Debate analysis: Palin spoke at 10th-grade level, Biden at eighth - CNN

[steve2470]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/03/debate.words/?iref=mpstoryview

(CNN) -- An analysis carried out by a language monitoring service said Friday that Gov. Sarah Palin spoke at a more than ninth-grade level and Sen. Joseph Biden spoke at a nearly eighth-grade level in Thursday night's debate between the vice presidential candidates.

Sen. Joe Biden used 5,492 words during the debate; Gov. Sarah Palin used 5,235.

The analysis by the Austin, Texas-based Global Language Monitor said Palin, governor of Alaska and the GOP vice presidential nominee, used the passive voice in 8 percent of her sentences, far more than the 5 percent used by the Democratic senator from Delaware.

The analysis noted that the "passive voice can be used to deflect responsibility; Biden used active voice when referring to Cheney and Bush; Palin countered with passive deflections."

"It obscures the doer of the action," said Language Monitor President Paul Payack, an independent with no political affiliation.

more at link above

:wtf:

[Aloha Spirit]

1. Yes, her sentences were longer. This analysis is based on the written content. But persuasive speech

has different standards, so it's fair to say this analysis is not relevant to the debate performances.

[hisownpetard]

26. Agree, "Not relevant to the debate performances" or anything else, for that matter.

[vanderBeth]

2. At a 10th grade debate, Palin would LOSE for not even answering the questions.

I thought it was the first rule for debate.

[minnesota_liberal]

16. First rule is: respect your opponent, including using his/her proper title

Although Palin asked Biden as they shook hands whether she could call him Joe, it was still a mistake.

Palin also would have lost points for winking (how very persidential) and for failing to answer most questions.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

3. ROFL: It scores Palin only one grade level below LINCOLN!

:rofl:

[moriah]

4. "You betcha!" and "darn" and "gosh" are higher grade level terms?

Whodathunkit.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

22. It factors in sentence structure, as well

If you've ever tried to diagram a Sarah Palin sentence (free advice - don't try), you'd see that her syntax is very convoluted...and more difficult to understand. But I don't think you needed a "language expert" to tell you that!

[Bad Thoughts]

28. No, they are noise

It takes more effort to get to Palin's core meaning because of the colloquialism she throws in. The analyst implies that these distract the listeners and consequently, it takes more work by educated listeners to figure her out.

{added} Think of it as rhetorical chaff: it obscures meaning.

[Bill McBlueState]

5. so much for "Palin connects with the voters"

In these algorithms, a high grade level can mean the speaker used a lot of convoluted sentence structures. For example, frequent use of the passive voice probably brings up the grade level.

Even though Biden tends to ramble, it appears his sentences were somewhat clearer than Palin's. They explain this in the article:

But higher grade level doesn't necessarily mean better sentence, Payack said. He pointed to Palin's second-to-last sentence in the debate, which the formula put at a grade level of 18.3:

"What I would do, also, if that were ever to happen, though, is to continue the good work he is so committed to of putting government back on the side of the people and get rid of the greed and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington," Palin said.

"When she said it, it sounded good, but on paper it's a completely different animal," Payack said. "It's like, what is that?"

[SemiCharmedQuark]

6. The president of this group has given exclusively to Republicans

http://www.languagemonitor.com/about

"Paul JJ Payack, joined Dr. Beard and reorganized Web of Online Dictionaries into yourDictionary.com, where Payack was the founding president."

MR. PAUL PAYACK
DANVILLE, CA 94506
YOURDICTIONARY.COM
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE $-1,000
primary 05/10/02
Payack, PaulJ. Mr.
Danville, CA 94506
Your Dictionary.com
RNC REPUBLICAN NATIONAL STATE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE $1,000
primary 04/24/02
PAYACK, PAUL
DANVILLE, CA 94526 BUSH, GEORGE W (R)
President
BUSH FOR PRESIDENT INC. $500
primary 07/07/99

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?city=DANVILLE&st=CA&last=Payack&first=Paul

[Tanuki]

12. Hah! Great catch! So much for this guy being an "independent

with no political affiliation"!

[City Lights]

7. Does anyone know if CNN did an "analysis" like this after the Obama-McNasty

debate?

Either way, this is bullshit. She sounded like she was talking to a bunch of kindergartners.

[rucky]

8. "Dontchaknow" is on the SAT this year. n/t

[frogcycle]

9. silliest thing I ever read

her sentences were longer, used the passive to deflect responsibility, so she spoke at a higher grade level?

