Communists spoke differently: An analysis of Czechoslovak and Czech annual presidential speeches

Abstract

Abstract Annual speeches of Czech and Czechoslovak presidents on the occasion of the end of the year are analyzed in this study. Several stylometric methods are used, namely, vocabulary richness expressed by the moving-average type–token ratio, an index of text activity, mean word length, mean verb distance, and cluster analysis of the most frequent words. The authors primarily focus on the differences between presidential addresses given in the democratic and in the communist era. Peculiarities of individual styles of particular presidents are also investigated.