Moral-Language Use by U.S. Political Elites

Area of Science:

• Political Science
• Computational Linguistics
• Sociology

Background:

• Political elites utilize moral language to frame issues and mobilize support.
• Understanding shifts in moral language use is crucial for analyzing political discourse and power dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how political power influences the moral language used by U.S. political elites.
• To examine temporal shifts in moral language use by Democrats and Republicans across different platforms.

Main Methods:

• Employed a distributed-language model to analyze large datasets of political communication.
• Study 1: Analyzed 687,360 Twitter messages from Democratic and Republican members of Congress (2016-2018).
• Study 2: Analyzed 2,630,688 Congressional speeches (House and Senate, 1981-2017).

Main Results:

• Partisan differences in moral language use varied with shifts in political power.
• Lower political power correlated with increased moral language use for both parties.
• Democrats exhibited heightened moral language on Twitter post-2016 election.
• Both parties used more moral language in Congressional transcripts when in the minority.

Conclusions:

• Political power is a significant factor shaping the moral language of political elites.
• Moral language serves as a rhetorical tool that fluctuates with political standing and electoral outcomes.
• The findings highlight the dynamic interplay between power, partisanship, and moral framing in American politics.