Many have attempted and many have failed to parse Sarah Palin's tortured syntax and sentence structure. Joan Walsh gives her credit for subject-verb agreement while Maureen Dowd fumes over her Frontier Baroque. Analyzing her logic and fact-checking? Oy vay, fuggedaboutit. But as far as I know no one has attempted a close reading of Palin's text employing purely objective, scientific, up-to-date statistical methods.
1. First, the text of Palin's comments was extracted from the NYT debate transcript. All quotes below are verbatim. Not a jot, not an iota, not a tittle (what on earth is a tittle?) has been altered.
2. The extracted text was fed into a proprietary (copyright CCC) vocabulary test and grade program.
3. Eliminating small words and verbal tics ("I" "uh" "duh" "huh" etc.),the remainder was rank-ordered and is presented in descending order below. The numerals denote the number of times the word appeared in the text. (Complete list available by special subscription.)
going45 mccain37 know34 john32 people28 energy28 just27 need25 again23 one23 good22 said21 think20 barack20 america20 obama19 american19 being19 tax19 government18 state17 want17 taxes17 how17 got17 americans16 ............. afghanistan12 put11 reform11 important11 through11 nuclear11 putting11 first11 thank10 president10 .......jobs9 change9 climate9 surge9 health9 back9 off8 position8 huge8 agree8 right8 troops8 ............oil8 credit8 record8 israel8 years8 alaska7 respect7 needs7 working7 doing7 go7 course7 funding7 mayor7 ............tapped6 families6 business6 senate6 children6 marriage6 well6 experience6 ............gas5 policies5 wants5 dollars5 clean5 never5 corruption5 .......oversight4 backwards4.......... speak4 kids4.....heck2 darn2 doggone1
The discerning eye will immediately notice that there are few words of more than two syllables. An audio-lingual test against the relevant tapes from YouTube will confirm that polysyllabic words are wrestled into submission e.g. government to gummint; corruption to cruption; president to prezdent; Afghanistan to Iran etc.
4. Next, the text was fed into a proprietary sentence structure analysis program (in Beta, copyright CCC) with the following results.
- Number of sentences : 571
- Simple sentences: 239
- Compound sentences: 111
- Complex sentences: 38
- Fragments: 52
- Unknown sentence structure: 131
- Thank you. Thank you.
- No, no. Of course, we know what a vice president does.
- And he shared with me his passion for diplomacy. And that's what John McCain and I would engage in als0.
- I do. I do.
- The chant is "drill, baby, drill".
- The barometer there, I think, is going to be resounding.... or the enigmatic
- Now, what I've done as a governor and as a mayor is (inaudible).
- Certainly, accounting for different conditions in that different country and conditions are certainly different.
- John McCain has already tapped me and said, that's where I want you, I want you to lead.
Also, John McCain's maverick position that he's in, that's really prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has.
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Education credit in American (sic) has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line.
- And this has to be some kind of code or else the Log Cabin Republicans have log-rolled the platform: But I will tell Americans straight up that I don't support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman, and I think through nuances we can go round and round about what that actually means. But I'm being as straight up with Americans as I can in my non- support for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.
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THE AMERICAN FUNDING OF MCCAIN IMPACTS GOOD AMERICA WELL .
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WORK, CHILDREN, AND POLITICS POSITION.
DOLLARS, MAYOR, AND WORK TAXES.
AMERICAS GOING LIKE AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS.
ECONOMYS TALK MAVERICK CLIMATE!
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WORK HECK LIKE A GOVERNMENT JOHN.
REFORM, EXPERIENCE, AND FUNDING.
LORD, NUCLEAR GREED!
ALASKAS SHARE LIKE IMPORTANT GOVERNORS.
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FUTURE, FUTURE, AND REFORM.
ALL GOVERNMENTS NEED PAST, DANGEROUS GOVERNMENTS.
SURGE IS THE AMERICAN MCCAIN.
