Last week, Politico published an analysis of Barack Obama’s language. The words he used most often were “America”, “Health” and “Economy” (Politico included “American” in the count along with “America”). This prompts the obvious question: what are the favourite words of our own Kevin Rudd?
Fortunately, the prime minster’s website publishes transcripts of all Kevin’s public utterances (although this does not include his speeches in parliament). There is a lot there and the Stubborn Mule was lucky enough to have OldFuzz do the hard work, assembling over 400 pages of text constituting Kevin Rudd’s speeches from 2009. If he has the time and inclination, prior years may follow. And here is what it looks like as a word cloud.
It is no surprise that, just as Barrack Obama is fond of saying “America” and “American”, so too Kevin Rudd likes to say “Australia” and “Australian”. He also throws in “Australians” reasonably frequently. It seems in keeping with his public servant mandarin style that Rudd uses the word “Government” more liberally than does Obama. While “global”, “world”, “national”, “economy” and “economic” are all appropriately big-picture words for a prime minister to be using.
There are a few intriguing words looming from the cloud. It seems that Mr Rudd says “also” a lot. Given that this analysis is case sensitive*, we can also glean that Rudd frequently starts his sentences with the word “Building”. It may seem fleeting strange that the word “cent” appears so prominently, but then again it is matched in size by the word “per”, so we are just seeing common use of “per cent” not some homespun wisdom about watching the small denominations of money.
So, peruse the cloud at your leisure and make of it what you will. Of course, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
UPDATE: an abridged version of this post has appeared on The Punch.
* Here is a case-insensitive version of the word cloud.
Possibly Related Posts (automatically generated):
- Malcolm Turnbull’s Word Cloud (20 August 2009)
- Taking It Too Far: Verb and Adjective Clouds (21 August 2009)
- The Big Arms Traders (1 August 2009)
- OpenAustralia (22 June 2008)
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very interesting Mule. Seems Rudd’s not so afraid of the word “billion” after all. However, as he won Office largely on the back of his green credentials, it’s unfortunate that “climate” or “change” aren’t visible….
The difference in use of “government” by Obama and Rudd probably stems from the difference in the structure of government, in particular the separation of the executive and legislative branches in the US, which would lead to Obama saying “administration” in many places where Rudd says “government”.
Mark: you make a good point about the different structure of government here and in the US. Although it’s interesting to see that “Government” ranks fairly high in Obama’s list (about 6th), but I cannot see “administration” there at all.
Cant see “sorry” – - oh but that was last year; cant see gay or lesbian, not too many “muslim” nor “America” & not one “China”?
where’s “working families”? I want to see the private list with all the swear words
APJ: if you get hold of the private list, I will analyze it!
it will be more meaningful if we can compare this with what John Howards said
This comment was originally posted on Reddit
If you also want to include the text of what he says in parliament, check out Open Australia. They have an API and xml data for you to peruse as well.
Government, Australia, Economy. A K-Rudd word cloud: http://www.stubbornmule.net/2009/08/kevin/
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Are you able to do a breakdown into nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives?
As would be expected the most frequent words here are nouns. It would be interesting to see what are the most frequent action and descriptive words.
It would be even more interesting if this was done for Malcolm Turnbull as well so we could compare.
FYI, I linked here, for the first time, from http://www.crikey.com.au today.
disappointed not to see “in due season” feature more prominently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGq9p8Yi8kc
Beautiful graph Sean with beautiful colours. Sadly, not beautiful rhetoric though.
I couldn’t find full employment – even when I increased the size of the picture. Still some of the words remained too small to read but then if they appear at that point they reflect the priority – next to zero.
best wishes
bill
You know something?
(OK … Havent heard that too much lately … during the election it was Kev’s pet way of changing the subject)
Guess what
( Kev’s way of showing that he really, no honestly, really really, is a genuine all-round nice guy.)
… in fact just about everything that Kev says seems to be scripted by an advertising consultant.
“On the question of” words, you have to “ask the question” why doesn’t question appear in the above list?
Old Kev is very fond of asking himself questions afterall.
I have now added a word cloud for Malcolm Turnbull. I am nothing if not balanced.
Lettuce All Rejoice: I will investigate the question of usage of nouns, verbs, etc. Stay tuned.
Thanks right down to my balsamic sox, Mule, I am curly with curiosity..
Lettuce All Rejoice: here is a first cut of Kevin Rudd’s verbs. Turnbull will follow.
And here is the Turnbull verb cloud.
I think these pieces are intriguing. Though, wouldn’t it be better, and more effective, to represent those word clouds in a graph? With the words along the bottom and the usage on the vertical axis. I think your point would be presented much stronger than while the words are represented in a confusing ‘word cloud’
Amanda: There’s no doubt that there’s an element of form over function in the word cloud. Having said that, believe it or not, the cloud above includes the top 800 words in terms of usage. While I’ll admit that some of them are a bit too small to read, even 100 words would be a bit unwieldy in a standard bar chart. Overall, I would say that the word cloud does effectively invite casual browsing, but I wouldn’t argue that it is a tool for rigorous analysis.