Cover not available
Part of
Language and Text: Data, models, information and applications
Edited by Adam Pawłowski, Jan Mačutek, Sheila Embleton and George Mikros
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 356] 2021
► pp. 195–208

Calculating the victory chances

A stylometric insight into the 2018 Czech presidential election

| University of Ostrava
The goal of this chapter is to determine stylometric features and keywords of the selected texts produced by the candidates for the 2018 Czech presidential election, and to interpret whether these may have had any impact upon the final results. The stylometric indexes researched include MATTR (moving-average type-token ratio), ATL (average token length), TC (thematic concentration), STC (secondary thematic concentration), Q (activity), and VD (verb distances); finally, a keyword analysis for two chosen candidatesʼ programmes is carried out. The outcomes of the analyses show that each candidate adopts a special strategy to influence his electorate and that this strategy can be captured via stylometric methods.
Keywords: stylometry, quantitative linguistics, political discourse, presidential election, keyword analysis, Czech
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Material and methods
  • 3.Results and interpretations
    • 3.1The new-year addresses: A stylometric perspective
    • 3.2Marek Hilšer vs. Michal Horáček: The keyword analysis
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.356.13mis
References (21)
References
Andreev, Sergey, Michal Místecký & Gabriel Altmann. 2018. Sonnets: Quantitative inquiries. Lüdenscheid: RAM-Verlag.Google Scholar
Brezina, Vaclav, Tony McEnery & Stephen Wattam. 2015. Collocations in context: A new perspective on collocation networks. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 20(2). 139–173. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Busemann, Adolf. 1925. Die sprache der jugend als ausdruck der entwicklungsrhythmik [Language of youth as an expression of development rhythm]. Jena: Fischer.Google Scholar
Covington, Michael. 2007. MATTR, version 2.0 for Windows. [URL]. (27 April, 2020.)
Covington, Michael & Joe McFall. 2010. Cutting the Gordian knot: The moving-average type–token ratio (MATTR). Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 17(2). 94–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Čech, Radek. 2014. Language and ideology: Quantitative thematic analysis of New Year speeches given by Czechoslovak and Czech presidents (1949–2011). Quality & Quantity 48(2). 899–910. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Tematická koncentrace textu v češtině [Thematic concentration of text in Czech]. Praha: Ústav formální a aplikované lingvistiky.Google Scholar
Čech, Radek & Miroslav Kubát. 2016. Text length and the thematic concentration of text. Mathematical Linguistics 2(1). 5–13.Google Scholar
Čech, Radek, Ioan-Iovitz Popescu & Gabriel Altmann. 2014. Metody kvantitativní analýzy (nejen) básnických textů [Methods of quantitative analysis of (not only) poetic texts]. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci.Google Scholar
euro.cz, 2017 November 8. Volební model: Favority prezidentské volby jsou Zeman a Drahoš [The election model: Zeman and Drahoš are the favourites]. [URL]. (27 April, 2020.)
iRozhlas.cz, 2017 December 27. Novoroční poselství kandidátů na prezidenta: jak hodnotí uplynulý rok a co si přejí v tom novém? [New-year messages from the presidential candidates: How do they sum up the previous year and what do they wish in the new one?]. [URL]. (27 April, 2020.)
Kilgarriff, Adam. 2009. Simple maths for keywords. In Michaela Mahlberg, Victorina González-Díaz & Catherine Smith (eds.), Proceedings of corpus linguistics conference CL2009. Liverpool: University of Liverpool. [URL]. (27 April, 2020.)
Kubát, Miroslav, Vladimír Matlach & Radek Čech. 2014. QUITA. Quantitative index text analyzer. Lüdenscheid: RAM-Verlag.Google Scholar
Kubát, Miroslav & Radek Čech. 2016. Quantitative analysis of US presidential inaugural addresses. Glottometrics 34. 14–27.Google Scholar
Kubát, Miroslav. 2017. Kvantitativní analýza žánrů [A quantitative analysis of genres]. Ostrava: Ostravská univerzita.Google Scholar
Melka, Tomi & Michal Místecký. 2020. On stylometric features of H. Beam Piperʼs Omnilingual. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 27(3). 207–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musil, Michal. 2018 January 27. Proč Zeman vyhrál a Drahoš prohrál [Why Zeman won, and Drahoš failed]. reportermagazin.cz. [URL]. (27 April, 2020.)
Rimkeit-Vit, Lyubov & Hanna Gnatchuk. 2016. Euphemisms in political speeches by USA presidents. Glottometrics 35. 16–21.Google Scholar
Tait, Robert. 2018 January 25. Czech presidential election on a knife-edge as challenger cries foul. theguardian.com. [URL]. (27 April, 2020.)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001 [1953]. Philosophical investigations. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Zörnig, Peter & Gabriel Altmann. 2016. Activity in Italian presidential speeches. Glottometrics 35. 38–48.Google Scholar