Comparison of the Local Assembly and National Diet Speeches made by the Same Speakers

Abstract

National Diet, Local Assembly, Speech Analysis This paper compares the speeches made by MPs when they were part of their local assemblies and after they became members of the National Diet. The data collected from the local assembly and National Diet speeches were compared based on three aspects: remarks made about the same topics, the political vocabulary ratio (Uchida et al. 2019), and their politeness and formality with which the speeches were made. The first analysis demonstrated that MPs tend to focus on topics they previously took up in their local assemblies. The political vocabulary ratio, on the other hand, helped identify politically relevant words from those that are not. Finally, the analysis showed that MPs were relatively more polite during their National Diet speeches compared to the local assembly speeches.