What Do a Politician's Speech Patterns Reveal?

Those of us who have cared for someone with Alzheimer's disease know all too well the pain of trying to communicate with someone who is losing their language abilities. People with the disease tend to use fewer different words and depend more on words like “something” and fillers like “um” and “you know.” Medications currently available only work to slow the disease’s progression—there is no cure or reversal, so any clues that give us earlier chances to intervene may be beneficial. One interesting analysis has demonstrated that language use might hold a clue. To test this type of idea, you would need a large sample of someone’s language use over a significant period of time, and it turns out that politicians give us an interesting chance for a case study.

Imagine being in a situation where every word you utter in public is put into the national historical record. That sounds terrifying, and thankfully, most of us don’t have to consider this. However, it is a matter of course for a small group of people: U.S. presidents. Presidents (and presidential candidates) speak in front of audiences of all sizes, often using prepared notes or full scripts produced by a speechwriting team. However, presidents also give press conferences in which they spend some amount of time speaking off the cuff as reporters ask them questions. What happens when a team of researchers explores speech patterns with this type of language data?

Source: Bingqian Li/Pexels

Ronald Reagan was president from 1981 to 1989. At the end of his presidency, he faced rumors about his mental fitness, but it wasn’t until five years after he left office that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Were there signs that his cognitive abilities were declining during his presidency? In 2015, researchers looked closely at his language patterns and discovered a few interesting changes. During press conferences later in his presidency, Reagan used fewer and fewer different words. This is not a measure of simply how many words a person says, but in the size of the vocabulary they use while speaking. Reagan also showed an increase in his use of nonspecific nouns (e.g., something, anything) and filler words (um, ah, well, so).

What if these changes are due to aging in general? Could it be a part of normal aging to use fewer different words and more fillers? To answer that question, the researchers compared Reagan’s press conference statements to those of George H. W. Bush, who was of a similar age and, of course, gave similar press conferences and had no known diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease during his life. They found no significant decrease in words or increase in nonspecific nouns and fillers.

This analysis suggests that there may be early signs of Alzheimer's in speech patterns of people who are not yet diagnosed. The type of changes seen in Reagan’s extemporaneous speaking cannot be explained solely by his age. Of course, this case study does not give us evidence enough to diagnose someone just based on their speech patterns, but it gives us hope that early indicators of the disease can be recognized in an attempt to find treatments.