Deception in Speeches of Candidates for Public Office

Abstract

The contribution of this article is twofold: the adaptation and application of models of deception from psychology, combined with data-mining techniques, to the text of speeches given by candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential election; and the observation of both short-term andmedium-term differences in the levels of deception. Rather than considering the effect of deception on voters, deception is used as a lens through which to observe the self-perceptions of candidates and campaigns. The method of analysis is fully automated and requires no human coding, and so can be applied to many other domains in a straightforward way. The authors posit explanations for the observed variation in terms of a dynamic tension between the goals of campaigns at each moment in time, for example gaps between their view of the candidate's persona and the persona expected for the position; and the difficulties of crafting and sustaining a persona, for example, the cognitive cost and the need for apparent continuity with past actions and perceptions. The changes in the resulting balance provide a new channel by which to understand the drivers of political campaigning, a channel that is hard to manipulate because its markers are created subconsciously.

Impact of Use of Language on Audience’s Perception: A Qualitative Analysis of Speeches by Hillary Clinton

“…Several studies have revealed the linguistic styles used by politicians that recommend the conservative and liberal's difference in using the emotional language and multi syllabic words (Slatcher et al, 2007;Wojcik et al, 2015). Skillicorn (2015) studied the political deception done by language for the successful accomplishment in the political market. For this purpose, they must appeal to the massive audience regarding the policy issues.…”