FROM EISENHOWER TO OBAMA: LEXICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF WINNING VERSUS LOSING PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN...

This longitudinal study of fifteen presidential campaigns used lexicalanalysis to isolate differences between winning and losing commercials.The availability sample of 1,227 commercials from 1952-2008 campaignswas analyzed with Diction 5.0 lexical analysis software. Results indicat-ed striking lexical differences between the commercials of presidentialwinners versus losers. Winners were significantly higher on positiveterms and other-directed references to groups, while losers were higheron self-related I/me/my words.

By Dennis T. Lowry and Md. Abu Naser

FROM EISENHOWER TO OBAMA:LEXICAL CHARACTERISTICSOF WINNING VERSUS LOSINGPRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN COMMERCIALS

The quadrennial presidential campaigns provide a natural labora-tory for political scientists, communication scholars, and others to ana-lyze communication and persuasion on a vital issue of great nationalinterest to the public as well as to scholars. Campaign commercialsdeserve detailed analysis because, as Jamieson observes, “politicaladvertising is now the major means by which candidates for the presi-dency communicate their messages to voters.“1

While it is obvious that the analysis of presidential campaign com-mercials has been a rich area for scholarly investigation,2 it is surprisingthat analyzing the commercials in terms of winning commercials versuslosing commercials has received very little attention. What is it in thecommercials that distinguishes the rhetoric of presidential winners ver-sus losers? What can future presidential candidates learn from therhetorical emphases of past successful candidates? What rhetoricalemphases should future candidates avoid?

The primary purpose of the present study was to conduct the mostcomprehensive content analysis to date of rhetoric used in the presiden-tial TV commercials of winners versus losers. More specifically, our pur-pose was to explore the rhetorical changes in a fifty-six-year collection ofpresidential TV commercials. Which rhetorical variables have been con-sistently used? Which variables have been particularly employed byone candidate or campaign or party? Most important, to what extent is

Dennis T. Lowry is professor of journalism and Md. Abu Naser is a doctoral candidatein the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois UniversityCarbondale. The authors are grateful to the editor of this journal and to three anonymousreviewers for helpful suggestions. An earlier version of the study was presented at the2010 AEJMC convention.

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it possible to statistically differentiate between the lexical word choices inthe TV commercials of presidential winners versus losers? A secondarypurpose was to continue to assess the usefulness of Diction 5.0 as a polit-ical advertising research tool.

Of course, there are variables other than campaign commercials(e.g., political opinion, economic factors, and foreign and domesticissues) that contribute to winning or losing the presidency, but commer-cials are one of the most important variables, as evidenced by the hun-dreds of millions of campaign dollars spent on them. Indeed, the schol-arly literature reviewed below dealing exclusively with presidential cam-paign advertising clearly supports this line of research as valuable in itsown right.

Television is often referred to as a visual medium; however, thisstudy focuses on the verbal rhetoric in the commercials. Why?Robinson, in the context of TV news content analysis, argues that, “Whiletelevision is regarded as an essentially visual medium (this being whatdifferentiates it from print and radio), sound dominates image in newsbroadcasts” (emphasis added).3 The present study was based onRobinson’s “first assumption that television news makes sense to usbecause the verbal dominates the visual. This verbal dominance is repre-sented in the continuous flow of commentaries, reports, and interviewsemanating from anchor persons, reporters, and commentators’ voice-overs” (emphasis added).4 There is a direct parallel here between theverbal dominance of television news and the verbal dominance of manypolitical television commercials. Thus the present study explored thecontinuous flow of verbal promises, attacks, counter-attacks, andannouncer voice-overs in presidential TV commercials that were intend-ed to help candidates win the highest office in the land. The study is bothexploratory and descriptive, since no prior research has ever examined afifty-six-year collection of winning versus losing presidential commer-cials from a lexical perspective. It applies an existing research tool(Diction 5.0) to a relatively new topic—the exploration of lexical differ-ences in presidential campaign commercials.

The study of presidential rhetoric in general and the study of cam-paign rhetoric in particular have generated a voluminous literature.Indeed, the self-evident importance of presidential rhetoric caused somescholars to employ the phrase “the rhetorical presidency.”5 Hart was oneof the earliest scholars to apply computerized content analysis to presi-dential rhetoric.6 Presidential campaign debates, which are, by definition,major rhetorical events, have likewise generated considerable scholar-ship.7 Jamieson focused on presidential rhetoric in the context of presi-dential campaign advertising,8 political speechmaking,9 and campaignpolitics.10 The volume of scholarship on presidential rhetoric has evenwarranted the creation of a Web site (presidentialrhetoric.com) devotedexclusively to that topic.

