A study examining global leaders' verbal diversity found that former President Donald Trump ranks higher for diversity in his speeches than President Joe Biden.
Wordfinder analyzed 861 speeches from 80 prominent figures over the past two decades "to uncover patterns in vocabulary and lexical diversity (how many different words they use)."
Examining Trump's speeches, Wordfinder observed a lexical diversity of approximately 27%, while Biden's speeches stood at around 26% — lower than most of the other world leaders whose speeches were examined. Elon Musk also exhibited a low lexical diversity, about 22%.
"This relatively low word variance could suggest a focused and consistent use of language in their communications," the study concluded.
Looking at the top three words used by Biden and Trump, Biden favored the term "president," emphasizing his role, while Trump's frequent use of "don't" showcased a distinct linguistic preference for "forbidding something." Meanwhile, shared terms included "people" and "going."
"Know" emerged as the most frequently used word in U.S. leaders' speeches, while "people" claimed the top spot among world leaders. The speeches Wordfinder analyzed "had an average of 33.6% unique words overall."
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and activist Ales Bialiatski claimed the lead on Wordfinder's ranking with a lexical diversity of 56.2%, meaning over half of the words employed in his speeches were unique.
The study examined speeches from politicians, authors, activists, and religious figures, employing detailed text analysis to unveil vocabulary and lexical diversity patterns.
Beyond lexical analysis, Wordfinder's study delved into sentiment, revealing an average score of 0.1443 across all speeches as measured on a scale from -1 (most negative) to 1 (most positive).
"This indicates a mostly neutral but slightly positive sentiment overall among leaders' speeches, a rhetorical balancing act that maintains engagement without veering into extremes," the study stated.
To conduct this comprehensive analysis, Wordfinder compiled 861 speeches over two decades from 80 global leaders, using YouTube URLs and transcribing them to text with BeeCut and YTScribe. Non-English speeches were translated before analysis, with at least five speeches per leader informing the findings.
Lexical diversity was determined based on each speech's percentage of unique words. The margin of error information was not available.
Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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