The State of The Guardian's SOTU Infographic Is...Dumber

"Instead, it probably reflects the fact that politicians have caught on to the idea that audiences don't really want to walk away from a speech in awe of the orator's masterful use of the semi-colon; they want to walk away knowing what the orator was talking about."

So you're saying...

-that people have trouble understanding long, complex sentences with lots of content?

-that reducing the use of said long words and complex sentences improves comprehension?

-therefore the complexity of the speech is in fact being reduced to improve the number of viewers comprehending the message?

Can you give me a definition of "dumbing-down" please? Because your article now seems like a contradictory piece of tripe that was just a reflexive response to someone criticizing your lord and savior's sermon.

"Dumbing-down" - a common after-effect of reading popsci articles like this.

On the chart showing the sentence word lengths, the bend in the curve seems to come very near 1913, when the "speeches" ceased being written submissions to Congress and started being actual speeches (according to the annotation about Woodrow Wilson on the original Guardian graphic).

That's a very interesting factor, as well.

Brian144, you really need to see a doctor about that jerking knee. You obviously didn't even look at the graphic, or you'd have seen that the president with the lowest "score" was George HW. So this story is as much or more about defending a man I presume you respect as one you clearly don't. And no, 'making your message easier to understand' is NOT the same as 'dumbing down'. Clearly this was a message too co0mplicated for you to understand, at least.

Anyone read the appendix about language in 1984?

Notice the particularly sharp decline during the age in which Fitzgerald is replaced by Hemmingway, as the last of the long senence writers is replaced by the new style.

They are correct that linguistic change over time is merely language adaptation (compare Paradise Lost to any contemporary work) as long, convoluted, sentences gave way to more independent sentences.

That said, the dumbing down of America is much clearer if you look at the content of the words said rather than the words themselves.

@Katie Peek: Interesting! There's the bend in work length AND the drop in sentence length right there.

@brian144: I would define "dumbing-down" as a simplification of meaning rather than a simplification of sentence structure. Long sentences are not necessarily smart sentences.

Linguists carried out this same analysis on articles in the journal Science and found the same trend. Are scientists dumbing down their findings for fellow scientists?

@ terrycollmann

You misapprehend my meaning, sir. I liked some things Bush did. And hated some other things he did.

I don't care if he had the lowest score. I don't terribly care about the score or the deliverance of the state of the union. I care about the content.

And there are several different reasons for a decline in complexity. But the primary driver I suspect is the advent of Radio-broadcast and television, which makes the state of the union an address to the people, rather than to the Congress.

But what is undeniable is that there has been a steady decline of the complexity of the state of the union addresses. Regardless of reason, it has been systematically dumbed-down over the past century. To deny that the requisite intelligence to understand the address has decreased, and the simplicity in which points are described has increased, it in direct contravention of fact.

I don't particularly care which president gave the smartest-scoring address. What I do care about is that this website has again posted something that seems to be motivated by their love of the current president, rather than objectivity and quantification (ie, science).

The writer himself even admits it, and gives a rational. People don't like it as complex. Ergo, they like it simpler. And the politician makes it simpler. That is the very definition of dumbing something down. 'dumbing-down' and 'making simpler' are synonymous.

I couldn't care less how complex the state of the union is. I could care less about how popsci is politically motivated to an annoying level. And this hypocritical article is a prime example I am pointing to.

@brian144 The writer himself is a she.

Yes, The Guardian's infographic (like so many polls, incidentally), arrives at a conclusion that has nothing to do with the data.

What would be more interesting is an infographic on how much bs is delivered in SOTU's. Has it increased or decreased over time? Or are politicians as dumb and/or deceitful now as they were a hundred years ago?

@laurenra7 Yes, I agree. I think it would be great to come up with a measure of Orwell-style obfuscation in language. George Orwell wrote at length about how politicians will intentionally avoid straightforward language to cloud the meaning of what they are saying in his "Politics and the English Language."

There were phrases in Obama's speech last night that were definitely Orwellian in this sense. When talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, Obama said that we are "changing the nature of our commitment." What does that mean? Does it mean we are leaving or not? Unclear. And that's the point.