Another indication of the importance of rhetoric in presidentialcampaigns has been evident over the years in the various “ad watches”

LiteratureReview


and “fact checks” performed by the news media and independentorganizations. These “ad watches” deal primarily with the words (espe-cially the verbal tone of the promises, claims, charges, and counter-charges) in the commercials; less emphasis has been given to the videocontent in the commercials.11 FactCheck.org, which bills itself as “anonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters,” is maintained bythe Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.This organization does not limit itself to verifying only campaign adver-tisements, but when it has analyzed commercials, most of the factschecked in the commercials have indeed been rhetorical claims, onceagain emphasizing the importance of the rhetoric of campaign commer-cials.

A different line of research dealing with presidential campaigncommercial rhetoric has been carried out by Benoit and his colleagues.12Because of the self-evident importance of rhetoric in presidential cam-paigns, this line of research has focused almost entirely on the words inthe commercials. Within the context of Benoit’s functional theory ofpolitical campaign discourse, the commercials have been divided intorhetorical themes, and the themes then have been categorized in termsof acclaims, attacks, or defenses. In short, the assumption underlying allof the above research on campaign rhetoric is that, even in this videoage, words still carry a lot of importance and are definitely worthy ofscholarly analysis.

Televised political advertising was first used by Dwight D.Eisenhower in 1952 and has become increasingly important to the polit-ical process since then.13 Study after study reveals the importance of tel-evision advertising in politics. A great deal of research shows that polit-ical television advertising in the United States has an important effect onvoter knowledge about candidates and issues and ultimately on votingdecisions.14 Naturally, researchers seek ways of understanding how can-didates use different themes and rhetorical styles in their campaigns foroffice,15 as well as how they use different television production tech-niques.16

Many studies have focused on the verbal styles of candidates. Forexample, Kaid17 and Benoit18 completed exhaustive studies of presiden-tial campaigns in general and television advertising specifically. Usingcomputerized content analysis (but not Diction), Ballotti and Kaid19identified verbal style in presidential campaign television commercialsfrom 1952 to 1996. They studied variables previously isolated by Hart20(Activity, Optimism, Certainty, and Realism); however, their findingsshowed an overall downward trend for Optimism, Realism, andCertainty. They examined variations in verbal style for parties, incum-bents versus challengers, and winners versus losers, but the issue ofwinners versus losers was not explored in detail.

Computer-based text analysis serves its purpose best when exam-ining large numbers of texts rather than small numbers of texts.21 Astudy of 2,000 texts from candidates of both major parties from 1948 to2000 found Democratic candidates were more likely than Republicans todiscuss campaign actors and to use nouns to rhetorically unite their

coalitions, while Republicans were more likely than Democrats to talkabout ideals and to be more direct.22

Lowry and Naser23 used Diction to analyze more than a thousandpresidential TV commercials from 1952 through 2004. Among other keyfindings, their longitudinal study found a striking increase in Inspirationin the television commercials. Inspiration was also positively correlatedwith winning the presidency. Inspiration factors into the Diction “mas-ter variable” Optimism.

This study was guided by nine research questions and threehypotheses.

RQ1: Overall, for all 1,227 commercials, what havebeen the most consistently used lexical elements employed inpresidential campaign commercials?

RQ2: To what extent have the rhetorical styles of Dem-ocratic commercials differed from Republican commercials?

RQ3: To what extent have the rhetorical styles ofincumbents differed from those of non-incumbents?

H1: Incumbents will have higher scores onAccomplishment than non-incumbents.

The reason is simply that they have already had four years in theWhite House to produce accomplishments. This hypothesis was alsosuggested in part by the findings of Brazeal and Benoit.24

H2: Incumbents will have higher scores than non-incumbents on Satisfaction.

Because they are by definition running on their records, incumbentshave every reason to communicate that they are satisfied with the pres-ent state of affairs in the country.

RQ4: The most important question for this study is: Towhat extent have there been substantive rhetorical differ-ences in the TV commercials of winners versus losers?

The large database and the large number of scores generated byDiction also provided an excellent opportunity to test other hypothesesin the context of exploratory data analysis.25 Indeed, Babbie26 points outthat, “Much of social research is conducted to explore a topic, or to pro-vide a beginning familiarity with that topic.” Since the present study isone of the first major applications of Diction to analyze the differencesbetween presidential winners versus losers, this exploratory approachwas appropriate. Thus, we also tested H3 and RQ5-9.

FROM EISENHOWER TO OBAMA 533

ResearchQuestionsandHypotheses


H3: Certainty will go down over time.

This hypothesis was based on Hart and Childer’s27 finding and graphshowing a steep decline in certainty in presidential candidates’ speech-es between 1948 and 2000.

RQ5: To what extent did Inspiration scores increaseover time?

RQ6: Were the Inspiration scores of winners higherthan those of losers?

RQ7: To what extent did Accomplishment scoresincrease over time?

RQ8: Were the Accomplishment scores of winnershigher than those of losers?

RQ9: To what extent did Rapport scores increase overtime?

