Comparison of Rhetorical Tactics Used by Current U.S. Politicians and Historical Leaders

Introduction  

In the following paper, I compare and contrast the campaign speeches of Donald Trump to the campaign speeches of Adolf Hitler before appointment to their respective heads of government. During the election of Donald Trump, the media frequently compared Trump’s speech to Hitler’s. Various articles were written isolating the specific instances where their phrases aligned, and people compared their political and social ideologies. Because the comparison was so widespread, I aim to either validate or discredit the media claims using an objective analysis. To compare the two political leaders’ speeches, I will use Natural Language Processing software.

I aspire to compare and contrast the two political leaders using NLP software called PC-ACE. I will use various PC-ACE functions to determine if the two men used similar or dissimilar verbal tactics. I will look at the sentiment of their sentences; whether overwhelming negative or overwhelmingly positive. I will explore if the men used positive sentiment when addressing a certain issue, and negative sentiment when addressing a different issue. I will additionally compare the most commonly used words from both men. With these common words, I will compare the sentiment of the words. I will also explore the structure of their sentences. I hope that comparison of sentence structure may give clues as to which tactics of speech work to mobilize voter support. I will use PC-ACE to explore how both men address their opponents and how they address themselves. I will analyze the sentence complexity of both political leaders.

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