NLP

Setting the Tone. The Diffusion of Moral and Moral-Emotional Appeals in Political and Public Discourse

Forthcoming in the *Political Science Research & Methods*

The Effect of Wind Turbine Construction on Elite Discourse

Accepted in the *Journal of Politics*

The effect of temperature on language complexity: Evidence from seven million parliamentary speeches

Climate change carries important effects on human wellbeing and performance, and increasingly research is documenting the negative impacts of out-of-comfort temperatures on workplace performance. In this study, we investigate the plausibly causal effect of extreme temperatures, i.e., out-of-comfort, on language complexity among politicians, leveraging a fixed effects strategy. We analyze language complexity in over seven million parliamentary speeches across eight countries, connecting them with precise daily meteorological information. We find hot days reduce politicians’ language complexity, but not cold days. Focusing on one country, we explore marginal effects by age and gender, suggesting high temperatures significantly impact older politicians at lower thresholds. The findings propose that political rhetoric is not only driven by political circumstances and strategic concerns but also by physiological responses to external environmental factors. Overall, the study holds important implications on how climate change could affect human cognitive performance and the quality of political discourse.

Creating and Comparing Dictionary, Word Embedding, and Transformer-based Models to Measure Discrete Emotions in German Political Text

Published in *Political Analysis* (2022)