This study reports certain lexical patterns produced during the general election of campaign 2008 by Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. As such, it continues a series of tracings begun a dozen years ago under the rubric of the Campaign Mapping Project. This is largely a descriptive project employing computerized language analysis, making specific use of the DICTION 5.0 program. The authors examine some 700 speech passages delivered during the primaries of 2007 and the general election of 2008 and compare them to around 4,000 passages from the 1948 through 2004 presidential campaigns. Overall, they find that popular understanding of the Obama style—that he is fiery, poetic, optimistic, and grandiloquent—to be wrong. Instead, they find Obama to be cautious, grounded, and highly focused. McCain, in contrast, was personal in style, quite partisan (as are most losing presidential candidates), and highly embellished. Obama’s “cool” style differed dramatically from McCain’s “emotional” style, thereby providing both a political and rhetorical contrast for voters during the 2008 campaign.
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