On the Grammar of Politics—or Why Conservatives Prefer Nouns

Abstract

Previous research indicates that political conservatism is associated with epistemic needs for structure and certainty (Jost et al., 2003) and that nouns elicit clearer and more definite perceptions of reality than other parts of speech (Carnaghi et al., 2008). We therefore hypothesized that conservatives would exhibit preferences for nouns (vs. verbs and adjectives), insofar as nouns are better suited to satisfy epistemic needs. In Study 1, we observed that social conservatism was associated with noun preferences in Polish and that personal need for structure accounted for the association between ideology and grammatical preferences. In Study 2, conducted in Arabic, social conservatism was associated with a preference for the use of nominal sentences (composed of nouns only) over verbal sentences (which included verbs and adjectives). In Study 3, we found that more conservative U.S. presidents used greater proportions of nouns in major speeches, and this effect was related to integrative complexity. We discuss the possibility that conservative ideology is linked to grammatical preferences that foster feelings of stability and predictability.

Liberals Lecture, Conservatives Communicate: analyzing complexity and ideology in 381,609 speeches

“…These effect sizes are thus generally small. But this is in line with the political psychology literature that studies the association between ideology language use of politicians and other elites [9,10,12]. Fig 2a thus provides consistent evidence that the link between ideology and language complexity exists across countries; where speech complexity appears to be increasing over time.…”

“…For example, research on linguistic habits of American and British politicians shows that conservative politicians make less complex statements than liberal politicians [3,4,8]. Cichocka et al [9] show that the speeches of liberal US presidents score higher on integrative complexity than those of conservatives, as measured by the presence of "words involved in differentiation (exclusive words, tentative words, negations) as well as integration of different perspectives (conjunctions)" (p. 809). Conservative political bloggers use less complex language than their liberal counterparts [10] and conservative citizens use language that scores lower on integrative complexity than liberal citizens [11].…”

The marketplace of ideology: “Elective affinities” in political psychology and their implications for consumer behavior

“…Cichocka, Bilewicz, Jost, Marrouch, and Witkowska (2016) hypothesized that ideological differences in cognitive processing style would influence verbal behavior, such as preferences for nouns—which convey greater permanence, stability, and categorical perceptions—over other parts of speech, such as verbs and adjectives. For instance, noun phrases such as “Julia is a Jew” and “Mohammed is a Syrian” convey more in terms of inductive potential and social stereotyping, in comparison with similar adjective phrases such as “Julia is Jewish” and “Mohammed is Syrian” (Carnaghi et al, 2008).…”

Gender biases and linguistic sexism in political communication: A comparison of press news about men and women Italian ministers

“…In this case, the detection of nouns may also be used as an indication of a higher level of abstraction, as proposed by some researchers (Carnaghi et al, 2008;Cichocka, Bilewicz, Jost, Marrouch, & Witkowska, 2016;Graf, Bilewicz, Finell, & Geschke, 2013). The frequency of noun usage should also be analyzed in relation to the political orientation of newspapers to verify if the rightist ones use them more than the leftist ones, as was found by Cichocka et al (2016) in reference to grammatical preferences of conservative ideologies.…”