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Dana Dangerous
Skip Williamson
designanator
Dennis Knight
dharmabummer
Critical Mess
Salon.com
Comments
John, criticizing? Who, moi? Hey, I just do the dogwork and present the pure, objective, scientific, statistical results. Not a single critical woof in the piece, is there?
WOOF
WOOF
Y. A. Tittle, is a former American football quarterback in the NFL who played for the Baltimore Colts, San Francisco 49ers, and the New York Giants. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, inducted in 1971. Wikipedia
And you call yourself a Merican?
WOOF
Style.org's piece. As for the rest of his pronouncements, I guess not even his dog Barney cares. Actually Bush 41's syntax would have been fun to dig through.
WOOF
There's something so right about that.
If you look at the words each candidate uses, you find that Biden and Palin are relatively well-matched. Each goes on for about 7800 words (Palin a bit more, Biden a bit less), and each uses about 1400 unique words (Biden a few more than Palin). One interesting thing to look at, I think, is words that one candidate used that the other didn't. Now again Palin and Biden are evenly matched, each using about 950 words that the other didn't. But those are, of course, different sets of words. Just looking at those words that each candidate used three or more times and the other candidate didn't use at all, then we get, in descending order of frequency:
Biden: number absolutely pakistan neighborhood regard million wealthy dick single half haven deregulation control spend fair fairness cheney genocide wrong wrote bosnia home providing amendment raise pleasure eliminate election sex went commanding republican replace months decade slow role failure arms won regime draw letting judge hamas cuts prime grew standpoint drawn anybody happened couples branch deregulate virtually engine facts controversial quote profits dirty wild true heterosexual idea realize windfall maybe disagreed gotten lugar abroad helms principal power wilmington iraqis spent combat hezbollah
Palin: reform position climate aside track course mayor coming greed huge corruption business tapped met leaders agenda partisanship acquire politics future use countries team impacts speak knowing backwards debate planet domestic higher known especially produce fear experience federal producing group learn knows conditions diverse white political bipartisan forge kim allowed jong thankful opportunity presidential flexibility workforce remember grow having freedoms order challenges attempt pointing petraeus strategies reduce proposing counterinsurgency hungry implemented markets heart dear natural november peace weaponry bit consider patriotic special job plans blunders investments certainly campaign supports assure nyse efforts
Make of that what you will. It's not as useful as it might seem at first glance--Palin doesn't mention Pakistan--oh my goodness! but Biden doesn't talk about climate! Ifill's questions are an issue, of course.
My favorite bit? The appearance in Biden's list of "pleasure" shortly followed by "sex", and then this: "dirty wild true heterosexual idea". Holy crap! Palin can't match that, not even coming close with "speak knowing backwards", "especially produce fear", "diverse white political", and "heart dear natural".
I hope you have been entertained.
2. When you count her words, are you distinguishing between the ones she adds "g" to and the ones she doesn't? Like "going": Did she ever add a g, or are you givin' her some credit here where it in't due?
3. To be fair, Joe Biden is worse than she is about slurring multi-syllabic words into mono- or duo-syllabic ones. Really, check it out anywhere. It kind of drives me crazy. I wish he'd slow down and articulate more. The way his articulate running mate does. :)
But, how the heck did you do both Biden and so fast? (mutter, mutter, there goes your copyright crap, CCC, he's probably got a bigger, faster, BETTER program). Took me hours in the wee hours after dragging my tail home from the wilds of NH.....
WOOF
Since Ifill inexplicably didn't ask about reproductive rights or religious affiliations (I wanted to hear Palin put "lipstick on the pig" of her Pentacostal anti-semitism) or guns or McCain's problematic health or Phil Gramm or some other reasonably vital issue, Palin got away with her usual impersonation of a cross between Annie Oakley and Britney Spears expounding on the presidency.
At this point, after the exposure she has received, seeing large audiences of hapless, clueless, feckless Americans sitting in some venue in the heartland wildly cheering and applauding Palin's bobble-headed rhetoric, while waving signs, is absolute proof that not only can you lead horses to water and make them drink, you can get them to chow down on their own manure while they whinney "home on the range"!
