19 May 2009

Speech Clouds: Obama vs. Obama, Part 2

Over the weekend I posted a comparison of clouds that looked at President Obama's commencement address at Arizona State with Mrs. Obama's remarks at UC-Merced.

Given the attention paid to the "controversy" at each of the President's speeches, I thought I'd see how much attention the President paid to religion and abortion at Notre Dame versus the more mild controversy of the honorary degree kerfuffle at ASU.

Here's the ASU speech again:

And here's Notre Dame:


As I look at the cloud it's fairly clear to me that abortion is a big issue at the Notre Dame speech. The largest words in that cloud - "Father" and "one" - are not contextually relevant. "Father" is a proper title used to address officials at Notre Dame; the President is not talking about his father or God as the Father. "One" is marginally contextual at best. "Faith" and "Abortion" are reasonably prominent in the cloud and might be bigger if "Father" and "one" were excluded.

You don't see those words in the ASU speech. But you see "economy" at ASU where you don't at Notre Dame.

I don't think any of this is all that surprising, but it's interesting to see the President's rhetoric matching the moment.

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