Political language

PEOPLE often see what they expect to see ("confirmation bias"), so I'll hand it to Paul Payack for at least pretending to use some empirical evidence to call Barack Obama's BP speech from the Oval Office "professorial". But we shouldn't be surprised that Mr Payack misses the mark; after all, he is best known for the ridiculous claim that a secret algorithm would tell him exactly when the millionth word was added to the English language.

Mr Payack, in analysing Mr Obama's speech, gives it a 9.8 "grade level", a mindless bit of math that takes average word-length and sentence-length and assigns it a misleading equivalent in high-school or university reading levels. It takes no account of the skill with which words are chosen and sentences constructed, nor (in an orally delivered speech) how well or ploddingly it is delivered.

Microsoft Word can calculate the "Flesch-Kincaid" reading level for any bit of text. It tells me that the Gettysburg Address is on a 10.9 reading level, and the first section of Winston Churchill's storied "We shall fight them on the beaches" speech rates a downright incomprehensible 12.6. Yet of course neither speech is called "professorial". It seems that for the gullible reporters at CNN passing along Mr Payack's "analysis", confirmation bias is alive and well.

(Photo: The White House)