My favourite online tool = Wordle. It really is. Perhaps there are many better things I am missing out on, but this nifty site provides an interesting look (sometimes) at the words emphasized in a speech, or article or what ever you desire. When viewing it as a wordle, you get to see the frequency certain words are used, giving an idea of what was on their mind when they wrote it – not just the message they are saying, but the message they want to imply. So here is Obama’s speech from August 31, 2010 on the end of the Iraq war. If you would like to read the transcript, you can find it here. This speech seems cold, but one of filling your duties; doing what is responsible. One quick note of about something that I noticed off the bat was how “women” was pretty easy to find, but “men” took forever (near the bottom and smaller.) In the transcript, Obama says “women” five times and “men” only three. For the folks out there that are oddly worried that Obama is Muslim, rest to sure that while “god” doesn’t appear in this wordle, he does say it twice; no mention of allah. 
Here is George W. Bush’s speech on the Victory of Iraq war way back in 2003. He really like polarizing his words. “Terrorists!” “Freedom!” “Military!” “Liberty!” Also doens’t look very victorious when frequency of words are taken into account (transcript here.)
As a comparison, here is President Ford’s speech gave in April 1975 declaring the end of the Vietnam war. You can read the transcript here.
Seems more positive than the other two. but the one thing that real stands out as different in this speech from the one’s above? How they ended. (I’m also going to show the tally of the uses of ’god’, ‘men’, ‘women’, and ‘people’ to give a superficial glimpse at the changing times.)
Obama 2010: Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America, and all who serve her. (2 god, 3 men, 5 women, 22 people)
Bush 2003: Thank you for serving our country and our cause. May God bless you all, and may God continue to bless America. (3 god, 5 men, 5 women, 6 people)
Ford 1975: Thank you very much. (0 god, 2 men, 1 women, 8 people)
America being a “Christian Nation” didn’t really start to grow until the 1950s with all the “be afraid of Communists!” talk and shows that even in the 1970s it wasn’t the prerequisite to mention a supreme being in speeches as it is today. Funny difference, is that in Canada, we used to be more religious than the USA, but for the last couple of decades it has been dying off and you rarely here “god” in a speech. So much so that as our current Prime Minister started to sign-off speeches with “God bless Canada” it made the news. They even did a poll.
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