Bush-Kerry debate (was RE: "sort of" is elitist? (now with data))

[Clai Rice]

A response to another of Arnold's observations:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Arnold M. Zwicky [mailto:zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2004 7:15 PM
> Subject: Fwd: "sort of" is elitist? (now with data)
...
> the other caveat is that social differences often interact with
> contextual differences, so that social values associated with
> linguistic choices may be quite different, even opposite, in different
> contexts.  ... there's a very real
> possibility that the context was/is *not* the same for the two men,
> that they configure the setting and their role in it in
> different ways. ... kerry might, for instance, see his role primarily as a
debater, while bush sees his primarily as a wooer.  ... that would lead
kerry
> towards stressing reason, bush towards stressing emotion and
> affiliation (not an implausible suggestion, given, for
> instance, bush's references to how hard it is to do the job of president,
thus appealing to his audience to identify with him), and it would move
kerry towards the more formal end of the style world, bush towards the
informal and
> colloquial.

I agree that reasoning from any particular usage directly to intention is
unreliable, even when the context appears to be so similar, as with a
debate, because any specific linguistic choice may be multiply motivated.

For example, the two candidates differed absolutely in how they referred to
the September 11th terrorist attacks. Kerry uses the term "9/11" only,
whereas Bush prefers the longer term 'September the eleventh' and never uses
the shorter one:
Kerry:
        king if off to Iraq where the 9/11 Commission confirms there was
        ms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam_Hussein, an
         Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosev
        l in the last two years since 9/11 than we did in the two years
        id in the two years preceding 9/11.
Total tokens = 5

Bush:
                        September the eleventh changed how America must look
        ized that after September the eleventh, we must take threats serious
        e mastermind of the September eleventh attacks, Khalid_Sheik_Mohamme
Total tokens = 3
        (also "That's kind of a pre-September tenth mentality")

One well established principle of discourse studies is that the first
mention of a person or item, a noun phrase, is generally longer than later
mention. This holds up not only within a single discourse, but within groups
of exchanges over time as well. People and events more familiar to us
generally get shorter names (and this is associated with the frequency with
which the person or event is mentioned -- more frequent mention correlates
with shorter names). Thus, Bush's usage strongly suggests that he is
continually defining the term, introducing it as if it were an unknown, not
necessarily part of a shared discourse, and in need of clarification.
Kerry's briefer usage indicates that he assumes people already understand
the event, that it is part of our shared discourse, and thus _not_ in need
of clarification. Kerry, in other words, assumes we already know what the
attacks mean, whereas Bush continues to tell us what they mean, a strategy
that allows him to link the strengths of his personality and choices to the
event in definitional terms. The longer term also harks back to the hours
and days immediately after the event, when a consensus on a name for the
attacks had not yet been established. Using the longer term undoubtedly
evokes the strong emotions we originally associated with the event at that
time to emphasize Bush's active role as protector.

But the usage might also be seen as characteristic of each person's general
approach to emotional events, Kerry intellectualizing it and Bush re-living
it. Or if Kerry has already recognized Bush's rhetorical usage of the term,
he may wish to simply draw a distinction between himself and Bush so as to
be seen as someone who does not dare to co-opt national tragedy for partisan
political purposes. So even when we have a fairly strong empirical base for
inferring the motivation for using one form over another, we can't forget
that motivations are usually multiple and sometimes even conflicting.