In this context, we primarily used quantitative lexical analysissoftware (Diction 5.0) to analyze a total of 1,227 presidential televisionads from fifteen campaigns from 1952 to 2008, with the availability sam-ple compiled from six sources.28 Out of the total 1,227 spots, 630 werefor winning candidates, while 597 were for losing candidates. Therewere 727 spots for Democratic candidates and 500 for Republican candi-dates. After retrieving the transcripts of the spots from the differentsources, we stored them in Word files. Then all the files were cut andpasted into .txt documents, as required by Diction.

Diction contains a series of thirty-one built-in dictionaries tosearch text documents for five main semantic features: Activity,Optimism, Certainty, Realism, and Commonality. It also searches forthirty-five sub-features including tenacity, blame, ambivalence, motion,and communication.29

RQ1 asked, “Overall, for all 1,227 commercials, what havebeen the most consistently used lexical elements employed in pres-idential campaign commercials?” Table 1 shows that Familiarity,Insistence, and Activity were the top three variables, in descendingorder, while Commonality and Certainty rounded out the top five.Familiarity, the top variable, included such words as a, as, at, by, for, from,of, on, so, and to. Hart states about this variable, “A high score becomesa measure of colloquialness.”30 Thus, these are common words that onewould expect to find in commercials, since copywriters normallyattempt to “write the way people talk.” Insistence, the second-highestvariable, is a measure of repeated words (e.g., slogans and themes).

Method

Results

Since repetition of words, themes, or slogans is a common advertisingtechnique, it is easy to understand why the Insistence score would be sohigh.

Activity, the third-highest variable, is one of the master variables.It is calculated as follows:

Activity = [Aggression + Accomplishment + Communication +Motion] – [Cognitive Terms + Passivity + Embellishment]

Its terms connote physical energy, social domination, goal directedness,personal triumph, and human energy.31 Variables 4 through 7 in therankings in Table 1 are also master variables calculated from differentcombinations of the individual dictionaries.32

RQ2 asked: “To what extent have the rhetorical styles ofDemocratic commercials differed from Republican commercials?” Table2 presents the results of eleven of the forty variables that showed signif-icant differences between the two parties. Democratic commercials weresignificantly higher on Familiarity,33 Numerical Terms,34 SpatialAwareness,35 Present Concern,36 Diversity,37 Motion,38 and Realism.39Republican commercials were significantly higher on Inspiration,40Communication,41 Variety,42 and Complexity.43

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Variable Diction Score Variable Diction Score

1. Familiarity 109.71 21. Denial 6.672. Insistence* 60.67 22. Praise 6.553. Activity** 50.71 23. Inspiration 6.214. Commonality** 50.44 24. Aggression 6.175. Certainty** 50.22 25. Hardship 5.936. Optimism** 49.76 26. Leveling Terms 5.587. Realism** 49.10 27. Passivity 5.078. Human Interest 34.39 28. Complexity* 4.629. Tenacity 30.64 29. Satisfaction 3.6710. Concreteness 29.66 30. Past Concern 3.5111. Temporal Terms 16.26 31. Cooperation 3.1012. Present Concern 14.84 32. Rapport 3.0413. Numerical Terms 14.19 33. Motion 2.7314. Accomplishment 12.62 34. Blame 2.2315. Ambivalence 12.38 35. Centrality 2.1416. Communication 12.08 36. Liberation 2.0817. Self-reference 10.51 37. Exclusion 1.4418. Collectives 9.29 38. Embellishment* 1.2019. Spatial Awareness 9.14 39. Diversity .8920. Cognition 9.09 40. Variety* .69

* = Calculated Variable ** = Master Variable

TABLE 1Descending Order of Diction Variables Used in Presidential TV Campaign Commercials,

1952-2008 (N = 1,227 Commercials)

RQ3 dealt with the rhetorical differences in the commercials ofincumbents versus non-incumbents. Of the fifteen presidential cam-paigns between 1952 and 2008, nine involved incumbent presidents. Sixincumbent presidents (Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton,and George W. Bush) were re-elected, while three (Ford, Carter, andGeorge H.W. Bush) failed to secure a second term. Table 3 shows thatthere were twelve rhetorical variables with significant differencesbetween incumbents and challengers, and it also presents the results forthe first two hypotheses.

H1 predicted that incumbents should have higher scores onAccomplishment than non-incumbents. This hypothesis was supportedby the data (t = 1.99, df = 686.6, p [2-tailed] < .05).

Likewise, H2 predicted that incumbents should have higherscores on Satisfaction. This hypothesis was also supported (t = 2.71, df= 683.8, p [2-tailed] < .01). The results of these two hypotheses also sup-port the predictive validity of Diction as a political advertising researchtool.

RQ4, the primary focus of this study, asked: To what extent havethere been substantive rhetorical differences in the TV commercials ofwinners versus losers? Table 4 shows that a large number of variables(fifteen out of forty) were statistically significant. Because the primaryfocus of this study was to compare the TV commercials of presidentialwinners versus losers, it is important to examine the individual vari-ables of Table 4 in detail and attempt to extract the political meaning ofthe results. In doing this we found striking differences in the lexicalchoices of winners versus losers.

