Lately the word "divisive" has been used a lot by American
politicians. I believe it was first used extensively by
the Bush administration, but was quickly taken up by the
Democrats. Is this true? When did the word start to appear
in Bush's speeches? Was it used extensively by politicians
before this? |
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
07 Jan 2004 12:14 PST
Perhaps this link from the Internet Archives will shed some light on your question:
http://recall.archive.org/?query=divisive&search=Go%21
The graph at the top of the page shows a huge spike in "divisive"
around January 2002. Trouble is, I have absolutely no idea what the
graph is all about...!?!?
Maybe another researcher can add some insight here.
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Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
07 Jan 2004 17:45 PST
On the archives of the Clinton White House web pages, which are found here:
http://clinton4.nara.gov/
a search for the word "divisive" turns up 36 distinct results:
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=site%3Aclinton4%2Enara%2Egov+divisive
A similar search on the Bush White House web pages:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
turns up 21 results:
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=site:www%2Ewhitehouse%2Egov+divisive
Of course, Clinton's folks had 8 years to accumulate speeches and the
like, while Bush has only been at it for 3 years (seems longer,
though, doesn't it...!).
Then again, I don't know how comprehensive the two sites are in terms
of overall inclusion of speeches, transcripts, etc.
Just a little food for thought, I suppose. Let us know if there is
any specific sorts of information that would make for a satisfactory
answer to your interesting question.
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Clarification of Question by
bugbear-ga
on
07 Jan 2004 18:15 PST
Certainly it seems the word was used a good deal in the Clinton
years. And yet I don't remember hearing it as much then as I
have lately. Maybe this "spike" is the key, if we can figure
out what's going on.
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Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
07 Jan 2004 18:40 PST
Nah, turns out the spike is nothing much (it wasn't even there when I
checked just now...the data seems to have "moved" somehow). I was so
curious about the spike, that I fired off an email to the author of
the "Recall" program, who explained what it was...long story short, it
doesn't indicate more activity on the word "divisive", so it doesn't
help out all that much.
HOWEVER, here are some interesting tidbits (you may be able to
tell...I'm starting to take the challenge of your question a bit
personally...!). I ran some searches on Google and noted the count of
the results:
==========
president divisive 1996
45,200 results
president divisive 1997
44,800
president divisive 1998
49,000
president divisive 1999
50,200
president divisive 2000
69,600
president divisive 2001
59,900
president divisive 2002
59,200
president divisive 2003
76,100
president divisive 2004
34,800
==========
I'd certainly expect to see some growth in the "divisive" numbers,
simply because the internet itself has grown so enormously in the past
few years. But I was surprised by the -- I have to say it -- "spikes"
in 2000 and 2003.
The 2000 results may be a reflection of the election campaigns. The
2003 results may be the hard numbers to back up you impression that
the current political climate is truly reying more heavily on the word
"divisive" than in the past.
pafalafa-ga
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Clarification of Question by
bugbear-ga
on
14 Jan 2004 08:24 PST
I think this is good enough as an answer. BTW, pafalafa-ga, the
reason I'm asking is a new essay I just put online (it reached
number 2 on blogdex and daypop):
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
I've already changed the wording not to blame "divisive" on Bush.
He does like the term, but it was clearly already popular.
Several of the questions I've asked lately were for this, though
I didn't end up using all of them.
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