Why do politicians talk like that?

Politicians don’t just talk differently from the rest of us—they talk differently from each other, and the differences run deeper than the talking points. On Science Friday, linguist Valerie Friedland of the University of Nevada, Reno, walked through the mechanics of what she calls the “political register,” explaining how word choice, sentence structure, vowel pronunciation, and even accent all carry hidden signals about a candidate’s values, partisanship, and relationship to the voter. The conversation is a useful decoder ring for the next political ad you hear.

The shift from evidence to emotion

The most striking trend in political speech over the last century is that it has gotten simpler and more personal. Friedland pointed to data from congressional speeches going back to 1873, analyzed by data scientists, which shows a clear decline in words like analysis, investigate, evidence, and data, and a corresponding rise in phrases like my viewpoint, I believe, and I feel. The shift is not about intelligence—politicians are not getting dumber—but about what voters now demand. Since the 1990s, the premium has been on relatability, authenticity, and storytelling, not empirical argument. “We are becoming more about relatable politicians and less about politicians that debate the issues themselves,” Friedland said.