The Times and the Man as Predictors of Emotion and Style in the Inaugural Addresses of U.S. Presidents

Intercorrelations among stylistic and emotional variables and construct validity deduced from relationships to other ratings of U.S. presidents suggest that power language (language that is linguistically simple, emotionally evocative, highly imaged, and rich in references to American values) is an important descriptor of inaugural addresses. Attempts to predict the use of power language in inaugural addresses from variables representing the times (year, media, economic factors) and the man (presidential personality) lead to the conclusion that time-based factors are the best predictors of the use of such language (81% prediction of variance in the criterion) while presidential personality adds at most a small amount of prediction to the model. Changes in power language are discussed as the outcome of a tendency to opt for breadth of communication over depth.