Explaining Donald Trump via communication style: Grandiosity, informality, and dynamism

How did Donald Trump dominate his more experienced competitors in the primaries? We suspected the answer might lie in his communication style rather than his platform details. Hence, we analyzed the announcement speeches of the top nine Republican contenders as of October, 2015. We transcribed 27 speech segments each and applied Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a computerized text analysis software. We also conducted acoustic analyses of the speech recordings and had them coded for grandiosity by trained (but blind) raters. Trump scored highest on (a) grandiosity ratings, (b) use of first person pronouns, (c) greater pitch dynamics, and (d) informal communication (including Twitter usage of all 17 candidates). With number of primaries won as the criterion, our results suggest that Trump benefited from all these aspects of campaign communication style. It remains to be seen whether this same communication profile will help or hinder success in a general election.