Language study delivers last word on the Budget speech
Language study delivers last word on the Budget speech
The Centre for Language in Social Life at Macquarie University has today released its revised study of Federal Government budget speeches to incorporate the 2010 speech delivered by Wayne Swan on Tuesday night.
Using a specialised linguistic computer program, the study measures the frequency of words and phrases, and the collocation of words. These frequencies reveal crucial aspects of the rhetorical styles of the current and the previous Treasurer.
"The Budget speech is Australia's pre-eminent political speech - the only regularly televised political speech on the Australian calendar, and the only annual public statement we require from our government," said Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow Dr Annabelle Lukin, who led the study.
"Perhaps against expectations, word frequencies and collocations are extremely revealing as a window into the way each Treasurer positions himself, the government, the budget, and the economy.
"There is a whole industry now which advises governments on what their ‘key messages' should be. But we can see things in these speeches that the PR advisors can't see."
The study also includes a brief look at the Top 20 words in Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's ‘great big new speech'.
Key findings for Swan's 2010 speech:
- While the word economy is much more prominent this year (in Swan's bid to present a "boring budget"), the word government has slipped out of the Top 20 for the first time in 6 years.
- Swan used the word government 52 times in his first speech, but just 8 times in his third speech. Dr Lukin says "Swan seems to be missing opportunities to position the government as responsible for having taken strong action on the economy".
- While the absence of government could be compensated for by the use of the pronoun WE, there seems to be confusion at times in his speech about the meaning of WE - is it "we the government" or "we the people"?
- Swan was much more explicit in justifying the budget measures, with the word why turning up in the Top 20 for the first time. Costello used it once in 3 years, Swan has used in 18 times in 3 years, including 11 times on Tuesday night.
- The previous report showed Costello was three times more likely to say SAVE/ING than to say SPEND/ING, while Swan said SPENDING more (average 10 per speech versus 2.3 for Costello), and SAVING less (3.5 per speech versus 7 per speech for Costello). This year, Swan has got his use of SPENDING down to only four mentions, and SAVINGS is up - it almost makes the Top 20 for this year.
- As in his previous speeches, Swan avoids direct attacks on the previous government. His one swipe is "Not one single pre-election budget of the former government delivered net savings over the forward estimates". Compare with Costello in his 2006 speech: "We have now eliminated the $96 billion of net debt that Labor left the Australian Government when it left office".
Both the earlier and the updated reports are available at The Centre for Language in Social Life website.
Contact: Samantha Norris
Phone: (02) 9850 9658