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Linguistic Changes In Foreign Policy Discourse, Kayla Nicole Jordan

MSU Graduate Theses

In an ever-changing world of foreign relations, understanding how world leaders process and interpret events will be useful in predicting potential official reactions. The focus of the current study is on the U.S. Congress, who, despite the power they can exert on world politics, is an understudied population. Language, more specifically word frequency in congressional speeches, is one way to measure how people approach situations. Therefore, I examined speeches on foreign policy issues (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea) to elucidate Congressional thinking. Using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) developed by (Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007), the linguistic constructs …