Winners were significantly higher on the following variables:• Collectives – words such as coalition, community, country, economy,

family, group, housing, public, race, team.

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Diction Democratic Republican df t/Sig.Variable Mean Mean (2-tailed)

Familiarity 112.33 105.91 1,010.4 4.21***Numerical Terms 15.43 12.40 1,167.3 3.21***Inspiration 5.83 6.77 988.1 2.18*Communication 11.50 12.91 886.1 2.28*Spatial Awareness 9.67 8.37 1,018.3 2.52*Present Concern 15.45 13.95 1,058.2 2.45*Diversity 1.02 .71 1,181.7 2.23*Motion 2.97 2.39 1,086.6 2.25*Variety .68 .70 1,100.8 3.13**Complexity 4.59 4.67 935.9 3.66***Realism 49.37 48.72 982.8 3.74***

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

TABLE 2Significant Rhetorical Differences in the Presidential TV Commercials

of Democrats and Republicans (N = 1,227 Commercials)


• Inspiration – words such as beauty, courage, dedication, faith, good-ness, honor, hope, ideals, liberty, love, loyalty, pride, security, trust.

• Accomplishment – words such as achieve, campaign, change, deliver,develop, employees, establish, expand, finish, generate, improve, organize, pro-duce, results, work, workers.

• Temporal Terms – words such as decade, elderly, elders, history,immediate, lifetime, memories, morning, present, senior, seniors, timeless,today, tomorrow, tradition.

• Concreteness – a broad array of more than 700 specific nouns.• Centrality – words such as conformity, core, custom, destiny, endur-

ing, foundation, humanity, mainstream, majority, primary, reliable, standard,steadfast, steady, unified, unify.

• Rapport – words such as affirm, agree, comply, confirm, conform, con-sent, devote, embrace, empathy, endorse, pledge, pledges, tolerance, unison,willing.

• Exclusion – words such as alone, discard, displace, divisions, exclude,foreign, ignore, inequality, isolationism, opposed, prejudice, racism, reject.

Winners were also significantly higher on the calculated variableComplexity and the master variables Activity and Commonality.

By contrast, the TV commercials of losers were significantly high-er on:

• Self-reference – the nine words I, I’d, I’ll, I’m, I’ve, me, mine, my,myself.

• Tenacity – words such as be, did, didn’t, doesn’t, don’t, hadn’t, hasn’t,haven’t, must, shall, we’ll, you’ll.

• Human Interest – words such as brother, child, children, dad, daugh-ters, friends, grandchildren, housewife, husband, kids, men, mom, our, our-selves, parents, people, sons, us, we, wife, women, you, yours.

Diction Incumbent Non-incumbent df t/Sig.Variable Mean Mean (2-tailed)

Ambivalence 14.14 11.58 718.8 3.72***Leveling Terms 6.23 5.29 723.1 2.42*Satisfaction 4.30 3.39 683.8 2.71**Accomplishment 13.59 12.18 686.6 1.99*Passivity 5.87 4.71 683.8 2.96**Present Concern 13.21 15.57 865.7 3.90***Human Interest 36.90 33.27 743.5 3.11**Cooperation 2.62 3.32 804.8 2.54*Denial 5.91 7.02 744.0 2.65**Insistence 54.54 63.43 1,053.0 2.46*Optimism 50.04 49.63 723.2 2.33*Realism 49.34 49.00 798.9 1.99*

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.


of Incumbents and Non-incumbents (N = 1,227 Commercials)

• Denial – words such as aren’t, can’t, didn’t, don’t, haven’t, no,nobody, none, shouldn’t, wasn’t, weren’t, won’t.

Table 5 presents the results of the key findings from Table 4 bro-ken out by incumbency and party. Of the seven Diction variables withsignificant differences, Republican incumbents were highest onTenacity, Human Interest, and Commonality. Republican non-incum-bents were highest on Denial and Complexity. By comparison,Democratic candidates were lowest on all seven variables. Democraticincumbents were lowest on Tenacity, Rapport, Denial, andCommonality, while Democratic non-incumbents were lowest onHuman Interest, Concreteness, and Complexity.

Based on these findings, a clear lexical picture begins to emerge.First, while winners were significantly higher on Collectives (i.e., other-directed references to groups), losers were significantly higher on Self-reference (i.e., a self-directed I/me/my approach). Second, winnerswere significantly higher on “positive” lexical terms pertaining toInspiration and Accomplishment, while losers were significantly higheron the largely negative variables Tenacity and Denial. Supporting this“positive” interpretation, winners were also significantly higher onRapport, a largely positive lexical variable. Third, winners tended touse lexical terms pertaining to specific Temporal terms and specificConcrete terms. Fourth, winners in effect used a dual-track lexicalapproach: specifics, on one hand, and the higher order abstractions rep-resented by the lexical variable Centrality, on the other hand. Fifth, bothwinners and losers were significantly higher on one variable that seems

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of Winners Versus Losers (N = 1,227 Commercials)

