Political Frequencies

Below is a partial word frequency list for Bush's 28 June speech on Iraq. Peter Pereira's post pointed me to the program I used, ConcApp.

I eliminated the smaller, high frequency words such as "a", "the", "this", etc. I left the pronouns—they strike me as critical in the rhetoric of unifying the "us" against the ominous "they."

The list seems easily to capture the major themes and line drawing of the speech.

Unique words = 990   Total words = 3688
Rank                Word Frequency
6                     we 76
8                    our 67
12                 Their 39
13                  they 39
14                  will 36
16                 Iraqi 32
17                  Iraq 29
18                Iraqis 24
20            terrorists 23
23                     I 21
25               freedom 20
28                Forces 19
32                 fight 15
35              military 14
36              security 14
37                    us 14
38                  free 13
41                people 13
42                troops 13
43                   war 13
44                   you 13
46                  them 12
48                 world 11
49                  your 11
51                   men 10
52               mission 10
55             Coalition 9
56                defend 9
57                   New 9
58                 these 9
60                 today 9
61               America 8
64                 enemy 8
65             elections 8
68                Nation 8

Not sure when I'll have time to get to it (the "to read" pile is tall enough to kill me in an earthquake), but I'm really looking forward to reading Paul Chilton's Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2004).

UPDATE Looks like I wasn't the only one who had the idea. See here and here.