scholarly journals Emotion and Reason in Political Language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gloria Gennaro ◽  
Elliott Ash
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Opposition Party

Abstract This paper studies the use of emotion and reason in political discourse. Adopting computational-linguistics techniques to construct a validated text-based scale, we measure emotionality in 6 million speeches given in U.S. Congress over the years 1858-2014. Intuitively, emotionality spikes during times of war and is highest in speeches about patriotism. In the time series, emotionality was relatively low and stable in earlier years but increased significantly starting in the late 1970s. Across Congress Members, emotionality is higher for Democrats, for women, for ethnic/religious minorities, for the opposition party, and for members with ideologically extreme roll-call voting records.

A Further Look at Universalism and Partisanship in Congressional Roll Call Voting

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Gaines ◽  
Brian R. Sala
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Negative Correlation ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Legislative Activity ◽  
The U.S

This note extends Melissa P. Collie's “Universalism and the Parties in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1921–80,” American Journal of Political Science 32, 4 (November 1988): 865–883. Detecting a strongly negative correlation between the time series of universalism and partisanship in roll call votes for the 67th through 96th U.S. Houses, Collie concluded that consensus and partisanship are alternative, rival means of organizing legislative activity. If robust, this finding ought not to be time- or chamber-specific: it should be in evidence over the whole (partisan) histories of both House and Senate, session by session. Moreover, the inverse relationship should persist under alternative operationalizations of both partisanship and universalism. Using several measures of partisanship and universalism, mostly based on roll call votes tabulated for sessions of Congress, we reassess this relationship for the 43rd through 105th Congresses. Collie's core finding persists for both chambers over the longer time span provided that one uses her measures. But results are weaker when sessions of Congress rather than Congresses are used as units of observation, and alternative operationalizations of partisanship and universalism do not strongly replicate the original finding.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Spatial Models ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Policy Space ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conventional Models

Spatial theory is divided between models of elections and models of roll call voting, neither of which alone can explain congressional polarization. This chapter discusses the history of spatial theory, why it is important to link the two strands of spatial models, and the value of reversing the order of conventional models. Conventional models place an election before policy decisions are made. This chapter proposes a unified spatial model of Congress in which the conventional order is reversed. First, there is a legislative session, then an election in which voters respond retrospectively, not to the locations candidates claim to hold, but to the bundles of roll call votes that incumbents cast to incrementally adopt their locations in the policy space. Such a model is best suited to explaining three puzzles: why do legislators adopt extreme positions, how do they win, and what role do parties play in the process?

Gender and Roll Call Voting in the New York State Assembly

1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle A. Barnello
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
York State

scholarly journals The Concept of “New Life” as a Powerful Psycholinguistic Element in the Inaugural Addresses of the U.S. Presidents

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (33) ◽  
pp. 8-16
Author(s):  
Maria Shutova ◽  
Svitlana Mudrynych
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Complex Needs ◽  
Inaugural Addresses ◽  
Word Combination ◽  
The Common ◽  
Special Approach ◽  
Ethnocultural Community ◽  
The U.S

The article deals with the concept of “new life” in the inaugural addresses of the U.S. presidents. A political language, as a reflection of people’s behavior in a certain ethnocultural community, is under the consideration. The investigation of political language caused the special approach to the analysis of lexical units that comprise the semantic group “novelty”. Based on this analysis a group of words that have the common sema “new” was singled out. The means of expressions and stylistic devices that presidents used to express the idea of “new life” were determined. The presidents make people believe in their ability to take new actions and change the situation, lead the nation to new, better life. Adjective “new” is often used by the presidents in context of the necessity to revitalize old values, to renew the nation spiritually. Analysis of inaugural address of American presidents showed that ideas of “new life” run through the entire speech of every president. In this article the role of the idea of “new life” in inaugural addresses of American presidents and means of its conveying has been studied. Model of a “new life” can be rather complex, needs more or less strong argumentation. The very word-combination the “better life” predetermines that this life should be different from the existing one, i.e. new. Thus concept of “new life” plays important role in political discourse. Consequently, our research may be understood not only as belonging to a narrow sphere of analysis of political discourse but to wider branch of science – linguistic political science.

Roll Call Voting by Congress

1982 ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
James B. Kau ◽  
Paul H. Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting

Political Discourse Strategies Used in Twitter during Gezi Park Protests

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nilay Yavuz ◽  
Naci Karkın ◽  
İsmet Parlak ◽  
Özlem Özdeşim Subay
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Political Interaction ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Discourse Strategies

Along with the growing use of twitter as a tool of political interaction, recently, there has also been an attention in the academia to understand and explain how and why politicians use twitter, and what its impact on the political outcomes are. On the other hand, there has been little analysis about the content of the tweets that politicians from different parties posted during major political events. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the discourse strategies that the top-level politicians of the party in power and of the main opposition party in Turkey used in their tweets during Gezi Park events in the summer of 2013. Findings from a hand-coded content analysis based on Van Dijk's framework (2006) indicate that while the most frequently used strategy was actor descriptions and categorization for both parties' politicians, burden strategy and lexicalization / metaphor strategy were used significantly more by the main opposition party politicians compared to the politicians of the party in power.

The Influence of Social Networks on the U.S. Senate Roll-Call Voting

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jang Hyun Kim ◽  
George A. Barnett ◽  
K. Hazel Kwon
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
United States Senate ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Party Membership ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Complex Models ◽  
Network Properties ◽  
Committee Membership ◽  
Relational Resources

Along with individuals’ ideological factors, various network properties play a crucial role in the process of legislators’ political decision making. Social networks among legislators provide relational resources through which communication occurs, exerting social influence among the members in a network. This paper examines six social relationships among the members of the 109th United States Senate as predictors of senatorial voting (roll call votes), shared committees, co-sponsorships, party membership, PAC donation, geographical contiguity, and internet hyperlinks, which may be considered as direct or indirect representations of communication networks. The six networks are modeled using MRQAP, and results suggest that roll call voting was predicted by party membership, co-sponsorship, geographical proximity, and PAC donation networks, while shared committee membership did not contribute significantly. As for hyperlinks, results were mixed, showing a small variance of contribution in a simpler model but not significant with more complex models.

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