Exploring the Microscopic Textual Characteristics of Japanese Prime Ministers' Diet Addresses by Measuring the Quantity and Diversity of Nouns

This study explores the textual characteristics, more precisely the quantity and diversity of nouns, of Japanese prime ministers' Diet addresses. In the field of stylistics, textual characteristics independent of the content have been examined with the aim on detecting the authors, genres, and chronological variations of texts. This study focuses instead on textual characteristics related to the content of texts, namely the quantity and diversity of nouns, because our aim is to analyze texts to better understand two political phenomena: (a) the difference between the two types of Diet addresses delivered by Japanese prime ministers, and (b) the perceived changes made to these addresses by two powerful prime ministers. It is a case study of the microscopic characterization of texts, which has become more and more important with the expansion in the scope of stylistics and the production of a wide variety of new types of texts following the advent of the Web.