Wanna Win in November? Copy Your Opponent
I don't know about you but I have no intention of watching the debate tonight (I have my son's Open House at school so I have a ready-made excuse, if anyone asks). But I've just had enough of all the hatred and spewing of vitriol and I can't wait for it all to be over. Now a new study is saying that a linguistics trick could boost poll numbers. A study of U.S. presidential debates between 1976 and 2012 found that matching certain aspects of an opponent's language can lead to a bump in the polls, according to newswise.com. "Linguistic style matching," says a University of Michigan professor who led the study, has nothing to do with tone, cadence or the number of times one candidate interrupts the other. Nor is it about content—the nouns and regular verbs that make up "what" a speaker says. It's much more subtle. Linguistic-style-matching zeroes in on so-called function words that reflect how a speaker is making a point. It ...