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Filled pauses (FPs) are a universal feature of spontaneous speech, yet most studies rely on small, single-language corpora, limiting the generalisability of their findings. We analyse ~4,000 hours of parliamentary speech across four related Slavic languages (Croatian, Czech, Polish, Serbian).
The study investigates how bilingual politicians structure the timing of their speeches in Luxembourgish and French, analyzing 400 sentences from ten speakers. Rhythm metrics were computed for consonants and vowels, revealing that consonant patterns are largely speaker-specific while vowel patterns are strongly influenced by language choice. French tokens exhibited longer, more variable vowels and vocalic intervals, whereas consonant timing differences were smaller, with no significant language-by-gender interactions.
arXiv:2609.15207v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Generative AI writing assistants and the Large Language Models (LLMs) that power them are increasingly part of how voters gather information before ele...
The study analyzes oral political language in U.S. presidential debates from 1960 to 2024, focusing on 19 candidates. It finds a clear trend toward simplification: sentence length and complex terms have decreased, while emotional tone has risen and logical, rational content has diminished. The research also explores whether specific presidents exhibit unique stylistic traits and whether language patterns correlate with electoral success.
arXiv:2608.30485v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The language a legislature uses to debate women's rights, even in favour of them, encodes systematic patterns of sexism that persist across two centu...
The study examined 400 utterances from 10 politicians speaking in both Luxembourgish and French to determine how much of charismatic prosody is due to speaker identity versus language. Mixed‑effects modeling revealed that speaker identity explained most of the variance, while language contributed less but still produced systematic differences: French speech had higher shimmer and phrase‑final F0, suggesting a polite, respectful tone, whereas Luxembourgish speech showed stronger mid‑frequency spectral energy, indicating a more vocally present profile. These acoustic patterns reflect the sociolinguistic roles of Luxembourgish as an informal identity language and French as a high‑prestige institutional variety.