Language statistics
An annoying trope in US political stories (which, fortunately, hasn’t made it here yet) is to criticise a politician for using too many first person singular pronouns — saying “I” and “me” too often. These stories often get analysed by the computational linguists over on Language Log, who tiredly point out that the claim is (a) largely irrelevant to the point being made, and (b) false.
This week’s example is the speech by New Jersey Governor Chris Cristie at the Republican National Convention. A New York Times piece said
Gov. Chris Christie is getting rave reviews today for his performance at the National Republican Convention, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he did a huge amount of good for the three most important people in his life – he, himself, and him….
By my count, Mr. Christie used the word “Romney” six times in his address. He used the word “I” 30 times, plus a couple of “me’s” and “my’s” tossed in for seasoning.
but as Mark Liberman points out, the actual use of first person singular pronouns was slightly lower than in the speeches by Paul Ryan, Anne Romney, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and much lower than Clint Eastwood. It’s also slightly lower than in the similar speech by (then Illinois Senator) Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »