It’s funny to me how everything the President does is analyzed to death, including this:
For the third consecutive State of the Union Address, Barack Obama spoke in clear, plain terms.
And for the third straight Address, the President’s speech was written at an eighth-grade level.
In Obama’s own words: “My message is simple.”
But was it too simplistic?
A Smart Politics study of the 70 orally delivered State of the Union Addresses since 1934 finds the text of Obama’s 2012 speech to have tallied the third lowest score on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, at an 8.4 grade level.
If you want the American people to understand, you better speak at an eighth grade level. Besides, only Frenchified coastal elites use dem big werds.
Villago Delenda Est
8th grade level is about right. Reaches most of the citizens out there, but is over the head of the teatards, particularly the assclown freshmen of the class of 2010.
donnah
What he needs to do is act it out with hand puppets so all of the mental midgets understand what he wants to do. So far they only seem to hear “tax and spend” when he says exactly the opposite.
There isn’t a hearing-comprehension level low enough for them.
General Stuck
After surfing some of the winger blogs on this finding, I wasn’t surprised to learn they took it as evidence that Obama is dumb. And they are the smart ones. This could come under 11 dimensional chess, or it could have a simple answer.
PaulW
Falls under the perview of “Keep It Simple, Stupid”
The easier it is for an audience to understand you – without stooping to insulting their intelligence – the better you do.
It’s interesting to note that Obama’s SOTU went over positively with some of the audience trackers. Even among Republican voters.
Joe Bauers
You gotta put the slop where the pigs can get at it.
David Koch
I waiting for the PL to denounce the hostage rescue as violation of pirate rights.
smintheus
@General Stuck: Wingnuts have been touting this stuff since Obama’s first SOTU. Pathetic.
flukebucket
I am as embarrassed as hell to say that I don’t know what this means. Is it a good or bad thing? Is grade level 8.4 too easy or too hard? Are they saying he needs to dumb it down a bit or pick it up some?
Zifnab
PaulW’s got it.
Third lowest? Are they suggesting that the speech was less readable because it was written more simply?
The elites are chaffing again. Doesn’t the President know that the State of the Union is for the Masters of the Universe to consume quietly in smoke-filled lavishly decorated back rooms? Can’t let politicians start appealing to people without Ivy League credentials, dontchaknow? The little people might think they are having a conversation with people in authority. They might forget that its their job to keep their heads down and let the big, rich, smart people do all the thinkin’.
Mike E
I thought it was PolitiFact there for a sec…Truthy
Linkmeister
@Joe Bauers: Oh, man. Where would you like your Internet delivered?
Chris
I don’t think he understands what “readability” means. The LOWER the grade level the more readable it is – because MORE people can read it.
The whole point when addressing the country is not to show off with a fancy command of big words, it’s to convey your message to the American people.
Also I have no doubt if the speech was any more complex we’d just be hearing them complain “Obama’s talking over the heads of the American people”.
smintheus
@PaulW: It’s more important to use clear, flowing language in a speech than in written pieces. This 8th grade level assessment means that Obama used few convoluted sentences with few subordinating clauses. That’s exactly the way to make yourself clear in a speech to a general audience.
scav
Kee-rist, I’ve been asked to dumb down some training documentation for professional truckers that clocked in at about 6th grade level.
Woodrowfan
according to a buddy who is a govie (US government worker here in DC) they are told to write at a 6th or 7th grade level so members of Congress and their staff can understand them.
and they were allowed to write at a higher level during the Bush I and Clinton admins than they could during Raygun and Bush II.
Villago Delenda Est
@Zifnab:
I believe you’ve found the nub of the gist, here.
Rosalita
and King George the Second’s overall intelligence level was 8th grade on a good day
Woodrowfan
@smintheus: good point
redshirt
Me fail English? Unpossible!
Now, GUMMINT OUT OF MY GRAMMAR!
Maude
Obama spoke clearly and people understood what he said. That makes him low level. GW Bush spoke in My Pet Goatese and that made him high level.
Obama has been talking about the issues he brought up in the SOTU for a long time. It was familiar ground and people are comfortable with what is familiar. That’s what made the speech so good. He was consistent. He made sense.
It doesn’t hurt that one the hostages rescued in Somalia was a gravely ill American woman.
hrprogressive
Considering that most of Congress’ reading level stops at the 4th or 5th grade level, I’m actually impressed.
jl
Interesting information, trivia, details, about famous (and infamous) people are analyzed to death.
Witness the extensive analysis of the historic John G. Cole pic release that unforgettable early morning in January 2012.
This kind of linguistic analysis is interesting and important for understanding some aspects of political science, linguistics, etc. And the type of analysis discussed in the link is clearly that kind of nerdy stuff.
However, if you are going to write a post about nerdy stuff, then you should follow nerd protocol and analysis, not make dumb statements.
There is a very clear downward trend in the scores, and I do not see how Obama is lower than expected given the trend.
So, the main point, R Obama talk to grade skool, seems out of place.
And dragging this kind of analysis into campaign tactics and decisions about whether a president is stoopid or not is dumb.
PreservedKillick
Oh come now, he delivered it in front of Congress, of *course* he had to dumb it down.
LGRooney
Microsoft Word, the repository of all that is worth knowing, says one should aim for 7th to 8th grade level in writing.
gnomedad
Wingnuts Hoot at Obama Speech, But 91% of Americans Approve
This proves that we should require photo IDs to participate in polls.
gelfling545
@smintheus: Exactly. And the audience is, after all, not reading it.
srv
I’m pretty sure Cantor and Rush would find those 9th graders to be too elitist.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I’m pretty sure the problem is that “President” is too polysyllabic for them to comprehend – but only when it’s followed by the furrin’-soundin’ “Obama.”
Monkey Business
I’m just wondering how much more we’re going to dumb the political discourse in this country down? What’s next? Distributing paper and crayons to every man, woman, and child in the United States?
If Kennedy tried to give his “Ask Not” speech today, the GOP would decry him as some effete ultra-liberal elitist.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m often accused of using $10 words where $1.50 words will do. The expensive ones often are used to express shades of meaning that are, frankly, just not that useful in communicating basic ideas.
The KISS principle rules…I’ve had that pounded into me though years of military training, where you want to use simple words that can be quickly said and understood while all hell is breaking out around you.
Get ‘er done.
cckids
@General Stuck:
Of course they choose to see it this way. Gingrich has been saying openly (and did again today) that President Obama is just not smart. It boggles the mind.
And when you get out of the Foxnewsbubble & listen to Obama, especialy vs Gingrich, the reality of who is actually intelligent hits pretty hard.
amk
@David Koch: gg is working on it. It takes time to spew a 1000-word ‘essay’ full of bs, you know.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Did the Republicans “fact check” the SOTU address? Did they “challenge” the job numbers or any other information Obama presented during the address?
Emma
Remind me never to read the comment sections of anything related to Obama in the next few days. The trolls, paid and otherwise, are out in force.
Comrade Mary
@scav: I write stuff for people in all sorts of jobs — restaurant kitchen staff, oil and gas technicians/engineers, auto workers, white collar workers, executives, high school students, web developers, and subject matter experts in practically every discipline you can think of — and you bet your sweet ass I aim for a sixth to eight grade reading score in almost everything I write.
I read for pleasure. I’ve read for pleasure since I was a pre-schooler and badgering my parents to please, please send me to school (I started kindergarten halfway through the year as soon as I turned 5). Hey, I read Infinite fucking Jest twice (well, before my Internet-related ADHD kicked in). All of us who read for pleasure can and do revel in complex sentences and arcane vocabulary. Sometimes you want nuance and challenge and surprises.
But when you’re talking or writing for people who bring varying levels of motivation to your arena, yes, you fucking well write for a sixth grade level, or an eighth grade level. This doesn’t mean that you’re stupid or your target audience is stupid: it means you want to make your message as clear and easily understood as possible.
You want to see another example of material at a sixth grade reading level? Here.
(And may the FSM bless my current crop of clients who agree that the word “utilize” is an abomination that has no place in our work. Use that word as you please in your own pleasure writing — wank on, dude, wank on — but don’t put it in my web sites or manuals.)
CT Voter
“Third lowest score”. Well, hell! What were the lowest and second lowest scored SOTU speeches?
The Moar You Know
Republicans and the Village can caterwaul about this all they like, but the brutal truth is that half this damn country can’t even read at eighth grade level, much less anything higher.
smintheus
@gelfling545: An absolutely basic way to persuade an audience to adopt your point of view is to ensure that they can always see your viewpoint unobstructed. You avoid leaving people hanging in mid air, as they try to figure out if they’re following what you’re saying. Subordinating clauses often force people to work to follow your argument, so you minimize them.
taylormattd
That’s nothing. I stupidly clicked on the facebook wall of some self-anointed “very left wing” friends of a “friend”. To a certain percentage of these people, the SOTU was a seriously vile slaps in the face to all progressives. Honestly, I feel like these people sit around cutting themselves all day long.
taylormattd
@amk: oh no, it’s already in full swing.
Niques
I read the article, and it seems they count the number of words and divide by number of sentences to get their score. So Obama’s short, direct, easy to understand sentences rate a very low score compared to, say, Sarah Palin’s word salad-sans-punctuation. Or verb. Or sense.
Yep. Perfect way to determine intelligence.
Sloegin
8th grade level? Dat’s sum sort of Democrat dog-whistle, dat is. It’ll go right plum over the 27-percenters heads.
taylormattd
@David Koch: And don’t forget, if you ask why it was a problem to rescue those people, you likely support Obama raping nuns on live TV.
Amir Khalid
@Zifnab:
I think the suggestion is that Obama can only read at an 8th grade level, so his speechwriters musn’t write any fancier than that. Apparently, in America you can be a well-regarded professor at a prestigious law school, as Obama was, with the reading proficiency of an average 13-year-old.
(By the way, that standard seems roughly equivalent to the first year of secondary school in the education system of my people.)
I wonder what the critics would say, if Obama’s speeches were rated as requiring the reading proficiency of a first-year law student.
wrb
@redshirt:
more brillianter
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@taylormattd:
That’s a vile slander. Even the liberal Obama draws the line at showing it on live TV. That’s what the White House YooToob channel is for.
IrishGirl
@Amir Khalid: If his speeches were that high (1st year law) they’d b*tch about how “elite” he is being. So he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
Kathy in St. Louis
Since many adult Americans read at only a 6th grade level, and the tea party probably lower, the 8th grade level speech sounds about right. Is the implication of the writer that Obama is thinking at an 8th grade level, that his speech writers can only manage an 8th grade level, or that his audience of the Senate and House can only manage an 8th grade level speech? By the way, how did the Mitch Daniels speech measure up?
Svensker
@Amir Khalid:
No. He only got that job because he was a black, i.e., Affirmative Action. He is really, really dumb and it’s only A.A. and white guilt that propelled him to any success that he undeservedly achieved.
So sayeth the wingnuts.
Linda Featheringill
Ernest Hemingway wrote in simple declarative sentences. Many were rather short.
What’s the score for the Gettysburg Address?
Roger Moore
@Niques:
That’s exactly right, though. What these things measure is how easy something is to understand, not whether the ideas it’s presenting are easy or difficult. Since word salad like Sarah Palin uses is genuinely difficult to understand, it ought to have a higher difficulty score. If there’s a flaw in the analysis, it’s the tacit assumption that higher scores are better.
Catsy
Obama is a horrible pretentious elite because he uses big words and complicated concepts. He is also a horrible condescending elite because he uses small words and simple concepts.
If you can hold both of these contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time, congratulations: you might be a wingnut.
This kind of intellectual dishonesty is blatantly transparent to anyone with a flicker of sentience who isn’t already invested in hating Obama regardless of what he does.
Mike E
Newt Gingrinch is a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person should sound like. As is George Will. Too.
wasabi gasp
That one talks like an eighth-grade professor.
satby
@Woodrowfan: Most newspapers are written to a 6th grade Flesch-Kincaid level. I was once a field interviewer for a longitudinal health study that used which Chicago daily as a divider to assess education level (Sun-Times 6th grade, Chicago Tribune used to be 8th) but this was the early 90s. The Trib is dumber now too.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
Then again, there’s a difference between prose with long words and sentences which is difficult to understand because it’s genuinely trying to convey complex/difficult ideas; and prose like Sarah’s, which is difficult to understand because it’s just poorly disguised nonsense.
gbear
Obama may speek concisely in language that everyone can understand, but why doesn’t he say what he means?!?
Villago Delenda Est
@Catsy:
DING DING DING DING DING!
Very well said.
gbear
@gbear: GAH! I hate no edit command.
…speak….
It’s been a long day…
J.W. Hamner
In all seriousness if you want to be understood by the largest audience the guideline is to assume that your reader/listener has not graduated high school. That’s how we explain the risks to people who want to participate in our research studies.
patrick II
@PreservedKillick:
Rand Paul still didn’t get it.
pluege
does the poster know that obama is speaking to the American people? (Of course if obama was republican the poster would be extolling the virtues of the plain way the president speaks.)
Petorado
I’m hearing a dog whistle on this. By focusing on the plain-spoken nature of the speech, detractors may be trying to show that he’s preaching to the classes that have a lower education level (you know, like people from inner city schools, wink) as well as those for whom English may not be their first language (like the people who take care of our lawns and pools.) If they can find no rocks to throw at the content of Obama’s speech, these guys will throw their ever-handy noose instead.
Amir Khalid
@gbear:
If it’s any consolation, speek is a more logical spelling than speak.
Jewish Steel
Sesquipedalians GFY!
MarkJ
He’s an overeducated elitist, except that he speaks at a level that the majority of Americans can understand. Then the question becomes is he giving the third stupidest state of the union address of all time?
Davis X. Machina
Some states mandate that certain document — insurance contracts, e.g. — either level out at 8th grade, more or less, or are accompanied by an English-to-English translation at that level, when the customer receives them.
RSA
What’s with the value judgment? “Simple” or “terse” would have been enough. Hemingway, for example, famously wrote simple prose; I’ve seen Flesch estimates of some of his work that put it at the 8th grade level as well.
gelfling545
@smintheus: Indeed. For many if not most following a spoken text and extracting its meaning is not quite as easy as reading a written one. I have seen this time and again administering the ghastly NY State ELA tests.
Comrade Mary
@Linda Featheringill: Word says 10.9 grade level. If you delete the lovely but complex sentence “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”, the score drops to 8.7.
chopper
so that’s 3 grades above the average american. i left school in 5th grade and i aint not no un-dummy!
Comrade Mary
Hey! The tech fairy gave us spell-check! And a HUGE comment box!! W00t!
Anyway, the Flesch Reading Ease score might be a better measure. The higher the number, the easier it is to read. As Cathy Moore says here, you want to aim for something in the 60s. I just checked the speech and it hits 62.2.
And Edit is back! Never before have I cried out “FYWP!” with such joy.
Repeat edit: FYWP for stubbornness about blockquotes. And bless you tech fairy.
elaine benes
@Comrade Mary
This.
I worked in public relations for years and writing at an 8th grade level was standard practice. Especially when the audience was the general public. The rational was that that was the average reading level in the US and you wanted to reach the widest audience possible.
WeeBey
Newspapers are written at about a 3rd-5th grade reading level.
Bruce from Afar
To give a comparison:
Barack Obama’s magnificent 2004 Convention speech — you know, the one that made people say, “I want that guy for President!” — comes in at a grade 8.
[This is by MS Word; other calculators (probably measuring syllables differently) grade it as 7, 7.8. 7.8, 8.4, 8.4, or even 9. Your results may vary.]
Which all tells me, that a readability test is a tool, which can sometimes be helpful to students and can sometimes be used by tools. (For laughs, check out some of the suggestions that some calculators give on how to improve the text.)
ArchPundit
These points have been made up thread, but I can’t help myself and is directed towards the authors John linked to.
First, THERE’S A FUCKING TREND IN DATA GOING DOWN YOU IGNORANT SLUT. That is mildly interesting trivia, but not any evidence of the dumbing down of anything. It’s actually evidence of the increasing accessibility of politics to people given education levels have gone up significantly over the period listed.
Second, HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU DON’T GIVE A SPEECH LIKE YOU WRITE A FUCKING PAPER! SERIOUSLY? NO SHIT!
Do you know how hard it is to follow subordinate clauses in long paragraphs in a speech? Very. So you use simpler sentences because, get this—IT’S A FUCKING SPEECH and not a policy paper.
No, you IGNORANT FUCKS! It’s more effective in any age if you want to connect to the most people.
Maus
At this point I’m less concerned about the reading level of the American people and believe he’s dumbing it down for the reading level of the media.
Wile E. Quixote
Smart Politics wrote:
Yes, but what about the anally and intra-venously delivered State of the Union Addresses delivered since 1934? Until we have complete statistics for all SotU routes of delivery we won’t have a complete picture of how the latest SotU stacks up.
Cowbelle
This is such a misuse and abuse of the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.
A lower score is actually a GOOD thing, because by and large Americans do want our political leaders to speak in clear and simple language.
xian
@gnomedad: there he goes dividing us again
MikeMc
What’s the point of this study? Shouldn’t they take it, a bit, further and explain which grade level is the most effective? It’s kinda’ interesting, but who cares?
Woodrowfan
@satby:
really? Interesting.
The S
Who even listens to anything Obama says anymore? I’m sure there will be plenty of election year rhetoric and progressive posturing but we’ve heard all the lies before. The POTUS loves wealth and power and militarism. He’s the best candidate the american rich can put forward to keep the peasants from revolting.
BC
I worked for federal govt engineering agency and all reports had to be at 8th grade level. Using technical jargon and multi-syallable words for a general audience is a big no-no if you want the audience to follow your logic and understand your conclusions. Of course, this might be the rub – Obama is talking to general audiences using the sentence structure and words that will be widely understood. I can understand the frustration – how you gonna twist the wordings when it’s already clear?
ruemara
@The S: I grade this trolling at 3.14
oldswede
The Flesh-Kincaid program evaluates readability, which is diffent from aural comprehension. People using F-K to evaluate a speech are misapplying the tool. This whole uproar is bogus.
Anyway, the F-K and others are intended as guides for writers, providing feedback for a work in progress.
There is a program similar to the Flesh-Kincaid called the Gunning Fog Index. It uses mostly the same metric and rates grade-level, but it’s stated purpose is to show how many people will NOT understand the text. A high Gunning Fog Index means that the writing is not clear, not lucid.
Bad writing can have many big words and run-on sentences, score high on the Flesh-Kincaid, and be totally incomprehensible.
Our President understands this. As a Harvard-trained lawyer, he can certainly produce text that would make your eyes cross. Check out the Harvard Law Journal, where he was editor-in-chief. But his intent is to communicate, not be awesomely intellectual. If you want pretentious b.s., Gingrich is your man.
oldswede
El Kabong
@ruemara: I see what you did there. Nicely done.
ArchPundit
@oldswede:
Jesus fucking christ is this correct and how the fuck does a PhD in Polisci not understand this. Fuck. Just to make th goddamn point.
Howlin Wolfe
When Obama was elected, there were dozens of columns in the newspapers pompously headlined as “Advice to the President” or “What Obama Should Do”. I dont’ remember that sort of column when W stole the election the first time, or when Clinton or Poppy Bush assumed office. Maybe I’m not remembering. But it seemed to me a lot of those columns were extremely patronizing, as if the blackity black preznit would be overwhelmed, lost or not know what to do as president unless these wise Village elders gave him their oh, so savvy conventional wisdom.
I hate these Village idiots as much as the Nazi-Soviet wingnuts and their corporate enablers.
AxelFoley
@Linda Featheringill:
Fourscore, I believe.