Hooked With Phonetics: The Strategic Use of Style-Shifting in Political Rhetoric

• In Event: Measuring Populism and Its Impacts

Abstract

In the pursuit of their electoral and representational goals, politicians serve the needs of multiple constituencies and address each according to its own preferences. To convince their constituents that they are alike to them, and therefore will act in their interests, politicians project likeness through the way they talk: When speaking to an audience of ordinary citizens, a politician will play the average Joe; when addressing a congressional committee, they will demonstrate sophistication and competence. Furthermore, there is an expected effect of topic: when discussing matters of state, politicians assume a more dignified manner of speech, whereas topics such as unemployment, health care or crime, which affect most voters more directly, will lead to more colloquial speech. Hence, political speakers shift their style according to both the audience and the topic. I test these hypotheses using audio data from congressional and campaign speeches of U.S. senators. I extract the acoustic properties of the audio signal and measure vowel space density, a concept developed in phonetics, which is used to measure the degree of articulation in speech. Armed with this measure, I show that politicians do indeed adjust their articulation to fit both the needs of their audience as well as the topic of the speech.

Author

• Markus Neumann, Pennsylvania State University