Speeches of US politicians 'have the reading age of a 13-year-old'

Congressional speeches made by US politicians have become simpler since the 1970s and only require the reading age of a 13-year-old to be followed, study found. Computer scientists from Kansas State University analysed two million congressional speeches from Republican and Democrat politicians made between 1873 and 2010. Text analysis algorithms were used to examine how congressional speeches changed in terms of complexity, emotion and divisiveness over 138 years. More recent speeches use a smaller vocabulary, simpler language and talk about'the other party' more than speeches made even a decade ago, the authors found. Researchers put the drop in the reading level down to the rise of broadcast media in congress that started in the mid-1970s - with politicians'playing to the camera'.