Ben Zimmer Quotes

Hillary Clinton has been portrayed as robotic, someone who is trying to approximate real human emotion.

Donald Trump speaks extemporaneously, often through stream of consciousness, where it doesn't seem to follow a trajectory.

Donald Trump himself has an idiosyncratic speaking style that relies on simple words and phrases, which worked for him in the primaries but may be coming up short for him now.

Sometimes people are primed to hear in a certain way. When a word like braggadocious suddenly appears, it's like, 'What, is he just making that up?'

Weaponization of a candidate's words against him or her is something we're seeing a lot. The term Obamacare was used against Obama in a pejorative way, but Obama again reclaimed it.