Language
Readability
Talking down to America
Jan 27th 2012, 19:33 by E.G. | AUSTIN
THOSE of you who have the luck or judgment to ignore the endless stream of non sequiturs surrounding America's 2012 presidential election may have missed an unusual line of comment about Barack Obama's annual State of the Union speech, which he delivered on Tuesday. It started with this post from Eric Ostermeier, at the University of Minnesota's "Smart Politics" web site:
A Smart Politics study of the 70 orally delivered State of the Union Addresses since 1934 finds the text of Obama's 2012 speech to have tallied the third lowest score on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, at an 8.4 grade level.
Bolding and italics his. The president, Mr Ostermeier noted, had promised to keep his message simple. "But was it too simplistic?" he asked. Some of Mr Obama's critics seem to say yes. Here's a typical harrumph: "There's talking down to people, and then, there's condescending." "Knowing our media elite, they would process this information and then praise Obama for talking down to the people," concludes another. One woman put Mitch Daniels' response speech to the same test and found that he ranked at a 14th-grade level. "Governor Daniels was speaking to us as adults!" she says.
It's impossible to tell whether this dudgeon is highly shared—to be fair, it doesn't seem to have gotten that much traction—but this sort of critique isn't exactly new. For several years Mr Obama has been repeatedly attacked, from the right, for not being as intelligent as Democrats would have people believe. To be more precise, there are a lot of people who angrily object to the idea that Mr Obama might be reasonably good with words. They're appalled that he uses a TelePrompter. Every time he misspeaks, they pounce. In some cases...well, let's hear it from one of them: "The public is asked to believe Obama wrote Dreams From My Father on his own, almost as though he were some sort of literary idiot savant." This latest line of attack is more of the same. The question of why some of Mr Obama's critics are so fixated on his rhetorical skills is one for Democracy in America.
But as this is the language blog, let's take the complaint at face value. Mr Obama's speech was relatively simple, more simple than most State of the Union addresses. However, there's no normative weight to the Flesch-Kincaid grade level. The score is a function of how long the sentences are and how many syllables the words have. It's a weak proxy for accessibility, not substance or value. I just tested a couple of recent articles in The Economist—which I hope we can all agree is a reasonably well-written publication—and found grade levels of 10.3, 10.6, and 10.8. George Orwell's "Why I Write": 9.5. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": 7.4, suggesting that the Fleisch-Kincaid formula isn't that sensitive to context. In any case, such comparisons are a little silly; no one judges political speeches on their syntactic complexity. (Reagan's address to the nation after the Challenger disaster: 5.7.)
No one, that is, except Mr Obama's critics. It's notably that he's also caught flak for speaking at too high of a grade level; after his speech on the BP oil spill registered a 9.8, he was dinged for being too "professorial." As my colleague noted then, the Flesch-Kincaid score is a "mindless bit of math," insensitive to meaning or intention. If anyone is condescending to the voters here, it's probably Mr Ostermeier, who suggests in his post that the president should speak to Congress at a higher level than the people. As for the voters themselves, the silver lining of this little flap is that it evinces such a high demand for advanced literacy that Mr Obama's bold proposal to ensure that more kids graduate from high school might get some traction.
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Dumbing down in the US seems to keep going on...
Mr. Obama is not a professional of Lexis and structure grammar, but lawyer. I wonder how many of us here on the Economics page will be gratified by the result of "hand writing testing" of opinions which will eventually serve as the basis of testing or judging our intellectual capacity. To be a lawyer is to be learned also but we know that many lawyers don't like mathematics but does that mean that they cannot understand how figures works such as multiply 2 by 5 or divide 50 by 5 to know the result.
Goldilocks.
This is true of so much criticism of Obama. He's too hot, too cold, but some Republican, any Republican, is just right.
When leaders communicate, it's the quality of the message that's important. Does it makes sense? Does it move us to rethink a situation or better yet, move us to action? Is the message authentic, i.e., in the true voice of the speaker? Those are the questions we should ask of a SOU or any other executive speech. NOT, whether the speaker is using compound-complex sentences at a 12.0 grade level. Loraine Antrim
While reading this post I happened upon a new word "envinces". I looked it up on a dictionary website, most enlightening, and this quote came up too:
"He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it."
I was wondering what score the above has, and what exatly it means. I think I can infer the meaning roughly but for my tastes there's far too many its in it!
Could anyone spell it out in 5.7 language for me?
"People who pretend to understand other people obviously don't have a clue. Admitting you don't know is much better. God only knows how to make sense of any of it."
So simply put.
Do you think he meant "god only knows" or "only god knows"?!
Cheers
A Smart Politics study of the 70 orally delivered State of the Union Addresses since 1934 finds the text of Obama's 2012 speech to have tallied the third lowest score on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, at an 8.4 grade level.
hmm, doesnt a lower grade level -increase- readibility by making content more accessible? Perhaps the speech writers were taking the ADA into account...
So tired of this crap..........
Both the greatest ideas and the most trivial of platitudes can be expressed in the shortest sentences.
