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The technique is working quite well for Donald Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/15/how-trump-speak-has-pushed-the-donald-into-first
by AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
The technique is working quite well for Donald Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/15/how-trump-speak-has-pushed-the-donald-into-first-place/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/15/ho...
> Some of his answers last only a few seconds, some are slightly longer, but almost all consist of simple sentences, grammatically and conceptually, and most of them withhold their most important word or phrase until the very end. Trump’s sentences end with a pop, and he seems to know instinctively where to put the emphasis in each one.
- consum3dbyfire 11y agoLooks like the creator picked up on that, as well: https://medium.com/@mortenjust/i-doomed-mankind-with-a-free-text-editor-ba6003319681#.d80lnwnac https://medium.com/@mortenjust/i-doomed-mankind-with-a-free-...
- Semiapies 11y agoI'd say anyone who says he's made a language/special vocabulary/style guide/editor that "makes it hard to write bullshit" really hasn't picked up on that.
- matwood 11y agoSounds tremendous!
- gertef 11y agoTrump does not limit himself to anything like the most common 1000 worrds
- briandear 11y agoProbably just the top 25.
- phaedryx 11y agohttp://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/10/20/donald-trump-and-ben-carson-speak-grade-school-level-that-today-voters-can-quickly-grasp/LUCBY6uwQAxiLvvXbVTSUN/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/10/20/donald-t... He does use very simple words.
- Munksgaard 11y agoHe has the best words!
- j_koreth 11y agoThis also ignores also that most Democratic presidents spoke on the same level
- m741 11y agoThe article literally has a chart showing that the current candidates are all speaking at a higher level, and that the remaining candidates, Democrat and Republican, are speaking at 8th 9th, and 10th grade levels. Of the current cohort of candidates only Kasich is near Trump. If you're talking about presidents (which is unfair, the type of speech you give as president vs candidate, and debates are different), it's clear that although the trend was downward, for the past few presidents the average level was about 8th grade: http://www.vocativ.com/interactive/usa/us-politics/presidential-readability/ http://www.vocativ.com/interactive/usa/us-politics/president... Trump speaks at a 4th grade level. Probably intentionally.
- mrrrgn 11y agoI hope that they normalized the data to account for the number of words spoken during each debate, rally, etc... This is important because of Zipf's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law If they didn't, the findings are invalid.
- manachar 11y agoI'm with Orwell on this one. Whether by design or "happy" accident, Trump exemplifies the trend for politicians to be vague. Or as he puts it, speaking like this "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langu...
- escherize 11y agoIs this the syllogism? Trump uses political language political language makes murder respectable ------ Trump makes murder respectable Why focus on Trump then? Care to name a politician who's not using political language? That seems to be an oxymoron. Trump was against the Iraq War, probably the biggest killing event of the last xxx years.
- manachar 11y agoNo, this wasn't intended to slyly indicate that "Trump makes murder respectable". Were I to make that bold accusation I'd want to debate that on another forum than HN and base it on things Trump has actually stated. Regardless of politics, Trump has a very idiosyncratic approach to speaking. His mastery of this approach reminds me strongly of the Orwell essay linked above. I've no desire to debate Trumps policies on HN, but find his approach to speaking quite interesting.
- escherize 11y agoThanks for clarifying. I do agree that his speaking style is different and interesting.
- SixSigma 11y ago“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Trump said. So in a way, yes, he has made murder respectable. The previous two POTUS' made murder respectable by using remote controlled flying bombs.
- gnaritas 11y agoHe speaks like a child, it works because his base is stupid and they relate. It's not a skill, he just isn't that bright.
- escherize 11y agoDude, that's not an argument - that's a whole bunch of ad hominems. Could you bring an argument against Trump at least instead of literally smearing him and his supporters? The guy is acknowledged to have won (basically) every republican debate.. would you suggest a child can do that?