Diction Winner Loser df t/Sig.Variable Mean Mean (2-tailed)

Self-reference 9.21 11.91 1,179.6 3.81***Tenacity 28.64 32.77 1,221.2 4.52***Collectives 9.96 8.59 1,219.3 3.05**Inspiration 6.72 5.65 1,211.5 2.58**Accomplishment 14.01 11.15 1,209.9 4.53***Temporal Terms 17.16 15.28 1,219.9 2.62**Human Interest 32.40 36.52 1,181.2 3.78***Concreteness 30.90 28.36 1,210.3 2.78**Centrality 2.47 1.79 1,184.3 2.94**Rapport 3.43 2.62 1,206.5 2.67**Exclusion 1.70 1.17 1,163.6 2.64**Denial 6.22 7.16 1,220.3 2.44*Complexity 4.67 4.57 1,215.2 4.51***Activity 50.93 50.48 1,223.8 3.00**Commonality 50.61 50.26 1,214.5 2.22*

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.


counter-intuitive. Winners were significantly higher on the seeminglynegative variable Exclusion, while losers were significantly higher on theseemingly positive variable Human Interest. Given the pattern of theother findings above, one would expect the results on these two variablesto be reversed. Sixth, the results of Table 5 suggest that Democratic can-didates “talk differently” in their commercials, at least in terms of theseven variables with significant differences. This, of course, suggestsareas of future research to determine to what extent this might carry overto other forms of partisan communication, especially campaign speeches.

The exploratory part of this study investigated H3 and RQ5-9. H3predicted that the master variable Certainty would go down over time.This hypothesis was based on Hart and Childer’s44 study of verbal cer-tainty in presidential speeches from 1948 through 2000. They found asharp drop in Certainty, and the present study did the same. Thus, H3was supported (r = -.075, p [2-tailed] < .01). Therefore, it can be said thatboth presidential speeches and presidential commercials declined inCertainty in the last half-century.

RQ5 asked to what extent Inspiration scores increased over time.Results indicated that candidates in general used slightly moreInspiration over time (r = .067, p (2-tailed) < .01), but it is the individualpeaks and valleys which are of greater interest. Figure 1 shows a spike inInspiration in the 1960 campaign, followed by a drop in the next three

TABLE 5One Way ANOVA of Political Party and Incumbency Scoreson Selected Lexical Variables (N = 1,227 Commercials)

Diction Democratic Means Republican Means F Sig.Variable Incumb. Non-Incumb. Incumb. Non-Incumb.

Self-reference 9.13 10.98 10.94 10.18 1.150 .328Tenacity 28.93c 30.35a 34.21acd 29.73d 4.395 .004**Collectives 8.52 9.68 9.51 8.88 1.324 .265Inspiration 5.53 5.92 6.94 6.65 1.842 .138Accomplishment 12.67 12.37 14.39 11.83 2.292 .076Temporal Terms 16.11 15.97 17.61 15.95 .948 .417Human Interest 36.41 33.10 37.32 33.58 3.294 .020*Concreteness 32.15a 28.34a 29.48 30.75 3.128 .025*Centrality 2.04 1.97 2.34 2.36 .802 .493Rapport 1.79cd 3.48c 3.34d 2.76 5.061 .002**Exclusion 1.91 1.48 1.08 1.34 1.824 .141Denial 5.55a 6.84 6.22 7.33a 2.965 .031*Complexity 4.68c 4.56cd 4.60e 4.72de 13.676 .000***Activity 50.67 50.62 50.81 50.84 .562 .640Commonality 49.82abc 50.50a 50.64c 50.56b 3.678 .012*

* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

abMeans with the same superscript differ significantly at p < .05.cdeMeans with the same superscript differ significantly at p < .01.

540

campaigns, and then a striking rise in Inspiration from 1972 through2004. Interestingly, Obama and McCain commercials in 2008 reversedthe upward trend and brought the curve sharply downward.

Since the primary focus of this study was on analyzing the rhetor-ical differences in the TV commercials of winners versus losers, andsince this study was partially exploratory in nature, we next asked(RQ6): Were the Inspiration scores of winners higher than those of los-ers? Figure 2 presents the Inspiration scores for each of the fifteen cam-paigns. It can be seen that the scores are significantly higher (t = 2.61,df = 1,212.9, p [2-tailed] < .01) for winners than losers in nine of the fif-teen campaigns.

RQ7 asked to what extent Accomplishment scores increased overtime. Results indicated that Accomplishment scores increased modestly(r = .105, p [2-tailed] < .001) over the fifty-six years studied. Of greaterinterest to this study, RQ8 asked to what extent the Accomplishmentscores of winners were higher than those of losers. The meanAccomplishment score for winners was significantly higher at 14.01 (t =4.53, df = 1,211.4, p [2-tailed] < .001), while the mean for losers was 11.15.This suggests that Accomplishment is an important lexical variable tostudy in future elections.

