In 1990 gopac, a Republican coaching organisation, despatched a infamous memo to conservative candidates. It contained an inventory of constructive phrases they need to use in relation to their very own get together, akin to “braveness”, “fact” and “imaginative and prescient”, and unfavourable ones to connect to Democrats, like “corruption”, “greed” and “stagnation”.
The memo’s legacy has not turned out how its authors supposed. At the moment, Democratic lawmakers use phrases on its record greater than Republican ones do. To judge the partisan slant of American media organisations (see essential story), we would have liked to provide an inventory of phrases that reliably distinguish the 2 events’ language.
To develop our phrasebook, we gathered all speeches made in Congress between 2009 and 2022. We break up the textual content into two-word phrases; eliminated uninformative phrases akin to “in” or “the”; and de-stemmed the remaining phrases, in order that, for instance, “habit” and “addicted” each change into “addict”. This left us with a mere 2m phrase pairs. Subsequent, we narrowed this record to phrases used nearly solely by one get together, and selected the phrases utilized by the best share of that get together’s legislators.
The ensuing record of 428 phrases fell into two broad classes. One is duelling labels for related matters. Individuals who enter America with out permission are “undocumented immigrants” to Democrats however “unlawful aliens” to Republicans. Democrats discuss with firearms as a “gun epidemic”; Republicans because the product of their proper to “maintain and bear arms”. Abortion, to Democrats, is “reproductive care” to which girls as soon as had a “constitutional proper”. Republicans, in the meantime, bemoan the “abortion trade” violating the “sanctity of life” of “unborn infants”.
When discussing policing, Democrats are likely to convey up George Floyd or Breonna Taylor, unarmed black individuals who have been killed by police, whereas Republicans invoke the “skinny blue line”—the notion that solely police can save society from chaos. On electoral integrity, Republicans fears about “poll harvesting” are matched by Democratic ones over “darkish cash”.
The record incorporates many phrases about topics that one get together is raring to debate, and the opposite prefers to keep away from. Republicans like to rail towards “burdensome regulation”, “authorities overreach” and “unelected and unaccountable officers”, in addition to taxes, notably the “demise” and “job-killing” varieties. In addition they recurrently talk about “almighty God” and the rights he has given you. Democrats, in distinction, play up environmental woes just like the “local weather risk”, “rising sea ranges” and “large oil”, and the plight of downtrodden “communities” which are “marginalised” or “of color”. In addition they present a penchant for discussing “doughnut holes”—not the edible kind, however the type present in Medicare prescription-drug protection.
