Abstract
Leaders have been observed to use distinct rhetorical strategies, but it is unclear to what extent such strategies are effective. To address this issue we analyzed the official election campaign speeches of successful and unsuccessful Prime Ministerial candidates in all 43 Australian Federal elections since independence from Britain in 1901 and measured candidates' use of personal (‘I’, ‘me’) and collective pronouns (‘we’, ‘us’). Victors used more collective pronouns than their unsuccessful opponents in 80% of all elections. Across all elections, victors made 61% more references to ‘we’ and ‘us’ and used these once every 79 words (vs. every 136 words for losers). Extending social identity theorizing, this research suggests that electoral endorsement is associated with leaders' capacity to engage with, and speak on behalf of, a collective identity that is shared with followers whose support and energies they seek to mobilize.
Highlights
The oratory of great political leaders has been subjected to meticulous analysis by psychologists, linguistics, political scientists, and historians [1,2,3,4,5]
Research suggests that successful leaders act as entrepreneurs of identity such that their speeches serve to cultivate a sense of ‘us’ that is shared with potential followers [6,7,8,9]
We examine whether successful candidates in national general elections make greater use of we-referencing language than their losing counterparts
Summary
The oratory of great political leaders has been subjected to meticulous analysis by psychologists, linguistics, political scientists, and historians [1,2,3,4,5]. In line with common media portrayals, classical leadership research generally focuses on the (extraordinary) traits and capabilities of individual leaders as ‘‘great men’’ [10,11,12,13,14]. More recent research has shifted focus away from the leader as a great ‘I’ by stressing the importance of followers and the group as a whole to the leadership process [15,16,17] This places greater emphasis on the ‘we’ of leadership, and is exemplified by work examining the role that a sense of shared group membership plays in allowing leaders and followers to influence each other [18,19,20,21,22]
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