The presidential candidates will face off for the first time at Tuesday night’s debate in Cleveland. President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have been attacking each other for months, hoping to garner more support and put forth their own ideas. The 90-minute debate will be moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
We will let others speculate on how the words spoken Tuesday night may impact the political landscape. But in the meantime, we sought out what we can learn by treating the debate as a linguistics exercise.
Chris Kennedy, a professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago, highlighted a few things that might be interesting to watch. He has studied the field for years, and he teaches a course on truth and examining the concept’s relevance in an age of “alternative facts” and “fake news.”
Here are a few things he will be keeping his eye on.
How they evade questions. Debates are not set up for meandering answers or tackling complicated topics in depth. Often, politicians do not directly answer a question, preferring to pivot to talking points. Kennedy says to pay attention to how they do this. What are they pivoting to? Whatever their answer is can point to who they are trying to reach, or what they want to highlight instead. Politicians are hesitant to draw a hard line on topics like abortion, that some treat as black-and-white issues but involve nuances to different voters. Note how they are responding when they evade a question. “What do they talk about instead when they appear to be dodging a question, or when they bring up something a little different from what was directly asked, and why did they choose that particular thing in that context?” Kennedy said.
How they shift the way they speak. What is the cadence of their conversation, and how do they respond to different people in the debate room? Politicians often shift their tone to try to relate to different people — indeed, it’s something we all do, Kennedy noted. “People can move back and forth between different ways of talking, because we all interact with different social groups, and we do this quite naturally as a way of signaling our alignment with a particular group.” It can be interesting to note when and how they do this. For example, Biden often speaks in a folksy way, Kennedy noted. He might seek to cultivate an atmosphere of a calm grandfather who can handle the nation’s situations, Kennedy said, while Trump uses language to project authority. “Everybody’s a strategic speaker. We do it all the time, politicians especially,” he said.
How they respond to other ideas. Note when other ideas or points of view are brought into the conversation — perhaps Wallace brings up a topic that has several proposed solutions — and how each candidate responds. Kennedy said a debate can reveal through interactions, ostensibly about resolving a question, how seriously someone is taking ideas that are different than theirs. Pay attention to “the extent they’re willing to do the hard work of reasoning through different ways of approaching a problem and the goal of getting a solution,” he said. “Who the president is will make a difference for that.” Kennedy added, “Who’s going to foster and promote that kind of interaction, especially in the context of a political climate like the one we have now? No president or party can do it on their own at the end of the day.”
As for how to tell who is sincere in what they are saying, Kennedy says, “What we might ask is … do we have a reason to think that somebody’s lying?” Do they have a reason to hide facts or are they spewing hogwash with complete disregard for whether it’s true or false? He says candidates care about the effect their words will have on the people listening to them.
