Whatever we personally might think about the relative virtues or flaws of particular politicians, we know only too well from history the consequences of oratory that can engage and motivate large numbers of people. Similarly, in our own time, we know that some people “come across” better than others.

We might take out understanding of their policies, plans and key messages, but almost inevitably, we also take out a reading of that person based not on what they said, but how they said it.

In this illustration of ESP linguistic analysis, text from selected speeches is transcribed into a bespoke software programme that identifies and scores defined language patterns and vocabularies.