President Obama is not egocentric

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The president's words of choice
By Robert Lane Greene, January 30, 2014

Barack Obama uses words like “I” and “me” and “my” all the time. This, at least, is what his critics have claimed for years, arguing that it confirms the president's terrible egocentricity. 

But is it true? Is the president some kind of semantic Pharoah who constantly makes references to himself? The answer is not hard to figure out; it's just a matter of counting words. Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent years combing through the president's speeches to find out if this allegation holds water. Again and again he found that, far from being a pronomial egomaniac, Mr Obama is actually a bit I-shy relative to other presidents.

Alas, people see what they want. This helps to explain why, on the eve of last night’s state-of-the-union address, a New Hampshire public-radio show called "Word of Mouth" asked (via Twitter) how many times Mr Obama would say “make no mistake”. When will the president shed this "verbal tick", the show wondered (perhaps leaving some to worry whether such "ticks" carry lyme disease, adding injury to insult).

But does the president actually favour the phrase "make no mistake"? Taking Mr Liberman’s cue, I did a quick count. Sure enough, Mr Obama said “make no mistake” just once in five state of the union speeches. I tweeted this back to "Word of Mouth", which with good humour replied:

"Have we fallen victim to the power of Pres. Obama impersonations? Make no mistake, we feel shame."

So if President Obama doesn't lean heavily on personal pronouns, and he doesn't use "make no mistake" as a crutch, what are the man's preferred words?

I asked Mr Liberman. According to his "weighted log-odds-ratio, information Dirichlet prior" algorithm, the top words in Mr Obama's state-of-the-union speeches, relative to other presidents include the following:

jobs
businesses
innovation
republicans
kids
college
companies
democrats

But for a so-called "socialist", he is apparently unusually fond of talking about businesses, companies and innovation relative to his peers. (I’ve removed the function-words like pronouns and conjunctions from this analysis, even though they are, counterintuitively, the clearest markers of an individual’s style. I want to focus on content-words for the moment—but the president is more likely to use both I’m and we’re, relative to other presidents. I and me do not make Mr Liberman’s list of Obama’s signature words.)

What words does Mr Obama tend to disfavour, relative to other presidents, in his State of the Union speeches? They include:

peace
programme
federal
freedom
economic
billion
nations
world
free
national
programmes
hope
war
provide
policy

Yes, America. Your proof is in: the president hates freedom. But he also seems to hate peace, programmes, policy, nations, the world, things federal, and even hope!

Does this mean that looking at relative word-frequency is useless? Not at all. Eagle-eyed readers will have seen a “word cloud” graphic on the right of Economist.com pages, showing which topics are being discussed heavily at any moment on this website. And it is fascinating to watch the rise and fall of certain trending words. Some of these are long-term: liberty is in chronic decline relative to freedom. And around the civil war, people began referring to the country as a singular unit, not a plural collection, so the United States is began its triumph over the United States are. Meanwhile, other words rise and fall with the news: Mr Obama mentioned Afghanistan only twice in 2009, when that war was on the back-burner. He mentioned it seven times on Tuesday.

The lesson should be obvious: merely counting up words in a speech (for those who even bother to count, rather than shooting from intuition) is a poor substitute for analysis. I hate kids and love companies will produce the same frequency count as I hate companies and love kids. A president who says I am not going to address this issue because I consider this Congress’s prerogative, not mine is deferring on an issue—but the three first-person pronouns (in a context-blind count) will make him seem an egomaniac.

So by all means, analyse politicians’ language: but first, make sure you have the numbers, and second, compare them to a reference group (eg, what other presidents have said during their state-of-the-union speeches). Then you will have a real handle on what words a president actually does lean on. But if you are going to tie any political analysis to the linguistic one, you must go one step further and consider how they are actually being used. Context is king.
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