The Rhetorical Crucible — Semiotic

Home · Getting Started · Charts · Features · Playground

This page requires JavaScript for interactive chart demos.

AI / Machine-readable docs: llms.txt · llms-full.txt · CLAUDE.md · schema.json · API Reference · Examples

View on GitHub · npx semiotic-ai for CLI access

Machine-readable page content

Canonical: https://semiotic.nteract.io/examples/rhetorical-crucible

The Rhetorical Crucible

A lexical assay in three presidential debates

The Rhetorical Crucible

A debate is commonly advertised as an exchange of ideas, a description so hygienic as to miss the smoke. Here the words enter separately, endure the same hour, and leave either in company or in the tray reserved for the rhetorically unattached.

Each candidate receives a separate retort. The apparatus therefore observes temporal companionship, not political agreement, and it emphatically does not award a winner. The physics supplies the commotion; the ledger, less theatrically, supplies the truth.

Debate2016 · Clinton – Trump (first debate)

Follow wordFurnace paceAuto-rerun

TransportRunning · Opening

The charge enters in public

The Word Trails galley retains chronology: a word’s height is where it peaked in the transcript, its size is that peak-bin count, and its hue records which voices used it. The brass word is the one followed through both candidate retorts below.

Democrat Republican Moderator Mixed hue = shared usage

OpeningClosing

Two retorts, one clock

Candidate vocabularies are processed independently against the same five-part chronology. Near-matching 20-bin profiles open an alloy; later words may join only when their mean similarity clears the declared threshold.

ClintonDemocratic candidate retort

12 source components; 2 products; 138 uses in products. Outcome: assay-complete.

TrumpRepublican candidate retort

12 source components; 3 products; 192 uses in products. Outcome: assay-complete.

Clinton

leaves in JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY

Opened JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY at cosine 0.81.

Follow one wordJOBS

Same spelling. Different temporal company.

Trump

leaves in COMPANIES + JOBS

Opened COMPANIES + JOBS at cosine 0.94.

That is a pattern in this transcript, not an affidavit of motive. “Company” here means only that the words rose and fell at similar points in the debate.

What survived the heat

The names below are deliberately unromantic: they contain only the words that formed them. No topic label, ideological diagnosis, or victory was smuggled in by the animation.

Clinton · temporal alloy

PEOPLE + NEED + WILL

people · need · will · country

4 words · 93 uses

Clinton · temporal alloy

JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY

jobs · work · economy

3 words · 45 uses

Trump · temporal alloy

COMPANIES + JOBS

companies · jobs

2 words · 39 uses

Trump · temporal alloy

COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON

country · secretary · clinton · good

4 words · 120 uses

Trump · temporal alloy

MONEY + GREAT

money · great

2 words · 33 uses

Open the complete disposition ledger · 24 admitted words

Candidate	Rank	Word	Uses	Disposition	Destination	Recorded basis
Clinton	1	people	33	alloyed	PEOPLE + NEED + WILL	Joined PEOPLE + NEED + WILL at mean cosine 0.69.
Clinton	2	donald	26	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	No unassigned partner met the 0.65 opening-pair threshold.
Clinton	3	need	23	alloyed	PEOPLE + NEED + WILL	Opened PEOPLE + NEED + WILL at cosine 0.83.
Clinton	4	will	21	alloyed	PEOPLE + NEED + WILL	Joined PEOPLE + NEED + WILL at mean cosine 0.61.
Clinton	5	good	17	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	No unassigned partner met the 0.65 opening-pair threshold.
Clinton	6	jobs	17	alloyed	JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY	Opened JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY at cosine 0.81.
Clinton	7	country	16	alloyed	PEOPLE + NEED + WILL	Opened PEOPLE + NEED + WILL at cosine 0.83.
Clinton	8	tax	16	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	No unassigned partner met the 0.65 opening-pair threshold.
Clinton	9	business	15	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	No unassigned partner met the 0.65 opening-pair threshold.
Clinton	10	work	15	alloyed	JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY	Joined JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY at mean cosine 0.67.
Clinton	11	american	13	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	No unassigned partner met the 0.65 opening-pair threshold.
Clinton	12	economy	13	alloyed	JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY	Opened JOBS + WORK + ECONOMY at cosine 0.81.
Trump	1	country	51	alloyed	COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON	Joined COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON at mean cosine 0.71.
Trump	2	people	37	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	The three-product limit closed before another qualifying opening pair could be formed.
Trump	3	will	32	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	The three-product limit closed before another qualifying opening pair could be formed.
Trump	4	secretary	27	alloyed	COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON	Opened COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON at cosine 0.92.
Trump	5	years	24	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	The three-product limit closed before another qualifying opening pair could be formed.
Trump	6	clinton	22	alloyed	COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON	Opened COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON at cosine 0.92.
Trump	7	companies	20	alloyed	COMPANIES + JOBS	Opened COMPANIES + JOBS at cosine 0.94.
Trump	8	good	20	alloyed	COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON	Joined COUNTRY + SECRETARY + CLINTON at mean cosine 0.63.
Trump	9	jobs	19	alloyed	COMPANIES + JOBS	Opened COMPANIES + JOBS at cosine 0.94.
Trump	10	money	17	alloyed	MONEY + GREAT	Opened MONEY + GREAT at cosine 0.85.
Trump	11	bad	16	unalloyed	UNALLOYED	The three-product limit closed before another qualifying opening pair could be formed.
Trump	12	great	16	alloyed	MONEY + GREAT	Opened MONEY + GREAT at cosine 0.85.

The assayer’s fine print

A metaphor earns its keep by clarifying the rules under which it may be trusted. These are the rules, including the rather important ones that keep the furnace from manufacturing its own evidence.

The transcript is tokenized, common stopwords are removed, and each speaker’s remaining words are counted in twenty equal token-position bins. These are positions in a transcript, not minutes on a clock. The twelve most-used non-artifact words for each candidate constitute the admitted charge.

Every admitted pair is compared by cosine similarity across all twenty bins. An unassigned pair scoring at least 0.65 may open an alloy. At most two more words may join when their mean similarity to its present members is at least 0.55. Each source word belongs to one destination only; no word is quietly duplicated for dramatic effect.

Three products per candidate is the declared maximum. Whatever cannot qualify, or arrives after that limit closes, remains unalloyed with a recorded reason. “Crosstalk” and “nbsp” are transcript artifacts and are excluded before admission, rather than paraded as rhetorical waste.

The same authored program is compiled afresh for 2012, 2016, and 2020. Selecting another debate does not repaint a previous conclusion; it reruns the assay on that debate’s own profiles. The chart animates assignments already present in the data compiler. It does not discover topics by collision.

Pre-charge exclusions

1 transcript-artifact profiles

nbsp

Conservation

Twenty-four admitted sources

Twelve per candidate; each closes in one alloy or one unalloyed outlet. The amount ledger remains the original word-use count.

Claim boundary

Timing, not meaning

Cosine similarity compares the complete 20-bin timing profiles; it does not infer topic, intent, agreement, or debate performance.