full-steam ahead? Intrigued by such possibilities, this paper asks three basic questions:
(1) How did Bush’s style compare to that of his predecessors when seeking
reelection?
(2) Did Bush make important changes in linguistic behavior between 2000 and
2004?
(3) Can uniquely rhetorical factors help explain Bush’s reelection victory in
2004?
Answering such questions is important not because they can tell us something
about Bush-the-man (although they can) but because they can also shed light on the
institution of the presidency, the evolving nature of political campaigns, the sensitivities
and blindnesses of the electorate (and the mass media), the changing fabric of political
ideas in the United States, and, perhaps most important, the nature of American political
culture. As columnist Reanna Brooks (2003) observes, “people do not support Bush for
the power of his ideas, but out of the despair and desperation in their hearts. Whenever
people are in the grip of a desperate dependency, they won't respond to rational criticisms
of the people they are dependent on” (p. 22). The election of 2004 was a good laboratory
for testing Brooks’ hypothesis.
Methods
One of the major strengths of computerized language analysis is also its greatest
weakness: It lets a researcher examine great amounts of textual data almost instantly,
essentially translating words into numbers so that complex patterns of iteration and
interaction can be observed. In so doing, such programs radically remove lexical choices
9
Convention