Finally, RQ9 asked to what extent Rapport scores increasedover time, and the results did show a significant increase (r = .247, p [2-tailed] < .001). Figure 3 shows a moderate increase in Rapport from 1952through 2000, and then a striking jump in Campaign 2004 (GeorgeW. Bush versus John Kerry). There was also a significant difference

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FIGURE 1Trend Line Showing the Rise and Fall of Inspiration over Fifteen Presidential Campaigns


in Rapport between the commercials of winners versus losers (t = 2.67,df = 1,206.5, p [2-tailed] < .01). The respective means were 3.43 and 2.62.

The large database used in this study provided a rich source ofrhetorical data to be analyzed by the Diction software. The most impor-tant findings of this study were summarized in Table 4, and these find-ings provide clear distinctions between the lexical variables of winningversus losing commercials. Winners were more group- or collective-ori-ented, while losers were I- or self-oriented. Winners were much morepositive overall, and emphasized Inspiration and Accomplishment andRapport. The major unexplained exception to this was that losers weresignificantly higher on the “warm and positive” variable HumanInterest.

The master variable Certainty declined in presidential commercialsin the last half-century, and this decline parallels a similar decline foundby Hart and Childers45 in presidential speeches. Future research, per-haps of a qualitative nature, is needed to try to understand the meaning

FIGURE 2Inspiration Levels in the TV Commercials of Winners Versus Losers

over Fifteen Presidential Campaigns

DiscussionandConclusions

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of this parallel decline. Why have presidential candidates of both par-ties become less certain in their communications in the last half century?

Inspiration in presidential TV commercials has been on the rise. Infact, Figure 1 shows that the increase has been striking from Campaign1972 through Campaign 2004, but the rhetoric of both the Obama andMcCain commercials sharply reversed this trend. Figure 2 shows thatthe Obama and McCain commercials were almost equally “uninspiring”in terms of lexical choices. The “uninspiring” findings on TV commer-cials of Barack Obama were surprising, given that supporters and oppo-nents of Obama alike generally agree that he is an exceptionally inspir-ing speaker. Thus it was natural to expect that this would show up in hisTV commercials. It did not.

The trend lines for Inspiration and Accomplishment over the fif-teen campaigns were both positive and statistically significant, suggest-ing that both variables merit study in future campaigns. Finally, the lex-ical variable of Rapport was definitely on the rise for the fifteen cam-paigns analyzed by this study, with, by far, the sharpest rise inCampaign 2004. Rapport is therefore another lexical variable thatdeserves future scholarly attention.

Limitations. This study of course has several limitations. First,the most obvious limitation is that we studied only words, not visuals.It was pointed out above that, while it is a truism that “television is avisual medium,” a strong case can be made that it is words, however,

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FIGURE 3Trend Line Showing the Rise of Rapport in Presidential TV Commercials, 1952-2008


which carry the narrative.46 Second, while the effect sizes for most of theindividual statistical tests in this study would be considered small bynormal statistical conventions, even small effect sizes in an exploratorylongitudinal study can suggest trends and produce interesting resultsworthy of follow-up. Third, it was impossible for our study (or any con-tent analysis) to factor in how many times the various commercials randuring the campaigns, and therefore the impact they had. Fourth, ourstudy included only commercials sponsored by the political parties andcandidate campaigns; it did not include third-party commercials. Inspite of these limitations, perhaps the major contribution of this study isthat the findings can serve as a fertile source of hypotheses for futurestudies.

Future Research. The methods and results of this study certainlycall for an extension study of presidential Campaign 2012 commercials.Those interested in congressional or state-level races could also replicatethis study.

One of the most interesting areas for future research would be toconduct a replication of this study with the major comparison being TVcommercials versus Internet commercials. Each campaign in recentyears has seemed to place increased emphasis on Internet commercials,and Internet commercials often take a much more hard-line attack mode.The same approach used in this study could also be used to study cam-paign speeches and debates. Another interesting, though challenging,idea for future research would be to develop a method for quantifying“visual inspiration” in the commercials, and then comparing that with“lexical inspiration.”

In conclusion, Diction, as employed in this study, provided insightsinto the rhetorical choices in presidential TV commercials that wouldhave been almost impossible to code manually. While this study doesnothing to change the truism that “Television is a visual medium,” itstrongly supports another major truism that “Words [still] mean things.”The study has documented striking differences in the lexical choices ofwinners versus losers. Based on a longitudinal analysis of fifteen cam-paigns, it provides new insights to help us understand the lexical vari-ables associated with winning versus losing the presidency.

NOTES

1. Kathleen H. Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency: A History andCriticism of Presidential Advertising (NY: Oxford University Press, 1996),517.

