10.7910/DVN/LDM8OL Olds, Christopher Christopher Olds Harvard Dataverse 2015 Social Sciences presidential communication, rhetorical simplicity, linguistic simplification, presidential rhetoric, political communication, public opinion, Flesch readability Olds, Christopher Christopher Olds 2015-08-11 2015-08-11 10.7910/DVN/LDM8OL/QLIG5C 10.7910/DVN/LDM8OL/HZFAUL 49152 19994 application/vnd.ms-excel text/plain 1.0 Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Research on presidential rhetoric has noted the explicit communications strategy of simplifying the language in presidential remarks to the public. Rhetorical simplification removes in-depth political analysis and argumentation from executive branch communications. Research by Elvin T. Lim (2008) shows that presidential rhetoric that is linguistically simplified is also substantively simplified language. Linguistically and substantively simplified language can be interpreted to mean the political environment is lacking complications or difficulties. Simplified presidential rhetoric has the potential to encourage people to perceive there is no need for an expansion in government involvement in domestic affairs. As an initial attempt to assess this possibility, time series analyses of presidential rhetorical simplicity and public opinion in the United States are performed using quarterly information spanning between 1993 and 2011. Article: "Empirically contrasting presidential rhetorical simplicity and the public's policy preferences." Journal of Communications Research. 6 (1): 1-19.