Inaugural Words: A Snapshot of History
The New York Times this weekend posted a fascinating interactive feature at their web site: Inaugural Words — 1789 to the Present. (Thanks, by the way, to Angela Maiers for pointing me to this, via Larry Ferlazo’s blog.) The site gives a word cloud based on the inauguration speeches of each president.
Here are a few ideas about how you could use this with your gifted students:
Select one of the speeches and have the students infer whatever they can about the historical context in which it was given.
Research the historical period and compare/contrast what was mentioned in the speech with things that were left out.
Compare how vocabulary has changed over time. Figure out a way to illustrate these changes (perhaps with a graph or timeline).
Combine the text from several speeches (perhaps all the speeches over a 50-year span, or all the speeches from the top-ranked Presidents) and create a Wordle to look for broader patterns of words.
Create a Wordle from President Obama’s speech and compare it to those from other Presidents. (Thanks to Lee Kolbert for this idea.)
Imagine you’re elected President. Which other Presidents would you emulate? Use words from their speeches to begin building your own.
Research which Presidents wrote their own speeches and which used speechwriters. Is there any difference in the vocabulary?
This is admittedly a very rough list of ideas, and none of these are fully fleshed-out lessons. What other thoughts do you have?