2. Lynda L. Kaid, “ Political Advertising: A Summary of ResearchFindings,’’ in The Handbook of Political Marketing, ed. Bruce Newman(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 423-38; Lynda L. Kaid, ‘‘PoliticalAdvertising,” in The Handbook of Political Communication Research, ed.Lynda L. Kaid (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), 155-202; WilliamL. Benoit, Seeing Spots: A Functional Analysis of Presidential TelevisionAdvertising from 1952-1996 (NY: Praeger, 1999); William L. Benoit, “A


Functional Analysis of Political Advertising Across Media, 1998,”Communication Studies 51 (fall 2000): 274-95; Roderick P. Hart,Verbal Styleand the Presidency: A Computer-Based Analysis (NY: Academic Press,1984); Roderick P. Hart and Jay P. Childers, “Verbal Certainty inAmerican Politics: An Overview and Extension,” Presidential StudiesQuarterly 34 (September 2004): 516-34.

3. Gertrude J. Robinson, “Television News and the Claim toFacticity: Quebec’s Referendum Coverage,” in Interpreting Television:Current Research Perspectives, ed. William D. Rowland and Bruce Watkins(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1984), 199-221, at 200.

4. Robinson, “Television News and the Claim to Facticity,” 206.5. James W. Ceaser, Glen E. Thurow, Jeffrey K. Tulis, and Joseph M.

Bessette, “The Rise of the Rhetorical Presidency,” Presidential StudiesQuarterly 11 (spring 1981): 158-71; Jeffrey K. Tulis, The RhetoricalPresidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

6. Hart, Verbal Style and the Presidency.7. Kathleen H. Jamieson and David S. Birdsell, Presidential Debates:

The Importance of Creating an Informed Electorate (NY: Oxford UniversityPress, 1988); Dennis T. Lowry, Janet A. Bridges, and Paul A. Barefield,“Effects of Network TV ‘Instant Analysis and Querulous Criticism’Following the First Bush-Dukakis Debate,” Journalism Quarterly 67 (win-ter 1990): 814-25; Roderick P. Hart and Sharon E. Jarvis, “PoliticalDebate: Forms, Styles, and Media,” American Behavioral Scientist 50(August 1997): 1095-1122; William L. Benoit, Glenn J. Hansen, andRebecca M. Verser, “A Meta-analysis of the Effects of Viewing U.S.Presidential Debates,” Communication Monographs 70 (December 2003):335-50.

8. Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency.9. Kathleen H. Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The

Transformation of Political Speechmaking (NY: Oxford University Press,1988).10. Kathleen H. Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and

Democracy (NY: Oxford University Press, 1992).11. John C. Tedesco, Lynda L. Kaid, and Lori M. McKinnon,

“Network Adwatches: Policing the 1996 Primary and General ElectionPresidential Ads,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 44 (fall 2000):541-55; Courtney Bennett, “Assessing the Impact of Ad Watches on theStrategic Decision-Making Process: A Comparative Analysis of AdWatches in the 1992 and 1996 Presidential Elections,” AmericanBehavioral Scientist 40 (August 1997): 1161-82; Young Min, “Intertwiningof Campaign News and Advertising: The Content and Electoral Effectsof Newspaper Ad Watches,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly79 (winter 2002): 927-44.12. William L. Benoit, “The Functional Approach to Presidential

Television Spots: Acclaiming, Attacking, Defending 1952-2000,”Communication Studies 51 (summer 2001): 109-26; William L. Benoit,“State of the Economy and Presidential Television Spots,” Communica-tion Research Reports 20 (summer 2003): 269-76; William L. Benoit, “Topicof Presidential Campaign Discourse and Election Outcome,” Western


Journal of Communication 67 (winter 2003): 97-112; David Airne andWilliam L. Benoit, “Political Television Advertising in Campaign 2000,”Communication Quarterly 53 (October 2005): 473-92.13. L. Patrick Devlin, “Contrasts in Presidential Campaign Commer-

cials of 1996,” American Behavioral Scientist 40 (8, 1997): 1058-84; L. PatrickDevlin, “Contrasts in Presidential Campaign Commercials of 2000,”American Behavioral Scientist 44 (August 2001): 2338-69; Edwin Diamondand Stephen Bates, The Spot: The Rise of Political Advertising on Television(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984); Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency;Kaid, ‘‘Political Advertising.”14. Kaid, “Political Advertising: A Summary of Research Findings”;

Kaid, “Political Advertising.”15. Lynda L. Kaid and Dorothy K. Davidson, “Elements of Videostyle:

Candidate Presentation Through Television Advertising,’’ in NewPerspectives on Political Advertising, ed. Lynda Lee Kaid, Dan Nimmo, andKeith R. Sanders (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,1986), 184-209; Lynda L. Kaid and Anne Johnston, Videostyle in Presiden-tial Campaigns: Style and Content of Televised Political Advertising (Westport,CT: Praeger/Greenwood, 2001).16. Benoit, Seeing Spots.17. Kaid, “Political Advertising: A Summary of Research Findings”;

Kaid, “Political Advertising.”18. Benoit, Seeing Spots; Benoit, “A Functional Analysis of Political

