Perhaps this isn’t a surprise, but US presidential speeches have been getting simpler over time. Vocativ has the evidence and unearths a few fascinating gems about the reading ages implied by more than 600 presidential speeches.
Firstly, in terms of reading age, Barack Obama’s speeches differ only slightly from his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush. Bush’s State of the Union address in 2007, for instance, scored a grade level of 9.6; Obama’s 2010 address, scored 9.1. These scores mean both speeches were accessible to 9th graders, or students aged 14 to 15 years. Skip back 150 years and you’ll find that Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address – one of his simpler speeches – still scored 11 (or a reading age of 16 to 17 years).
The speeches may have been getting simpler, but they are getting longer. Bill Clinton was the master of the long speech, and as his speechwriter Jeff Shesol tells Vocativ, the fact that the public stayed tune and listened to him belied the trope of decreasing attention spans. Perhaps it was Clinton’s compelling delivery, and the fact that he could talk simply to large crowds and use colloquialisms with his fellow southerners points to his attentiveness and pure talent as a public speaker.
So what are the lessons for content?
Whether you’re giving a speech, penning an article or, for that matter, writing a script for video, it’s worth keeping in mind these two rules.
Keep it simple: The fact that presidential speeches have become simpler over time is not a reflection of the audience. Rather, it is a sign of better democracy; if a president has something valuable to share, why would they want to hide it in inaccessible language? So too with content: if you are trying to share some valuable, useful information, make it accessible to as many people as you can.
Know your audience: In speeches to Native American people, the grade level of speeches by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington dropped significantly. This may seem patronising by modern standards, but the pragmatic view of being understood probably should trump the urge to sound clever – and is underlined by the importance of knowing your audience. If you find that a significant proportion of your audience aren’t native English speakers, why not make things easier for them? Conversely, if your audience is from a unique sub-set, you can indulge them with their own specialist language, much like Clinton dropping the odd southern phrase or a university lecturer referring to specialist language in a biology lecture.
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