- gnaritas 11y ago> Dude, that's not an argument - that's a whole bunch of ad hominems. You don't know what an ad hominem is. Those were called insults, insults are not ad hominems. > The guy is acknowledged to have won (basically) every republican debate.. would you suggest a child can do that? Yes actually, a decently intelligent high school child could win against that pack of dim bulbs. Republican debates are a joke won by whichever person throws enough red meat to the crowd and insults the other guy the best; they're an embarrassment to even watch.
- recursive 11y agoYou might be surprised. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rksd80-FCAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rksd80-FCAw
- jshevek 11y agoIf Trump honestly believed everything that he says, I would agree that his thinking would necessarily be shockingly _shallow_ on many issues. But to compare him to a four year old then make a sweeping statement like "isn't that bright" ? How could anyone think this? Isn't it obvious that there are domains in which he is, for better or worse, exceptionally intelligent within that domain?
- MaysonL 11y agoThe trouble is, of course, that those domains (persuasion, intimidation, and braggadocio) do not include those necessary to competently be POTUS.
- okyup 11y agoTrump bashing is lame. Trump has used words in his speeches that you probably couldn't define. I heard him casually use PROGNOSTICATION a couple weeks ago. He's not dumb. It's actually a sign of intelligence to use the simplest language necessary when expressing yourself to a broad audience (many with low education). People who use unnecessarily large words are usually doing it to try to sound smarter than they are and to build up their own egos.
- relaytheurgency 11y agoAh yes, prognostication. Such a rare word that it's only uttered multiple times in one of the most popular Bill Murray movies made which is guaranteed to be on TV at least once a year. Seriously, that's not even nearly one of the best words.
- okyup 11y agoMaybe you should start the Thesaurus Party and run in the next election. I'm sure voters would swiftly capitulate to the erudition of your insuperable sesquipedalian fulminations. None of those pathetic made-for-TV words that Trump has bedizened his 8th grader lexicon with.
- rorykoehler 11y agoAt what point does a word's existence become invalid? Searching for 'sesquipedalian' brings up pages upon pages of dictionary links on Google. Clearly this word exists only in dictionaries and is so rarely used as to be almost imaginary by those who use it. To put it another way, if it wasn't in the dictionary would it exist at all?
- Spivak 11y agoYes because an English dictionary is a historical record of how English speakers and writers use words and phrases making no judgement as to their 'correctness' or whether an audience of current English speakers would understand you were you to use them. The purpose of a dictionary is to aid you in understanding the meaning any English speaker or writer is trying to convey independent of the time period or location, not to dictate valid and invalid words. Some words might be dropped from abridged dictionaries when they fall out of popularity but in 'The English Dictionary' (which doesn't really exist but is approximated by dictionaries like Oxford's) words are added but never removed. This is different, than say, the mission of L'Académie française which is to act as a language regulator and maintain the official vocabulary and grammar of French.
- Spooky23 11y agoIt's hardly unique to Trump. Politicians have labored to eloquently say as little as possible since the Assyrians.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoAssyrian kings had a lot to say. You could expect to hear about their illustrious ancestors going several generations back, and their many military and domestic accomplishments (like irrigation projects). Not so much about what they wanted to do in the future. They didn't stand for elections.
- sametmax 11y agoIt's because he doesn't aim to actually solve problems or provide meaningful answers. Simples words are good if your goal is to be rally a large number of people. But it's not practical if you want to build a car, honestly debate about social issues or describe how un cell works. What a lot of smart people don't understand though, is that in politics, not trying to solve problems, but trying to appeal to people is the goal. And you don't use the same tools at all for that.
- kbenson 11y agoI think it works well for high level overviews. This may be in part because it prevents the use domain knowledge and terminology, which is natural for an expert who might be writing the overview, but hard for a layman to grasp. Put more simply, I think it's useful to describe something generally, but not when trying to describe in detail or specify attributes exactly.
- sametmax 11y agoExactly.