Candidates Talk to Us at a 6th to 8th Grade Level, Except Trump (5th Grade)

Pretty depressing.

We all know that many Americans are at a 5th grade level when it comes to education and knowing what's going on in the country.  But did you know that the presidential candidates speak at a 6th-to-8th grade level?

A readability analysis of presidential candidate speeches by researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute (LTI) finds most candidates using words and grammar typical of students in grades 6-8, though Donald Trump tends to lag behind the others (big surprise), according to newswise.com.

A historical review of their word and grammar use suggests all five candidates in the analysis - Republicans Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio (who has since suspended his campaign), and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders - have been using simpler language as the campaigns have progressed. Again, Trump is an outlier, with his grammar use spiking in his Iowa Caucus concession speech and his word and grammar use plummeting again during his Nevada Caucus victory speech.

I wonder where the size of the hands thing comes in.

A comparison of the candidates with previous presidents show President Lincoln outpacing them all, boasting grammar at the 11th grade level, while -- again, no surprise -- President George W. Bush's 5th grade grammar was below even that of Trump.

"Assessing the readability of campaign speeches is a little tricky because most measures are geared to the written word, yet text is very different from the spoken word," says Maxine Eskenazi, LTI principal systems scientist who performed the analysis with Elliot Schumacher, a graduate student in language technologies. "When we speak, we usually use less structured language with shorter sentences."

An earlier analysis by the Boston Globe used the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, which is based on average sentence length and average number of syllables per word, and found Trump speaking at a 4th grade level, two grade levels below his peers. The study used a readability model called REAP, which looks at how often words and grammatical constructs are used at each grade level and thus corresponds better to analysis of spoken language.

So I guess none of this is a great surprise.  But it's pretty depressing.
















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don't Wash Your Chicken and Other Food Safety Myths

I remember when I first heard this.  Don't wash your chicken , before you cook it?  I ignored it.  But over time, I began to realize it's true.  Washing it spreads deadly (or at least sick-making) bacteria.  Really. “You should assume that if you have chicken, you have either Salmonella or Campylobacter bacteria on it, if not both,”Dr. Jennifer Quinlan, an associate professor at Drexel University, told newswise.com.  These two bacteria, she noted, are the leading causes of food-borne illness. “If you wash it, you’re more likely to spray bacteria all over the kitchen and yourself," she said. And the rinse water you've been using? It's not hot enough to kill bacteria anyway. Washing raw poultry was a common unsafe practice in all the groups she studied for a documentary on safe cooking conditions, with some minor cultural differences in the method of washing. People are very attached to the idea of washing raw poultry, she told newswise.com. “Some think they’re
Read more

Take Herbal Supplements? Even Green Tea Extract Can Lead to Liver Damage

Take herbal supplements? You might want to listen up. A new study is warning that new information is showing that some supplements may damage the liver, along with over the counter drugs and even those prescribed by physicians, according to newswise.com. The rate of drug-induced liver injury (DILI), a rare adverse drug reaction which is challenging to diagnose -- and which can lead to jaundice, liver failure and even death -- is increasing more and more.  Experts put it down to the overwhelming use of herbal supplements and other drugs in the last 10 years.  “A lot of consumers have a preconceived notion that if it’s a natural product, it must be safe. But that is not necessarily the case,” the Web site quotes Herbert Bonkovsky, MD, FACG, co-author of the guidelines. “Most of these products are not well-regulated and have very little oversight. Traces of heavy metals and prescription drugs have even been found in some herbal and dietary supplements. We encourage patients to
Read more

Need the ER? Pray Your Doc Plays Video Games

We're all so used to picking on our kids for playing video games but the next time he's in the ER, you just might be happy that doctors do it, too. According to new research, video games improve doctors' recognition and triage of severe trauma patients, newswise.com reports. Playing an adventure video game featuring a fictitious, young emergency physician treating severe trauma patients was better than text-based learning at priming real doctors to quickly recognize the patients who needed higher levels of care, according to a new trial led by the  University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine .  The results held, even though doctors assigned to the game enjoyed it less than those assigned to traditional, text-based education. This indicates that if game enjoyment can be improved, the already favorable results might be enhanced, the web site notes.  “Physicians must make decisions quickly and with incomplete information. Each year, 30,000 preventable deaths occur
Read more