As might be expected, the words god, lord, church, Jesus, and Christ are in the top. However, compared to the average general authority conference talk, President Monson uses those words less frequently. To be clear, those are still in the top twenty for President Monson, they are just diluted by the many other words that he uses. For example, President Benson's top word was church, and it has ~0.55% occurrence. President Monson's top word of god occurs with just under 0.3% occurrence.
Why the discrepancy? My interpretation is that President Monson has a wider diversity of words than the average general authority, and thus his top-used words occur less frequently because they are diluted by his linguistic diversity. Comparing President Monson to President Benson, President Monson has ~15,000 unique words in all of his talks from 1971 to 2015, whereas President Benson has ~8,000 unique words in his set of talks. Hmm...perhaps a future post can consider word diversity among different general authorities.
Now let's look at what President Monson's top twenty words are compared to the average general authority. The graph below shows the top twenty words when the percent occurrence has the average % occurrence of all general authorities subtracted out. In other words, it's taking the blue bars from the graph above and reordering them. The next graph shows the same top twenty words, but compares the relative percent increase (i.e. President Monson's percent occurrence divided by the average percent occurrence, minus 100%)
Looking at these words, we can come up with some interesting comments about President Monson's topics and speaking style. For example, President Monson's top words compared to other general authorities in absolute percent occurrence is president and brother. I was a little puzzled by this at first. Does president refer to the president of the church, to President Monson, to the president of the United States? Does brother refer to the brotherhood of man, his own brother, Brother so-and-so, or what? After looking at a few examples of both word usages, I came to the conclusion that president and brother are largely used as the name-titles President and Brother.
As an example, you can look at the word tree below from the talks of President Monson from 2011 to 2014:
Most of the instances using the word president refer to President Somebody. The same pattern occurs with brother. [Follow this link and you should be able to create your own word tree from President Monson's 2011-2014 talks].
Anyone familiar with President Monson's style of speaking knows that storytelling is an integral part of his talks. Thus the use of the name-titles President and Brother are consistent with stories of individuals. Similarly, in President Monson's top 20 list, the words each, years, ago, (think "years ago..."), city, where, ever, came seem particularly applicable to recalling specific accounts and happenings. The occurrence of the word Monson even fits into this category because he of necessity refers to his own actions or conversations with others--usually referring to himself as "Brother Monson."
Other themes that I draw from the top twenty words are:
- Ministering to individuals: each, service, priesthood, hand, courage (see The Service That Counts)
- Home and family: mother, home (see Hallmarks of a Happy Home)
- Church meetings: general, conference (e.g. Welcome to Conference)
I was confused by the words proposed and manifest, though. Why would proposed be used 350% more often than the average general authority, and manifest 200% more? Then I looked at the examples and found that over the course of President Monson's service as a counselor in the First Presidency, he has said "It is proposed that we sustain..." and "All in favor, please manifest..." many, many times!
In addition to looking at words that were used most frequently, I found it interesting to look at words that were used infrequently. For example, the word repent has only been used 4 times by President Monson in general conference from 1971 to 2015. Although he clearly teaches people to repent, improve, and change their lives, apparently you are not likely to hear President Monson directly proclaim "Repent!" Instead, he'll say something like:
May we return to our homes with a resolve in our hearts to be a little better than we have been in the past. May we be a little kinder and more thoughtful. May we reach out in helpfulness, not only to our fellow members but also to those who are not of our faith. As we associate with them, may we show our respect for them. (Closing talk of 2014 October General Conference)
I also found it interesting to find words that President Monson used only once, and that no other general authority used at conference from 1971 to 2015. To finish up, here is a list of a few of the many words that you can only find once in the conference archives--and that once is by President Monson. See if you can find them (exact word forms only!):
- ascertained
- auctioned
- avocados
- bachelor
- Beatles
- billboard
- blogging
- bobbed
- caboose
- canine
- clown
- dentistry
- humanities
- periscope
- snuck
- sombrero
- Tylenol
- ukuleles
- vaccines
- vagrant
- vendors
- viewer
- wastebasket
- Wheaties
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