(Incidentally, I think this example provides a good counterpoint to @brian144: "changing the nature of our commitment" as a phrase would register at a much higher reading level than "leaving." But "we will be leaving Afghanistan," isn't a dumbed-down version of "we will be changing the nature of our commitment in Afghanistan." It's just a lot clearer.)

It would be a challenging thing to do (and would involve a lot of pretty arbitrary judgement calls), but I think it would be great to see a tally of Orwellian phrases like this in SOTU addresses — and see how their use has changed over time. It would certainly be a lot more interesting than the Guardian's misled reading level analysis or a simple tally of the number of times a president used the word "god" or "nation" or "taxes."

brian144:

>That is the very definition of dumbing something down.

No, it isn't.

>'dumbing-down' and 'making simpler' are synonymous.

No, they're not. That's sort of the whole point of this piece.

You seem unable to grasp the relatively simple concept that is quite clearly conveyed in this piece, which contains no self-contradiction whatsoever. This, even after your muddled apprehension has been pointed out to you.

As is nearly always the case when someone accuses a writer of being politically motivated when there's nothing in the writing to indicate that, the accuser in this case is actually the one motivated by witless ideology, even if he has fooled himself into thinking otherwise.

Flowery bombastic speech -- with heavy use of long words with latin roots -- has long been on the decline, both in common speech and in political discourse.

I think that's a good thing.

Rudolf Flesch, E.B. White, and William Strunk would all think it's a good thing.

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It really is a simple thing to comprehend. The average american can probably grasp that overall intelligence is on a decline because of poor education and over-population. Dumbing down is an obvious requirement to speak to the growing number of people whose reading and comprehension level is on a discouraging decline. Not to mention that the leaders of this country reflect the people and their greatness can no longer be measured in intelligence.

Microsoft Word (amongst other programs) will analyze a document and report on the reading ease, and reading grade level.

FWIW, here are the results for this P.S. article:

Passive sentences = 14%
Flesch reading ease = 45.3
Flesch-Kincade Grade Level = 12.2

You know what's wrong with this article? That it should never have been written. I don't think it's good journalism, or speaks highly of the publisher, when they are wasting effort on an article to sway opinion of another publishers publishing. See how meta that sounds? It would just be easier to read, and hopefully easy for the staff of POPSCI to write, articles that are of original content that could very well be the antithesis of a Guardian posting without being so overt as to almost don their news with a POPSCI asterisk that explains why nobody should listen to it. It's a complex form of journalistic trolling that gives too much insight into the personal opinions of the writer; subjective writing if you will. I prefer my journalistic readings to be objective, especially when they deal with science.

@danmitchell: Mere nay-saying of another's argument coupled with a pair of conclusory (at best) paragraphs does not an argument of its own make. Your post amounts to an electronic "uh-uh."

According to Merriam-Webster, "dumbing down" means "to lower the level of difficulty and the intellectual content of (as a textbook); also : to lower the general level of intelligence in " www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dumb%20down

Webster goes on to define "simplify" as (in relevant part): "to make simple or simpler: b : to diminish in scope or complexity." www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/simplify

These definitions, by their very nature, make brian144's original post a legitimate condensation of the article itself. Of course, there is room for honest debate (hopefully a thing embraced by all with an interest in science), but surely not for such argumentative failures as your response.

I am confident that you can do better.

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ignorantia legis non excusat

Thomas Jefferson's 1801 SOTU address consisted of a hand-written 1/2 page.

http://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/sotu/images/jefferson-m.jpg

When you compare that to Obama's incoherent, rambling 1-hour-plus SOTU address, it becomes obvious that there is a direct inverse relationship between the length of a presidential SOTU address and their intellectual capacities.

If only Popular Science were as interested in the integrity of the methods and conclusions of their own published infographics/statistics as they are of those on other websites...

If only...

Ms. Elert, may I suggest you review and comment on the statistical methods of the many Popular Science pieces? Clearly your editors are not very interested in vetting the studies and the conclusions their writers draw from them...

If you've ever read anything from the 1800s, you know they just love to make agonizingly long and complex sentences and even use multiple sentences for something that can be said in 5 words.

Spit out what you want to say. Say it so we understand it the way you mean it. Ain't got time fo yo eloquent BS.