ABSTRACT

Televised U.S. presidential debates are the most-watched, if not the most-researched, political events in history. While prior studies have largely focused on general election contests, this longitudinal content analysis used DICTION software to parse the effects of election level, partisanship, and time on the candidates’ word choices or verbal styles in 35 general and 121 primary election debates. The results indicate that general election debate rhetoric contained significantly more optimism and certainty than primary debate rhetoric. Additionally, the rhetorical cleavage between the parties was located in the primary debates where the Democratic candidates used significantly more rhetorical realism, activity, and commonality than Republican candidates who used more rhetorical certainty. Further, we also found significantly less rhetorical certainty in the 2010s and the 2020 general election debate rhetoric than in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, we found interaction effects on optimism and realism that also supported our propositions that U.S. presidential candidates’ rhetoric is meaningful at the semantic level, and that their verbal styles may reveal informative perspectives on the speakers and their speech acts.

摘要

电视转播的美国总统辩论是历史上观看次数最多、研究最多的政治事件。虽然之前的研究主要集中在大选竞赛上，但这种纵向内容分析使用 DICTION 软件来解析选举级别、党派偏见和时间对 35 场大选和 121 场初选辩论中候选人选词或口头风格的影响。结果表明，大选辩论的修辞比初选辩论的修辞包含更多的乐观和确定性。此外，政党之间的修辞分歧位于主要辩论中，民主党候选人使用的修辞现实主义、活动性和共性明显高于使用更多修辞确定性的共和党候选人。更远，我们还发现，与 1960 年代和 1970 年代相比，2010 年代和 2020 年大选辩论的修辞确定性要低得多。最后，我们发现乐观主义和现实主义的交互作用也支持我们的主张，即美国总统候选人的修辞在语义层面上是有意义的，并且他们的语言风格可能会揭示关于演讲者及其演讲行为的信息观点。