Visualising key speeches and submissions of Sarath Fonseka
Repost This ArticleNow officially a Presidential aspirant, erstwhile Army Commander Sarath Fonseka has, since late October 2009 made a number of verbal and written submissions regarding his candidacy and political life after retirement. In October 2009 he made a speech at a Buddhist Temple in Washington DC. On the 12th November, he handed in his resignation addressed to the President. On 27th November, when it was an open secret that he would contest the Presidential elections, he gave an in-depth interview to the Daily Mirror newspaper.
For the first time, the following visualizations of Fonseka’s key submissions to date, using the web based Wordle, reveal the most frequently used words in each of them.
Visualisations such as this obviously have their drawbacks for serious semantic analysis. For example, the former General’s interview with the Daily Mirror was a clear and controversial break with the Executive’s avowed belief that post-war, there are no longer any minorities or majorities in Sri Lanka. On the other hand, these visualisations provide interesting insights into Fonseka’s vision and the possible thrust of his imminent Presidential campaign by flagging key words, phrases and ideas.
Speech made in Washington DC
One can clearly see the former General’s political ambitions in the speech made in Washington DC through the significant emphasis on the country and its people. At the same time, Fonseka also stresses the victory against the LTTE, the sacrifices of the Army, and things that need to be done to secure a better future.
Letter of resignation
Unsurprisingly, the letter of resignation strikes a completely different chord. Here, the predominant emphasis is on the Army and his command of it. Addressed to the President, he repeatedly calls the Executive’s attention to his actions during war leading to victory. There is no little or no emphasis on country, its people or its future as was the case in Washington DC.
Daily Mirror interview
The interview with the Daily Mirror harks back to the expression and emphases in Washington DC. Here again we find many references to country, its people, the Army and war. On the other hand, the emphasis on security, house, vehicles, the Secretary of Defence and the President reveal significant grievances against the Rajapakse administration.
Given the (growing) tensions between Fonseka and the Rajapakse administration, the following is an interesting visualisation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Olcott Oration at Ananda College on 4th December.
Rajapakse’s emphasis is clearly, and quite understandably Statist – choosing to highlight the political leadership and role of Government in the victory against the LTTE. For the Defence Secretary, the LTTE is still very much a topic of conversation. Unlike Fonseka, who concentrates on personal grievances and domestic issues in all of the examples above, Rajapakse in this speech flags peace, development, international aspects as well as domestic issues.
The visualisations are also interesting for what Fonseka and Rajapakse omit stressing as much as victory, Army, war and the LTTE. Inter alia, there is comparatively little or no significance afforded to democracy, human rights or the dire humanitarian conditions in Menik Farm in particular. Neither Fonseka nor Rajapakse stress the issue of war crimes or crimes against humanity, though rather  interestingly, Fonseka on the BBC recently seemed far less hostile to discussing this issue than the incumbent Executive.
Groundviews will continue to visualise key speeches of the Presidential candidates over the course of the campaign, as they provide a novel way to easily grasp key ideas and messages in campaign speeches, promises and individual manifestos.
This is brilliant! The brief semiotic analysis allows you to cut through all the academic crap to get to the heart of the candidate’s concerns! Please continue with this!
it is great! some big words are of course rhetorical, like people. did he say ‘peoples’ ‘nations’?
Sumane,
He says it in the singular, not plural.
Sanjana
why don’t you organize the same in his sinhala speeches, his speech at the UNP annual conference. a visual image comparison of the speeches by two candidates would be more productive. a great exercise.
From an Interview to OUTLOOKINDIA
Q: Why did you fall out with Rajapaksa?
Sarath Fonseka: Five days after we won the war, at a meeting of the (president’s) security council, he said he’d stop recruiting new people in the army because it’s too strong and too big, that Sri Lanka would become like Myanmar. Such statements demoralised me. I thought they were disgusting.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?263151
This is a fresh attempt. Therefore like any new exercise raises some key questions along with the opportunities.
1.Can the complexity of a social construct be captured by visualizing (self arranged) selected text?
2.What are the dependent and independent variables considered in this arrangement?
3.How did/could the author avoid the selection bias?
4.How could one codify (and justify) the size, density and position of each selected word?
5.What are the causal and notational effects of such selections?
6.Should one always in-build a multicollinearity in this type of attempst?
Sanjana
Good attempt. But I am puzzled with the absence of an explanation for the research design. With your permission, the chapter four of King, Keohane and Verba book gives a good guideline for this type of textualizing (though the book as a whole is very heavy on positivism)
Best
Creativity, Weird and Election analysis redefined
That being said, interestingly “PEACE” is missing, and that’s shocking !
Sanjana,
Thanks for another tool to analayse the speech of a person. It will be interesting to look at the speeches of persons in various series of significant time frame, audience, context, medium etc. These are significant independent variables to analyse the content and the persons inner thoughts.
Congratulations to CPA and its groundviews staff on its anniversary. I enjoyed the interviews you used to conduct. This is a good time period for you to interview candidates. I like to listen to it without cataloguing the words though! That would be like staying close and counting the pixels of an impressionist’s painting.