Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader

Politico ^ | 8-13-2015 | JACK SHAFER

[Citizen Zed]

Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one. If you were to market Donald Trump’s vocabulary as a toy, it would resemble a small box of Lincoln Logs. Trump resists multisyllabic words and complex, writerly sentence constructions when speaking extemporaneously in a debate, at a news conference or in an interview. He prefers to link short, blocky words into other short, blocky words to create short, blocky sentences that he then stacks into short, blocky paragraphs.

The end result of Trump’s word choice is less the stripped-down prose style of Ernest Hemingway than it is a spontaneous reinvention of Ogden’s Basic English, the pared-down lexicon of 850 words selected by early 20th century linguist/philosopher C.K. Ogden as the bedrock of a new world language. In the August 6th Republican candidates debate, Trump answered the moderators’ questions with linguistic austerity. Run through the Flesch-Kincaid grade-level test, his text of responses score at the 4th-grade reading level. For Trump, that’s actually pretty advanced. All the other candidates rated higher, with Ted Cruz earning 9th-grade status. Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker scored at the 8th-grade level. John Kasich, the next-lowest after Trump, got a 5th-grade score.

Trump’s low grade at the debates wasn’t a fluke. His comments from an August 11 news conference in Michigan earned only a 3rd-grade score.

[Citizen Zed]

[GeronL]

He now claims to be one of the Ivy Leaguers and this is a qualification.

How many blue-collars would see that as a disqualifyer

[SWAMP-C1PHER]

I love that we have a candidate who talks fiercely off the cuff and doesn’t care what his competitors think of him.

[VeniVidiVici]

Wow. I wonder where on the scale this would place Joe Biden and mister “Corpseman”?

[Red Steel]

Trumps seems to communicate very well to voters. Look who is on top and who is not. Run that through your silly Flesch-Kincaid scale.

[clearcarbon]

"Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader"

He's going after the democrat vote.

[grey_whiskers]

That’s because he’s trying to appeal to the Dem base.

[grey_whiskers]

And Obama *acts* like one.

Guess which one I'd prefer.

[Shortstop7]

Bunch of sore losers..... sniff sniff.

[GeronL]

What did they lose exactly.

[rikkir]

This author is one of those guys who believes he’s the smartest in the room. I have a challenge for him.

He should challenge Cruz, and his “9th grade” speaking to a one on one debate.

At the end of it let’s see who’s curled up in a ball, in the corner, sucking his thumb.

Shafer couldn’t carry Ted’s notes to a debate.

[onyx]

The piece came a couple of decimal points from scoring at the 11th-grade level. Thanks to Oren Tsur, a post-doctoral researcher at Lazer Lab at Northeastern University and at the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) at Harvard University.





Grade me via email: Shafer.Politico@gmail.com.

Consider it done!


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[Vision Thing]

Reagan was a great communicator. Although he was smart enough to use sophisticated and complex language, he was wise enough to use only simple words instead.

Trump is a smart ivy league graduate, but he is wise enough to speak as simply as possible.

[JMS]

Trump is a native New Yorker from Queens, one of the outer boroughs - that’s how people there talk. Unlike the author of the article, Trump actually got a real education at Wharton and as a developer in New York. It’s a lot like the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back To School. There’s the real world and academia.

[onyx]

#12 - "grade" Shafer! LOL. I did!

[dalereed]

Taking like a 3rd grader is smart, it's equal or above the comprehensive level of 90% of the population!!!!

[Yosemitest]

"Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader"

BLAME TODAY'S PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM!
Trump HAS TO, because of the LACK OF EDUCATION OF THE CURRENT VOTERS, ESPECIALLY THE "ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICANS" voters!
If Trump spoke at any higher grade level, the majority of voters could NOT understand him!

[867V309]

What did they lose exactly.

If you can't see what they're losing, you never will.

[tcrlaf]

That means he UNDERSTANDS the audience he talkingto, just like Obama’s handlers did.

Yet ANOTHER hit piece.
Anyone but me notice the volume of outright hate against Trump has really ratcheted up the last two days?

[cableguymn]

Then he is still talking down to them.