s mind. The words of the B vocabulary even gained in force from the fact that nearly all of them were very much alike. Almost invariably these words — goodthink, Minipax, prolefeed, sexcrime, joycamp, Ingsoc, bellyfeel, thinkpol, and countless others — were words of two or three syllables, with the stress distributed equally between the first syllable and the last. The use of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech, at once staccato and monotonous. And this was exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgement should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets. His training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost foolproof instrument, and the texture of the words, with their harsh sound and a certain wilful ugliness which was in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still further.

So did the fact of having very few words to choose from. Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning "to quack like a duck". Like various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment.

Orwell, Appendix to 1984

[Wounded Bear]

6. He raised it?

Last I heard he was at about a 4th grade level.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

7. He's making sure his base understands him. nt