@article{TEXTUAL,
      recid = {13792},
      author = {Zhou, Karen and Meitus, Alexander A. and Chase, Milo and  Wang, Grace and Mykland, Anne and Howell, William and Tan,  Chenhao},
      title = {Quantifying the uniqueness and divisiveness of  presidential discourse},
      journal = {PNAS Nexus},
      address = {2024-10-07},
      number = {TEXTUAL},
      abstract = {Do American presidents speak discernibly different from  each other? If so, in what ways? And are these differences  confined to any single medium of communication? To  investigate these questions, this paper introduces a novel  metric of uniqueness based on large language models,  develops a new lexicon for divisive speech, and presents a  framework for assessing the distinctive ways in which  presidents speak about their political opponents. Applying  these tools to a variety of corpora of presidential  speeches, we find considerable evidence that Donald Trump’s  speech patterns diverge from those of all major party  nominees for the presidency in recent history. Trump is  significantly more distinctive than his fellow Republicans,  whose uniqueness values appear closer to those of the  Democrats. Contributing to these differences is Trump’s  employment of divisive and antagonistic language,  particularly when targeting his political opponents. These  differences hold across a variety of measurement  strategies, arise on both the campaign trail and in  official presidential addresses, and do not appear to be an  artifact of secular changes in presidential  communications.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/13792},
}