Advertising.”19. John Ballotti and Lynda L. Kaid, “Examining Verbal Style in

Presidential Campaign Spots,” Communication Studies 51 (September,2000): 258-73.20. Hart, Verbal Style and the Presidency.21. Hart, Verbal Style and the Presidency.22. Sharon E. Jarvis, “Partisan Patterns in Presidential Campaign

Speeches, 1948-2000,” Communication Quarterly 52 (4, 2004): 403-19.23. Dennis T. Lowry and Md. Abu Naser, “Presidential TV Commer-

cials: Isolating the Key Lexical Characteristics of ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers,’1952-2004” (paper presented at the annual convention of AEJMC, Boston,2009).24. LeAnn M. Brazeal and William L. Benoit, “On the Spot: A Func-

tional Analysis of Congressional Television Spots, 1980-2004,”Communication Studies 57 (December 2006): 401-20.25. John W. Tukey, EDA: Exploratory Data Analysis (Reading, MA:

Addison-Wesley, 1977).26. Earl R. Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 12th ed. (Belmont,

CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2010), 92.27. Hart and Childers, “Verbal Certainty.”28. Most ads were taken from the Annenberg/Pew Archive of

Presidential Campaign Discourse, a project of the Annenberg School forCommunication and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of theUniversity of Pennsylvania. This archive contains transcripts of televi-sion commercials of twelve general election campaigns from 1952through 1996. Commercials for the 1964 campaign of Barry Goldwater


are not part of this archive; they were obtained from the Museum of TheMoving Image: The Living Room Candidate Web site. The Campaign2000 spots for the Al Gore and George W. Bush campaigns were takenfrom the multi-media e-book “Sourcebook for the 2000 PresidentialElection,” produced by the Political Communication Lab at StanfordUniversity. Transcripts for Campaign 2004 were obtained fromCNN.com’s election archive. The 2008 campaign spots were collectedfrom three sources. In addition to the Living Room Candidate Web sitementioned earlier, we used the Election Guide 2008 Web resources oftheNew York Times, and theWeb archive of the “2008 Race for TheWhiteHouse” of the George Washington University. We excluded a few com-mercials from the corpus for several reasons. The Annenberg archivecontains a few commercials produced in Spanish, which we did not ana-lyze for this study. We excluded primary campaign commercialsarchived in the CNN and Stanford sites, as well as commercials forthird-party candidates. Commercials produced by third-party organi-zations on behalf of candidates were likewise excluded.29. Diction User Manual, “Diction 5.0: The Text-Analysis Program

User’s Manual,” 2000, www.dictionsoftware.com/files/dictionmanual.pdf.30. Hart, Verbal Style and the Presidency, 17.31. Diction User Manual.32. The respective formulas are as follows:Commonality = [Centrality + Cooperation + Rapport] – [Diversity +

Exclusion + Liberation]Certainty = [Tenacity + Leveling + Collectives + Insistence] –

[Numerical Terms + Ambivalence + Self Reference + Variety]Optimism = [Praise + Satisfaction + Inspiration] – [Blame + Hardship

+ Denial]Realism = [Familiarity + Spatial Awareness + Temporal Awareness +

Present Concern + Human Interest + Concreteness] – [Past Concern +Complexity]33. The use of “common words in the English language.” Diction

User Manual.34. “Any sum, date, or product specifying the facts in a given case.”

Diction User Manual.35. “Terms referring to geographical entities, physical distances, and

modes of measurement.” Diction User Manual.36. “A selective list of present-tense verbs . . . which occur with great

frequency in standard American English. The dictionary is not topic-specific but points instead to general physical activity . . , social opera-tions . . , and task-performance . . . .” Diction User Manual.37. “Words describing individuals or groups of individuals differing

from the norm.” Diction User Manual.38. “Terms connoting human movement . . , physical processes . . ,

speed . . , and modes of transit . . . .” Diction User Manual.39. “Language describing tangible, immediate, recognizable matters

that affect people’s everyday lives.” Diction User Manual.40. “Abstract virtues deserving of universal respect. Most of the


terms in this dictionary are nouns isolating desirable moral qualities(faith, honesty, self-sacrifice, virtue) as well as attractive personal qualities(courage, dedication, wisdom, mercy). Social and political ideals are alsoincluded: patriotism, success, education, justice.” Diction User Manual.41. “Terms referring to social interaction, both face-to-face . . . and

mediated . . . .” Diction User Manual.42. “This measure conforms to Wendell Johnson’s (1946) Type-Token

Ratio, which divides the number of different words in a passage by thepassage’s total words. A high score indicates a speaker’s avoidance ofoverstatement and a preference for precise, molecular statements.”Diction User Manual.43. “A simple measure of the average number of characters-per-word

in a given input file. Borrows Rudolph Flesch’s (1951) notion that convo-luted phrasings make a text’s ideas abstract and its implications unclear.”Diction User Manual.44. Hart and Childers, “Verbal Certainty.”45. Hart and Childers, “Verbal Certainty.”46. Robinson, “Television News and the Claim to Facticity.”

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