Thanks, Lainey. Actually the program, for the most part, recognizes roots. Also, the NYT transcript uses correct spellin' (makin' it phonetic would probably violate style guide in addition to being political class war dynamite). But as for me, if I could, I woulda posted her speech in all its linguistic glory!
WOOF
Btw, I'm sure your numbers are good, but how did my counts compare to yours for Palin, straight up?
WOOF
Perfect.
as the littlest von Trapp might say, "...but it doesn't mean anything..."
perhaps not, but it is still interesting to consider Sarah Palin's creative use of language
Actually, I suspect your numbers are better than mine. My quick-and-dirty filters didn't do stemming, for example, so my numbers are slightly different, off by one in several cases, two in a few more. The ordering I get is identical for the first dozen words, though, and the rest look consistent based on spot-checking.
Rob notes that he discovered
dirty wild true heterosexual idea
in analysis of Biden's prose. I've seen several posts about Biden's sexual appeal (not his teeth ;0)) which were surprising. Sarah is not the only one with something going on.
I hope someone who knows Biden sees this and provides him with your comments.
That kind of says it all! ( I guess there isn't a category for mutilated sentence structure) Thanks for fetching the facts. Good dog!
Seriously, though, I worry a lot more about her unknown (or known and worrisome) policies.
CCC, can you crank this up a couple of abstraction layers and get us an analysis of either the logic or the pragmatic effectiveness of the things she's talking about (at least where the parse didn't fail on what she was talking about)?
"Unknown sentence structure: 131"
I'm surprised the number was not higher.
"Helluva job" CCC.
And Kent, never fear, would never try this on anyone other than those on my enemies list, which you're not. Right? Right? :-).
As for taking it to the next level of abstraction, what were you thinking of? Rob's actually started on that path, mapping the words used by one and not by the other. But the next steps would actually take some real analysis and have to be done manually, IMO. Worth it -- since McPalin seem to be self-destructing along with the stock market in front of our very eyes? And like Palin grating on Mary's ears, she grates on my mind. Subjecting myself to more torture....... I do have some interesting out-takes though, which might be worth a post.
WOOF.
Thx. I think accumulation of a lot of useless info into not quite ripe old age, insomnia and this insatiable desire to keep baying at Republicans must be the answer :-).
WOOF
I guess it's true what they say about there being poetry behind the numbers.
Really good Doggerel!
(I no one else is going to use that pun, I will!)
WORK HECK LIKE A GOVERNMENT JOHN and
ALL GOVERNMENTS NEED PAST, DANGEROUS GOVERNMENTS
are my favorites.
And you made the Cover on your own! Congrats.
I believe it did two things for her: 1) relaxed her by repeating by rote a sentence given for that exact moment 2) it throws the enemy off-guard JUST long enough for you to act (like pulling a gun).
Sarah Palin did just that at least twenty times during the debate. I give Joe Biden BIG kudos for his management of same. I give low points to the McCain camp for teaching her how to recite deflective gibberish in front of the nation. It was the ONLY way, however, that she could have kept her cool long enough to get through that debate.
She is WAY out of her depth except to act as an animal or assassin (in the case of the movie) to get herself through an adrenal packed situation. Similar to fight or flight, she surely would have wanted to flee rather than stand to fight...Perhaps an opportunity was missed to take her out.
Now that she is inciting Floridians to racial mob violence, I wish even more that she would be taken off the platform...
My two cents, but this came to mind as I listened to Palin that night...
That is an interesting analogy.
Inciting mob violence against a black candidate is irresponsible and unethical. I don't know how Palin can live with herself but I never understood her anyway.
I worry about Obama as it is -- every time he appears at a rally etc. look at the wide shots on the cnn.com just before speaking . You can see how many sharpshooters etc. are stationed on the rooftops in an attempt to protect him and it is scary.
I found it to be rather objective (till the last part) and not wholly critical (as some might say).
Days after watching her debate perfomance I was still trying to digest what she had said. I believe the Random Thought Generator (RTG - if I may) has given me some insight.