Study: Presidential Candidates Speaking At 6-8th Grade Level
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – As the Presidential campaign continues, candidates are using simpler language in their speeches and campaigns.
The analysis was conducted by Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute.
Researchers say the candidates are using words and grammar typical of students in the 6-8 grade level, though Donald Trump lags behind the others.
Five Presidential candidates were compared: Republicans Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, as well as Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
CMU says a comparison of the candidates with previous presidents show President Lincoln outpacing them all, boasting grammar at the 11th grade level, while President George W. Bush's 5th grade grammar was below even that of Trump.
In a release CMU researchers say: "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," said 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."
Researchers also compared the candidates with previous presidents, they found President Lincoln outpacing them all, boasting grammar at the 11th grade level.
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Based on vocabulary, campaign trail speeches by past and present presidents – Lincoln, Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama – were at least on the 8th grade level, while the current candidates ranged from Trump's 7th grade level to Sanders' 10th grade level. Trump and Hillary Clinton's speeches showed the greatest variation, suggesting they may work harder than the others in tailoring speeches to particular audiences, Schumacher said.