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Expert System’s Independent Text Analysis of Melania Trump and Michelle Obama’s Speeches Confirms Strong Linguistic Differences

20 July 2016

Company’s Cognitive Analysis Technology Identifies Stark Contrasts in Messages and Themes

 Melania Trump and Michelle Obama’s speeches were, in fact, very different. That is the finding from an analysis conducted by global cognitive computing technology provider Expert System (EXSY.MI) in its latest Expert IQ Report: Melania vs. Michelle – Divided Speeches

In conducting its speech analysis, Expert System used publicly posted transcripts of each speech. The company’s analysis focused on transcript text, processing both speeches with its Cogito semantic analysis technology.

“This will likely be surprising information to many out there, but our analysis shows that in fact there are stark differences between First Lady Michelle Obama’s and Melania Trump’s speeches,” said Daniel Mayer, CEO of Expert System Enterprise. “We found differences in their emotions, topics of importance, main concepts and main speech elements. In simple terms, these speeches had very different messages and it really comes down to truly understanding the context, not just the words.  That is the beauty of data science, we can test assumptions and prove otherwise.”

In the report, Expert System found, for example, that when it came to emotions “hope” was the most relevant emotion in Michelle Obama’s speech, followed by love and success. “Desire” was the first emotion in Melania Trump’s speech.  In looking at the main sentences, both Melania and Michelle talk about the key-role of the President for the future of the US. However Melania’s remarks are direct and incisive (Donald wants our country to move forward in the most positive ways) while Michelle uses special repetitions (Millions of Americans… Barack) that provides enphasis and clarity.

The vocabulary used in both speeches reveals an interesting difference as well: Melania Trump’s sentences are 45% shorter than Michelle Obama’s and 68% more easy to understand based a comparative readability index.

Expert System also analyzed the specific parts of the speeches that have been called out as duplicative. When measured by Cogito, the company found that there was indeed a 95% correlation between these parts, making the two, by data analysis standards, nearly exactly the same.

To access the full report which includes additional data analysis click here