Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, no surprise, sounds the most “feminine” of the hopefuls on the campaign trail, commonly using phrases like “incredibly grateful” and “open our hearts.” More surprising, the second-most “feminine” speaker is Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who often talks about “my beautiful family” and “lasting relationships.”
However, unlike Clinton, Trump is just as likely to speak in overtly “masculine” language, especially favoring phrases like “absolutely destroy” and often using insulting words that tend to alienate women and many men: “moron,” “imbecile” and “loser.”
This is based on 126,362 words in publicly available speeches by the candidates through March. 3 and in four debates analyzed by Textio, a company that uses software to evaluate language.
Illustration: Kevin Sheu
Textio ranked the candidates’ language in various areas, including gender associations, references to minorities and the frequency with which they talked about themselves, versus talking directly to voters.
The company determines which phrases appeal to men or women based on which get statistically significant response rates from either sex. The way the candidates speak influences voters’ perception of them, and could reveal clues about their core beliefs and which voters they are trying to sway.
Clinton’s language is often about coming together, and she mentions family five times as often as any other candidate. Trump’s language is the most polarized between masculine and feminine, though he has been sounding more feminine over the campaign, perhaps to try to appeal to female voters.
There can be a double standard for women, linguists say.
“If men add these little feminine flourishes, they have it both ways — they get admired for being tough and yet people like them,” said Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University and author of You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.
“There’s no question we have two standards that we use in evaluating male and female speakers,” said John Locke, a linguistics professor at City University of New York and author of Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk So Differently.
“If she speaks forcefully, people will say she’s strident or harsh. When a man does the same thing, we say that he’s speaking with appropriate command,” he said.
Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is the most masculine and aggressive speaker of all, Textio found, and much more masculine than Clinton is feminine. He rarely uses feminine words, favoring “relentless,” “hunt down” and “totally destroy.”
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders’ average language is more masculine than Trump’s, but not as masculine as Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s. Sanders’ speech has been getting more masculine over time.
Companies use Textio’s software to analyze job listings for bias, to see which groups of applicants they might turn off or attract. Customers have also applied it to e-mails, syllabuses, performance reviews and other documents. Textio uses data from all these sources to figure out which language is more feminine or masculine.
Software is imperfect at understanding human language because it misses important clues like gestures, tone of voice and facial expressions, said Robin Lakoff, professor emerita of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who in 1975 published a book, Language and Woman’s Place, that led to a variety of research on language and gender.
Based on these nonverbal cues, she concluded that Trump was the most feminine speaker of all the candidates, even more than Clinton — he gestures a lot, is very expressive, poses statements as questions and repeatedly explains himself, all of which are commonly feminine, she said.
Also in line with the Textio analysis, she said that Cruz spoke in the most masculine way, with few gestures or expressions, and with flat intonation and short, declarative sentences.
For every 1,000 words they say, the candidates typically tell four stories about people — their family members and people they have met on the campaign trail. Each tells more stories about men than women. Clinton talks about men three times as often as she does women, and Rubio 18 times as often. Sometimes it seems the only woman Rubio tells stories about is his mother.
When Trump tells stories about women, they are usually about his wife and daughter. Clinton’s stories have the broadest range of subjects, though she mentions her husband slightly more than she talks about anyone else.
All the candidates speak in violent language — commonly using words like “destroy,” “fight” and “obliterate” — though the targets of their aggression vary.
It is evidence that for the job of commander-in-chief, voters expect militaristic language, Tannen said.
The Republicans consistently say they want to destroy Islamic State, terrorists, “threats to our freedom” and “our enemies.”
Sanders talks about obliterating the wage gap and corporate greed, and about people he says want to destroy US democracy. Clinton, who talks about destruction least, uses these words to describe what she wants to do to barriers to progress, obstacles and IS.
The candidates who refer to minorities most are Sanders and Clinton, and the references are always positive. Trump is the only candidate who speaks about minorities more negatively than positively, and over half the negative references are about people from Mexico.
The candidates often talk about themselves or use the collective “we” — these first-person phrases come up an average of 125 times per 1,000 words. However, most also spend a lot of time talking to voters using the word “you” — they use second-person language an average of 55 times per 1,000 words.
Less so Trump: He talks about himself more than any other candidate, using “I” or “we” 212 times per 1,000 words, and addresses voters directly less than anyone, 42 times per 1,000 words. In that way, his language is more like that of a business tycoon than a politician, according to Textio’s analysis.
The previous presidential candidate who spoke most similarly to Trump? Ross Perot — an independent presidential candidate in 1992 and the Reform Party presidential candidate in 1996.
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