Absolutism and situation: Prolegomena to a rhetorical biography of Richard M. Nixon

This study is an initial attempt at rhetorical biography and details an automated language analysis procedure for assessing verbal absolution. The study proceeds deductively by first positing five features of the “public personality” of Richard M. Nixon and then using these constructs to interpret certain stylistic probings made of his rhetoric. The results of the investigation indicate that Nixon's verbal absolutism was (1) less pronounced than that of a comparison group of speakers, (2) highly variable, (3) explainable only when a network of rhetorical variables was considered, and (4) manifested variously (and predictably) from situation to situation.