Are members of Congress dumbing down their discourse?
The Sunlight Foundation determined that Congress is talking at nearly a full grade level below the level at which members spoke seven years ago, according to its study of the Congressional Record—the official record of members' proceedings and speech. The foundation applied the Flesch-Kincaid grade level test to congressional conversations and found that today's Congress speaks "at about a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005," senior fellow Lee Drutman wrote in his analysis. Sunlight also found that the newest as well as the most conservative members of Congress on average speak at the lowest grade level.
The following is a Sunlight Foundation graphic charting the grade levels of members' speeches:
Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina scored lowest with a 7.9 grade level average for his speech. But he told Yahoo News Monday that although he doesn't believe anyone equates "sentence length" and the "polysyllabic nature of words" with intelligence, his ranking is something to be proud of.
"I see it as an affirmation that we're doing something right," Mulvaney said of his fellow bottom-tier representatives. "You've got to speak clearly and concisely," Mulvaney said, if you want people to know what you believe.
He noted that he and some of his fellow bottom-rankers, including Republican Reps. Rob Woodall of Georgia and Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, speak extemporaneously and don't use prepared notes. "This is a group of people who are trying to sound like ordinary people and not like politicians," Mulvaney said.
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