New language study delivers last word on the Budget speech

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Centre for Language and Social Life has today released a linguistic analysis of the budget speeches from 2005 to 2009, incorporating the last three Costello speeches and the first two Swan speeches.

Using a specialised linguistic computer program, the study measures the frequency of words and phrases, and the collocation of words. These frequencies reveal crucial aspects of the rhetorical styles of the current and the previous Treasurer.

Researchers at the Centre will update their data following the handing down of the 2010 Budget tomorrow.

"The Budget speech is Australia's pre-eminent political speech - the only regularly televised political speech on the Australian calendar, and the only annual public statement we require from our government," said Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow Dr Annabelle Lukin, who led the study.

"We all know that the budget speech attempts to tell a political story, as well as deliver the budget. This analysis however, gives us a measure of how successful different budget speeches are at telling a story, and actually reveals more than the two treasurers might have wanted to reveal."

Key findings of their report include:

The word government - represented in the speeches as the agent of benevolent action - gets top billing and features 173 times (more than any other word).
While the word tax appears 126 times over the five budgets, it is never used as a verb. By using ‘tax' as a noun, it gets objectified and therefore becomes separate from the act of taxing (i.e. the government never says "we will tax you more" or "we will tax you less").
In his last three budget speeches, Costello used the word Labor 8 times, to denigrate the legacy of the previous Labor government. Even though the Costello speeches came at the end of 12 years in government, he still found space in his speeches to malign the previous government. By contrast, the word Coalition has yet to make an appearance in Swan's budget speeches.
Swan says the word spending much more than Costello (average of 10 times per speech versus 2.3 times for Costello) and says saving much less (3.5 times per speech versus 7 times per speech for Costello).
For the Coalition, million is more common than billion (79 instances as against 59 over three speeches), while the reverse is true for the Labor speeches (49 instances as against 44 over two speeches).
Unlike the Coalition's speeches, Labor speeches have a core - a central announcement which bundles up a number of programs into a packaged announcement. In 2008 it was the ‘Working Families Support Package', which was at the "very core" of the Budget; in 2009 it was the ‘nation building plan'.
Costello used the "I" word almost twice as many times as Swan, thus inserting himself personally into his speeches in a very direct way (for example, "tonight I announce details of the Future Fund").
Featuring at number 16 in the list of top 20 words used is health - this is also the first reference in the list to an ends to which our taxes are directed. Health made the top 20 thanks to Swan's frequent use of the word. If Swan had used the word ‘health' with the frequency of Costello it would not have featured in the top 20 list.
While health is a major preoccupation thanks to Swan, mental health has very low visibility, with just two instances in Costello's 2006 speech. The phrase preventative health turns up twice (in Swan's 2008 speech). There are no instances of the phrase primary health care, or of the words food, diet, exercise or obesity.
The high frequency of the word people at number 19 in the top 20 is thanks to Costello (46 of the 55 instances come from him). He uses the term to develop categories of people (young people, people of working age, small business people, etc) and often uses it when speaking of the benefits of moving different groups of people into work.
Swan uses the word people far less and instead refers to families (ie. working families). Lukin suggests this is a reflection of the Labor party's broader social agenda, and also of the individualism of the Liberal philosophy.
Education appears in the top 20 words for the Labor party speeches, but not for the Coalition
If the researchers had combined all instances of the words grow, growth and growing these items combined would have featured in the top 20 words for all five speeches. The message that ‘a good economy is a big economy' dominates. Lukin puts this down to a deep ideological bias in our language where "growth can only be good".

The full Centre for Language in Social Life report can be viewed online at: www.ling.mq.edu.au/clsl/budget_speech.htm

Provided by Macquarie University