Long and complex sentences with mulch-syllable words are only necessary when one wishes to impress a college professor. In fact, when a politician uses such trickery, he is only trying to confuse the issue and the voter.
Oops! Can't edit the misspelling. Sorry.
So. You were trying for "brevity is the soul of wit"?
Exactly.
"why some of Mr Obama's critics are so fixated on his rhetorical skills is one for Democracy in America"
-----------------------------------------------------
I'd say that they are no more fixated than president' Bush's critics. Less so, in fact, as Mr Bush was never sold as an intellectual as was Mr Obama.
And I agree with you that discussing the simplicity of his speech is silly. Substance is what matters: on that front, Mr Obama appears to have a grasp of Economics of a 2nd grader. Intellectual honesty would also be a valid criteria and there Mr Obama is found wanting as well. He used a line from Lincoln ("government should only do what people cannot do by themselves") which appears to be the antithesis of the way he runs his Administration.
But this is just another attack which pretends to have standards, yet is just a negative opinion. What was George W Bush's grasp of Economics? Ronald Reagan's?
HIS SIMPLICITY IS THE BEST STRATEGY NEEDED FOR A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS THAT IS FILLED WITH MEDIOCRITY.
WRITING IN ALL CAPS MEANS I'M RIGHT.
Correct, but was President Obama's speech written in ALL CAPS?
Wingdings.
Again, presumably, for the benefit of Congress?
The grade level (according to Word) for Johnson's article is 9.9 with an ease of 55.1. By way of comparison Churchil's "We shall fight on the beaches..." speech has a grade of 12.6 and ease of 58.2 and was addressing not just the house but the world population.
Not that you can compare a State of the Union speech to one of the most pivotal oratories in history, but I did anyways.
Oh, good grief! I would rather hear Obama give a simplified message at an 8th grade level than listen to some of these recent debates that showed no mastery of 8th grade civics or geography.
I would encourage Obama to keep at it, as part of an overall effort toward transparency in government. Let's see what the OMB and IRS can say at an 8th grade level.
I ran the same test against the Republican response... it was at a lightly higher grade level, but only slightly. This isn't a bad thing... you want to make sure people are focused on the message and not trying to parse complex sentences.
Written language can be presented at a higher level of complexity than spoken language. Television aims for a 12 year old level - say grade 7 - for most of its general programming.
Obama's speech seemed appropriate for the medium. Daniel's speech was a bit higher but then his audience was probably a fraction of Obama's - plus slanted Republican which generally correlates to higher educational attainment.
I think they both spoke to their audiences. Can't fault that.
Johnson-
I had to memorize that stinking Prufrock poem. I remember Reagan's speech. What about Bush's speech at 9-11, what'd it rate?
Dunno. Didn't hear Obama, live overseas.
But I know that Clinton was our boy and we've been lost without him and his wife ain't gonna do it. Nor's Harry or Nancy.
My best wishes (with my 2.1 rating...),
This peculiar American notion that big words and longer sentences somehow equates eloquence, is it down to the split nature of the English languange, and the percieved superiority of the romance inheritance?
Even to this stupidity has snuck in to our culture as well, most Swedes still knows to as simple words as possible and to keep sentences short.
Well you can see how the US conflates windbaggery with wisdom in the response to Newt.
Fashionable nonsense is wildly popular, just now the right has found their man.
Not having read all the posts I can't say whether this has already been pointed out but a book concerning this subject was written a couple of years ago. From memory it was called the anti-intellectual presidency in which a downward trend was identified that has been going on for decades. While at heart the book is very close to a slippery slope argument it is interesting to think about how simple language can get before the meaning becomes 'corrupted'.
"The question of why some of Mr Obama's critics are so fixated on his rhetorical skills is one for Democracy in America."
Sigh, I think it would be better to devote that topic to another blog called "Dumbocracy in America"
Its easy to understand why Republicans obsessed with rhetoric skills. Bush was so obviously incapable of independent thought or speech, that his party has been desperately attempting to show any opposition as being just as bad. Nixon could orate at length with no aids. Reagan was married to the prompter.
I would love to learn how Mr. Lincoln's speeches were rated. Is it possible to test a president extending that far into history? His eloquence was so simplistic that it took the better part of his administration for the public to accept him as a poet-president, and even then, the Gettysburg Address was received very poorly at first by the general public.
The Gettysburg speech was not universally acclaimed but it was recognized immediately by many as stating in a few short sentences why the war was being fought, why the union needed to be preserved. Remember, he was not the main speaker. That was Edward Everett, a noted "orator" who spoke for a long time. Lincoln came after him and was supposed to keep it short.
But if you read the speech, he uses fairly difficult words. As in these 2 sentences: "But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract." In all his best speeches, he had the ability to reduce very complex ideas to a handful of declarative sentences.
Difficult? Maybe for the third grade.
They complain that "Every time (Obama) misspeaks they pounce."! I don't recall that EVER happening before in presidential history. Three words: George W. Bush.
Yeah, you're right. Perhaps they're so eager because they get so little chance. With W., people were awed by the occasional correct one-liner ...