I decided on these 3 datasets using 3 different eras of United States history. First, I grouped presidents like George Washington and John Adams into Early American History. Then, came FDR and Truman. I grouped them into the war-time period or The Great Depression. Finally, modern day presidents like Biden and Trump were put into a seperate catergory.
In terms of investigation, I would like to discover if the wording is still just as formal as before, the kinds of wording, and maybe the word count of the speeches.
A collection of screenshots from the N-gram viewer in AntConc.
A collection of screenshots from the KWIC viewer in AntConc.
All documents mention The United States in some way. They also commonly talk from a perspective of the people with phrases like "Our fellow citizens". in the KWIC view, we can examine each United States N-Gram. We notice that in the left image that in "The United States" the "of America" is omitted compared to the right image. Instead, it uses prepositional language like "in" or "to". In terms of Formality, you could argue that modern day wording is slightly less formal with phrases like "and we will" compared to "my fellow citizens". But, I would still say that all the inaugural periods still contain very formal wording.
Individually, The early United States speeches with people, like John Adams, talk about "the people" ALOT. Because there is also a higher frecuency count with the Early American History period, we can assume that their speeches tended to be more wordy.
Next, during wartime "Franklin D. Roosevelt" was said 8 whole times, probably all from Truman. Finally, in current day, "God bless you" was said way more than previous inaugural texts. I find this interesting because the presence of christianity should have been way more popular back in the day.
