Vox Populi

Speeches and soundbites form the foundation of political campaigns—and the ways candidates prepare their words can win or lose elections. —Jacquie Itsines

• People who speak more abstractly are thought to be more powerful, recent research suggests. In one of a set of studies, participants viewed an image of a woman working in a library, paired with either the concrete phrase “Barbara is writing notes” or the abstract phrase “Barbara is working hard.” Subjects who read the abstract note tended to rate the narrator as more powerful. Powerful people are expected to view the big picture, the researchers argue, so that they can make swift judgments and take appropriate action.

• Fictional political speeches that skewed negatively in tone attracted more immediate attention from listeners than positive ones, researchers determined during a pair of experiments detailed in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. But they also found evidence that the best-recalled speeches used rhetorical schemes—like lists of three and contrasting positions (“We’ve done a lot, but we’ve got a lot more to do”).

• The president’s extended stay in the White House may be related to his success evoking more cheers per minute and making the audience laugh at almost twice the rate of his opponent. Eleven speeches by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, recorded during the 2012 presidential campaign, were coded in terms of applause, laughter, boos, and other responses from the speakers’ live audiences. The research demonstrated a correlation between audience response and electoral victory.

Telling It Like It Isn’t

Even the worst things in the world can be renamed, rebranded, or reimagined. Tax hikes can become “revenue enhancements” and corporate firings “rightsizing.” The drunk employee at the office party? He was simply “over-refreshed.” Spinglish: The Definitive Dictionary of Deliberately Deceptive Language, toys with a tactic employed all too frequently by business leaders, PR firms, and other masters of message. “I think spin has been around since the dawn of language,” says National Lampoon alumnus Christopher Cerf, who wrote the book with the magazine’s cofounder, Henry Beard. Here are some of the trickiest terms they compiled. —Jamie Downey

Address
To devote at least a minimum amount of attention to

Bereavement Care Expert
Undertaker

Deferred success
A project that is currently (and most likely will remain) a failure

Full and frank discussion
A conversation or negotiation that accomplished absolutely nothing (and was probably quite unpleasant as well)

Income protection
Tax avoidance

Misstatement
Lie

Neutralize
Kill, destroy

Public diplomacy
Propaganda (when waged by your side)

Reducing costs
Cutting salaries and/or firing people

Strategic Withdrawal
Retreat

It's Not All About "Me"

Before condemning your long-winded congressperson or any other speech-maker for excessive self-regard, be advised: Narcissists do not actually use first-person singular pronouns (like I and me) significantly more often than the rest of us, a recent study of American and German college students indicates. —Matt Huston