Trump vs. Clinton: Sentence Formation

Hi!

This week I was still investigating language techniques during the first presidential debate. Different from last week, where I focused on word choice and adjectives, I wanted to look at sentence length and formation of sentences.

According to Washington Post, Clinton produced longer sentences (~15 words/sentence) than did Trump (~10 words/sentence). When readability indices were used based on this data, Clinton’s speech was about at the level of an 8th grader, while Trump was at 6th grader level.

A discrepancy I found here though was that different sources often report a slightly different grade level for Trump—ranging from different elementary levels. Not completely trusting the sources 100%, I remain to just combine Trump’s level as “elementary and easy.”

Furthermore, Clinton produced 10 sentence fragments (not counting those which were interrupted), and Trump produced 83 fragments. An interesting thing to add is that most of these were complex sentences began with a subordinate clause (“When you look at what’s happening in Mexico...”; “As far as my tax returns...”). It matches Trump’s word choice rhetoric where he starts his sentences incoherently and ends strongly with an emphatic word. Again, to leave the important part stuck in people’s heads.

According to The New Yorker, “His fragmented language is consistent with an attention span that his ghostwriter likened to ‘a kindergartner who can’t sit still in a classroom’”.

That is all for this week.

Thanks for reading,

Gina