Posted on 10/12/2014 9:39:51 PM PDT by ConservativeStatement
NEW YORK, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Vocativ recently decided to do a study of the sophistication of presidential speeches, from George Washington to Barack Obama, and found they've become less sophisticated over time. They analyzed over 600 speeches using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, which judges speech by assigning it to a grade level. All of their conclusions were analyzed by former Bill Clinton speech writer Jeff Shesol.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
But will we get Brawndo before that?
It is what plants need.
“I got a solution, you’re a dick....South Carolina, what’s up?”
The speeches before audio recordings are only memorialized in writing; we don’t have much of a way to compare that to how they were delivered, they had editors to clean them up, and only the most noteworthy orations were recorded.
It’s also worth noting that “sophistication” is based on a test that is geared toward modern readers, so older language is going to be more “sophisticated” more or less by definition. Delivering speeches in Shakespearean English would make them off-the-charts “sophisticated”, but it wouldn’t make the ideas in them any more profound and would make them far less democratic.
Imagine Princess Hillary doing a speech with the adopted Southern drawl. “I think America is ready for a multilingual president.”
Ah thenk she’s too tard to larn anothuh language naow.
As a side note to this thread, please consider the following.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
I won't deny that presidential speeches have been lowered in sophistication. But please note that presidential speeches, including state of the union addresses, should also be limited to the issues for which the states have delegated specific powers to the feds expressly via the Constitution. In other word, presidents should limit their speeches to things like trade issues with foreign countries and commander-in chief-responsibilities as examples.
Interestingly, regarding domestic issues, one of the few things that a president might need to occasionally address is the quality of the US Mail Service as evidenced by the Constitution's Clause 7 of Section 8 of Article I.
You can't spell stupid without UPI.
Let me give a shout out...
I see all those [dead] veterans...
Obiegynie
Eboly
57 states with only one more to go
uh uh uh uh duh uh duh uh uh
He doesn’t speak Austrian but the corpse man knows the Tollybon.
Presidents don’t write anymore. They get speechwriters who think the sheeple are dumber and dumber, so they write that way for them. Speechwriters can’t help but think they are smarter than the common man, hence the common man needs pablum.
In reality, the common man is totally disinterested in political speech as it is BS from speechwriters and not truly the pol’s thoughts.
This is a study that proves that the speech writers are using the Flesch-Kincaid test as a tool. . . the same tool these Yahoos used in the study to test the speeches the speech writers used to assure they wrote dull, middle of the road prose! It is, essentially a circular argument proving the test works and that no one is ignoring the test. When you get down to it, it proves nothing but that Flesch-Kincaid is a bland echo chamber, producing dull, uninteresting tripe speeches, and isn't it boring to never challenge anyone?
If anything, it demonstrates the steady downward trend in grade level reading ability because no one aspires to be more than "adequate" in the writing readers are expected to comprehend.
See.......Obama isn’t as stupid as he sounds. In fact, he’s so brilliant that he is just intentionally sounding like his stupid predecessors since that’s what the public wants to hear.
Is this for real? If this mook was in office on 9/11 he would have crapped his pants in front of the kids.
The Congress is not required to do so. Technology has made it less and less necessary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.