How about "she rambled on and ducked the issues"

If that represents speaking at a higher grade level, well good. All those 8th-grade-level-speaking working class Americans liked Joe's completely intelligible straight talk, and she came across as a babbling dingbat.

[Bad Thoughts]

27. The analyst is speaking at a higher grade level

He's not judging the content, but looking at what level of education one needs to fully understand what the debaters said. By placing Palin at a higher grade level, he is saying that only better educated readers could understand her. We could interpret that to mean that her manner of speech is actually more convoluted and evasive. Construction was poorer. In many cases, her statements have taken more effort to unpack, and the danger in her thought not easily accessible. Conversely, Biden, more assured in his thoughts, was more direct, and his statements were simpler. Someone with less education could understand him.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. And thanks to a flawed analysis such as that, the U.S. ranks at the BOTTOM 3rd

of industrialized countries in education. To assign anything beyond lower middle school competency to the disasta' from Alaska, only underscores how far we have to go to correct the problems in the education system, including resolving to remove the nonsensical "educational punditry" from coming up with a solution.

[mmonk]

11. I never knew canned talking points indicated a high level at anything.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

13. Wise choice of words by Biden

His goal was to be comprehended by the most people, hence his choice of words. Active voice is also stronger and easier to understand. That Biden did this without it being obvious shows that he is a polished speaker who knows how to communicate with a great range of people.

[jacksonian]

14. bah, they're speaking strictly syntax

Palin used more complex sentence structures, true.

Idiot freeper point. Actually, it speaks to Biden's eloquence: he got more substance (a LOT more) into his eighth grade syntax than Palin had in her complex speech. This is good.

She spoke like a tenth grader - long subclauses and multi thread sentences - but also like a tenth grader with poor subject/verb/object agreement leading to incoherence. Word breezes, if you will. All to cover for her 2nd grade content.

[spanone]

15. crock o shit

[dailykoff]

17. Doggonit, there u go again CNN,

pointing out wut we knew all along, that Palin gal is real genie-ass!

[Arrowhead2k1]

18. All of her talking points were canned, whereas Biden spoke from the heart.

[minnesota_liberal]

19. Simple, straightforward speech = lower grade level

That Palin spoke at a "higher" level is actually a good sign. I suspect that a majority of voters with better than an 8th grade education already favor Obama/Biden.

[NYC_SKP]

20. Easy to Check this, please, someone, DU this with MS Word:

I'm working today, or I'd do it myself:

copy and paste all of Biden's comments, sans questions, into a word document, then use the spell-check reading level feature.
do the same with Moose's.

No way will her Fleischer-Kincaide (or whatever the fuck it is) reading level be higher than his.

Gotta go!

love, NYC_SKP!

:donut:

[trailer5533]

21. obama

speaks like prof

[DesertRat]

30. That's because he is well educated and intelligent. n/t

[Occam Bandage]

34. It has nothing to do with her reading level or his reading level.

The reading-level analysis says absolutely nothing about the competence of the speaker/writer; it's an estimation of how difficult a text is to read, looking only at word/sentence/paragraph length. She spoke in run-on sentences; he didn't. That's the only thing being looked at.

[Realityhack]

23. The problem is the simplified word count style determination of grade level.

It is a metric that is open to serious errors.

[fortyfeetunder]

24. I think the math is wrong!

Palin sounded like 1/10 = 0.1
Biden sounded like 1/8 = 0.125

Or -10 versus -8

CNN doesn't know who they are fooling!

[olegramps]

25. Sounds to me as valid as Voodo Economics

What a bunch of gobbledyglook crap. It has nothing to do with the effetiveness of a person's message. My dad's "I said now" probably rated at third grade, but it was highly effective to getting him the desired effect.

[Occam Bandage]

29. Misleading. What the grade-level analysis does is determine the minimum level of

linguistic competence required to fluently read a given body of work, with respect solely to sentence and word length, and with no respect whatsoever to content. Her sentences were longer. When you speak in garbled "also, and, also, of, but" sentences like she does when off-balance, you can expect that it would require a 10th-grader's level of linguistic competence to unravel your meaning.

Saying "she spoke at a 10th-grade level" implies that she spoke as well as a 10th-grader could. That is completely and utterly unsupported. The grade-level analysis has absolutely nothing to do with the competence of the speaker; it's aimed purely at estimating how difficult a text would be to read.

[Bad Thoughts]

31. Right: it takes a tenth grader to expose her!

[mw]

32. Palin studied hard to get to the 10th level, Biden dumbed down to 8

nt

[CreekDog]

33. She lied at a 10th grade level

:eyes: