Spontaneity of Speech Errors: A Diagnostic Psycholinguistic Case Study

The aim of this study is to use speech errors as a verbal means of communication to clarify the psychological aspects of George W. Bush’s character. Bush’s character is chosen for being highly controversial, having received the lowest approval rating in 2008 and the highest approval rating after the September 11 attacks. To achieve the aim of this study, a psycholinguistic approach is adopted in addition to a speech production model set by Dell (1999), and Chang and Griffin (1999). Some of Bush’s spontaneous errors are supposed to be collected, and then categorized from a psycholinguistic perspective and finally analyzed statistically. The main results of the study can be summed in the following points. (a) The phonological and morphological errors, caused by the psychological priming, reveal how much perplexity and confusion Bush has experienced. (b) Bush’s Freudian slips—caused by psycho-physiological factors, such as fatigue, excitement, and distraction—reveal the fact that he is not an open outright president as he represses many thoughts and feelings more than he shows. (c) Bush’s syntactic errors, caused by the improper lexical insertion, reveal his poor linguistic competence; the matter that reveals low intelligence for many psychologists such as Pishghadam and Shams (2012). (d) The economical use of speech disfluencies, caused by problems in the recognition system, reveals that Bush has a tendency of rashness. That is, he may take rapid incorrect decisions that lead to catastrophes.


Introduction
George. W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, receives much criticism and flattery during his presidency that lasts from 2001 to 2009. Some psychologists, authors, political commentators, journalists and analysts-such as Woodward (2002), Black (2004), Andersson (2005), Long (2009), and Judis (2005)-point out that Bush attempts to place himself as a legendary ethical leader who evokes past events to urge the Americans to keep up fighting terrorism for the sake of liberty and democracy. Others, such as Pfiffner (2003), Greene (2006), Rodriguez (2006), Kushner and Gershkoff (2005), assert that Bush is a manipulative cunning lying president who attempts to set a false link between 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein. In addition to his manipulative skills, Pfiffner (2003), Rodriguez (2006), and Kushner and Gershkoff (2005) also assert that Bush is a president with a bias for action rather than deliberation. The contrasted controversial views concerning Bush's character stirs the researcher to examine the aspects of Bush's personality from a psychological perspective, using a psycholinguistic tool, speech errors.

A Psycholinguistic Perspective of Bush's Personality
The results of the studies of Andersson (2005) and Judis (2005) reveal some aspects of Bush's personality. These aspects are revealed via President George W. Bush's conscious and skillful employment of certain devices such as religious references and historical symbols in his speeches. As a matter of fact, the use of these devices is peculiar as it matches with the line of American political rhetoric. What can also be noticed after reading these studies is that Bush relies heavily on American sense of patriotism. In other words, Bush reminds the Americans with their great history. The use of these devices spotlights some aspects of Bush's psychological personality. He wants to portray himself as a leader who studies the past and the present to encounter the future dangers facing America. He also wants to set himself as a leader of the twenty-first-century crusades launched against the barbarian terrorists. Like Andersson (2005) and Judis (2005), Pfiffner (2003), adopting a psychological approach, examines Bush's personal traits that can be deduced from his speeches. Pfiffner (2003, p. 161) argues that Bush's rhetoric reveals three personal traits: [1] "bias for action rather than deliberation", [2] "moral certainty over strategic calculation"; and [3] "personal approach to politics".

Research Questions
The researcher attempts to analyze Bush's speech errors to define the psychological peculiarities of Bush's character. Therefore, the researcher intends to find answers for the following questions: 1) What are the categories of errors made in Bush's spontaneous speeches?
2) What are the psycholinguistic interpretations of Bush's speech errors?
3) What can speech errors reveal about Bush's character?

Method
Speech errors, the research method employed in this study, can be defined as unintentional linguistic innovations. Further, they are defined as involuntary deviation in performance from the one's current phonological, grammatical or lexical intention (Fromkin, 1973). Fromkin's corpus of speech errors is employed for examining and categorizing George W. Bush's speech errors into groups including (a) cognitive intrusions, (b) phonological errors, (c) morphological errors, (d) syntactic errors, (e) semantic errors, and (f) speech disfluencies. Fromkin's corpus is widely used by psycholinguists when analyzing speakers' speech errors. It is worth noting that the focus is supposed to be on Bush's errors produced in spontaneous rather than previously prepared speeches.

Research Procedures
The research undertakes the following procedures. (a) The researcher looks for Bush's spontaneous utterances that have speech errors. (b) Depending on Fromkin (1973), Clark (1977), Carroll (1986), Garnham, (2013 and Levelt (1989), the researcher sets Bush's speech errors into categories. (c) The psycholinguistic approach is then used to interpret Bush's speech errors. (f) The researcher begins to draw a character sketch for Bush depending on the data analyzed.

Research Design
In this study, the researcher used the mixed research design to solve the research problem and answer the research questions raised in this study. There are two basic types of research paradigms: (1) quantitative research and (2) qualitative. The researcher used the two research approaches by transforming the descriptive data collected to quantitative, which underwent deep analysis by SPSS.

Bush's Cognitive Intrusions
(1) "If you want to build a big project and you can't get insurance because of what the terrorists have done for America, you can put the project aside." (George W. Bush, Oakland County Airport, October 14, 2002)  In a presidential debate with John Kerry, Bush declared that the best way to avoid the draft (i.e., national conscription) was to vote for him. He pledged to oppose mandatory military service. He accused John Kerry of supporting the notion of national conscription. Bush mistakenly said "We will not have an all-volunteer army". He quickly corrected himself by saying "Let me restate that. We will not have a draft. The best way to avoid a draft is to vote for me." (3) Well, I mean that a defeat in Iraq will embolden the enemy and will provide the enemy-more opportunity to train, plan, to attack us. That's what I mean. There-it's-you know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror. I believe it. As I told you, Osama bin Laden believes it (Bush, Washington DC, 2006).

Target Error Error Type
I am sure that there is a connection between Iraq and the war on terror.
One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror

Freudian slip
In an interview with Katie Couric aired on CBS Evening News, Bush said that one of the hardest parts of his job was to connect the Iraqi regime to the war on terror. His comments with Katie Couric totally contradicted previous statements by members of his administration. Bush in his interview with Katie Couric said that he just believed that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist September 11th attacks. The implication was that the war on Iraq was groundless and was not for the sake of fighting terrorism. It was for the sake of Iraqi oil as many commentators said.

Phonological Errors
(4) "If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow." (George Bush, Rochester, New York, January 7, 2001) with the syllable 'in-', producing a phonological error.

Morphological Errors
(7) "I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying to convince those college students to accept my tenants.
And I reject any labeling me because I happened to go to the university." (George W. Bush, February 23, 2000)

Target Error
Error Type

Tenets Tenants Malapropism
The excerpt in (7) above was said by Bush as a comment on his controversial visit to Bob Jones University in 2000 during his election campaign. Bob Jones University is the largest conservative Christian institution in the USA. It proclaims for fundamentalism. But after Bush's speech in which he said that he looked forward to publicly defend the conservative philosophy, he was criticized by Catholics because of the school's position on Catholicism, and by Blacks because of the school's ban on interracial dating. Bush then claimed that he deeply regretted appearing in the university. He contended that his speech was misunderstood. He added that his visit to Bob Jones university did not mean that he hold their tenets (i.e., principles and beliefs). However, instead of saying 'tenets', he said 'tenants'.
(8) "We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile." (George W. Bush, Des Moines, IA, August 21, 2000)

Target Error Error Type
Hostage Hostile Malapropism The excerpt in (8) above was said by Bush as a comment on US proposed Missile Defense Program. Bush was asked by a reporter during his election campaign whether he was for or against the National Missile Defense Program. Actually, this program is a mechanism which can detect and destroy a missile before it can cause any harm. This program can shield America against any kind of missiles. Therefore, for Bush, there was no chance for rogue nations to hold America hostage; the reference was to Iran and North Korea.
(9) "The law I sign today directs new funds and new focus to the task of collecting vital intelligence on terrorist threats and on weapons of mass production." (Washington, D.C., November 27, 2002).

Target Error
Error Type destruction production Malapropism ijel.ccsenet.org International Journal of English Linguistics Vol. 10, No. 3; In 2002, in a news conference, Bush declared that he set up "The National Commission on Terrorism" (Kean & Hamilton, 2004, p.479). This commission was created by the Congress, with a bill that was signed later into law by Bush. It was also known as the 9/11 Commission. It was set up to prepare a full report on the circumstances surrounding the September-11th attacks. The commission was asked to give recommendations to prevent future attacks by weapons of mass destruction. However, Bush slipped saying production rather than destruction.
(10) "I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but my predecessors as well." ( In September 2002, Bush addressed the American people about his energy concerns. He focused on energy consumption and its dangers on the American economy. Bush asked the Congress to quickly pass an energy bill. He believed that such an energy bill would help his administration to provide the Americans with more jobs. He repeated the notion that the Americans needed an energy bill that encourages energy conservation. However, instead of saying conservation or rationalization, he slipped saying consumption.  In 2000, in a news conference, a correspondent called Ken Herman asked Bush about his opinion concerning the American quota system (i.e., a system, originally determined by legislation in 1921, limiting by nationality the number of immigrants who may enter the U.S. each year) (Martin & Midgley, 2003). Bush said that for the Americans to succeed and actively affirm access to the American dream, they should revoke this system. The quota system, according to George Bush, would lead to an American balkanization. That is, it would divide America into smaller hostile states. However, instead of saying that the quota system would balkanize America, bush said vulcanize America.
(15) "The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. In 2004, in the first presidential debate with John Kerry, Bush was asked if there were any possibilities that America would be exposed to 9/11-type terrorist attacks. Bush replied, with much confidence, that there were no chances that such attacks would take place again. He asserted that America in 2004 became much safer than that in 2001 thanks to the security reforms that he had introduced to the general American security system. He also added that Al-Qaeda fought fiercely since it absolutely positive that it was about to be completely defeated in Iraq. However, instead of saying that Al-Qaeda fought fiercely he mistakenly said vociferously.

Target Error Error Type
Are Is Subject verb agreement The first time Bush used the word internets was in his third presidential debate against Al Gore on October 17, 2000. During the debate, an audience member asserted that he was concerned about the spread of sexually explicit movies among the youths. The audience member wanted to know how Bush would face such a problem. Bush said that this problem could have been faced by using filters on the internet. Nonetheless, he grammatically slipped saying internets rather than internet, an error that constantly repeated in his speeches. In 2008, in a Russian city, Bush and Vladimir discussed the war on terrorism. Bush appreciated the rule played by Putin to convince Iran to have civilian nuclear power. He concluded that USA and Russia had to cooperate as the two countries had been exposed to many terrorist attacks in the past. Nonetheless, Bush made a grammatical mistake when he used the preposition 'as' instead of the adverb 'so'.
(25) "Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling." (George Bush, Washington, D.C., January 23, 2004)

Target Error Error Type
is Are Subject-verb agreement Bush promised the Americans to make educating every child his top domestic priority during his second term. He proposed a comprehensive plan to improve overall student performance and close the achievement gap between rich and poor students in the American public schools. He proposed a law called No Child Left Behind Act that would improve the appalling educational level of the American children. However, while explaining the merits of such a law, he slipped using a plural verb, 'are', with a singular subject, 'the illiteracy level'.  In May 2002, Bush was asked in a press conference about the educational reforms that he wanted to introduce to the American educational system. He explained that his educational reforms aimed at giving the American children the necessary skills to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the American society. However, he described America as a fantastic opportunistic society. The word opportunistic is semantically incorrect as it means to take immediate advantage, often unethically, of any circumstance of possible benefit. Semantically, Bush meant to say something like 'a society of fantastic opportunities'.

Semantic Errors
(30) "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." (Bush, 2000) Target Error Error Type The dams would not be removed in order not to endanger fish wealth.
The human being and fish can coexist peacefully.

Out-of-context
In 2000, Bush gave a speech about his energy policy. He said that he would not support the removal of energy-producing dams. It was simply because the removal of these dams would endanger fish. He was speaking perfectly till he began to deviate from the prepared text. He said that fish and human beings could live peacefully together. The sentence was semantically illogical to the audience.
(31) "If you don't stand for anything, you don't stand for anything! If you don't stand for something, you don't stand for anything." (Bush, 2000) Target Error Error Type A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
If you don't stand for anything, you don't stand for anything. Tautology Bush replied that he could not speculate such a matter. But, he reminded Obama that there was an enemy that was getting ready for attacking America again. Bush used the object pronoun him referring to Obama, just immediately after warning him from the assumed enemy.
(34) "We are strong, we are determined, we are patient. We are resolved to rout out terror wherever it exists to save the world from freedom." (Bush, 2002) Target Error Error Type from terrorism from freedom Out-of-context sentence While Bush was addressing high school students, he said that America's message was to save the world from any terrorist attacks. But he slipped saying that America's message was to save the entire world from freedom.

Speech Disfluencies
(35) "I believe there ought to be, you know, one person in the klieg lights at a time, and I've had my time in the klieg lights. You know, I'm confident, you know, you'll catch me opining on occasion, but I wish him all the best." (Bush, 2009) (36) "You know, Mike, I don't know. Probably the next day. I'm a Type A personality, you know, I just-I just can't envision myself, you know, the big straw hat and Hawaiian shirt sitting on some beach." (Bush, 2009)

Target Error Error Type
Underlined fillers should be economized You know Discourse markers The excerpts in (35) and (36) were said by Bush in his last news conference; the one that included many filled pauses, such um, and well. In that news conference, Bush was asked about what he was going to do after leaving the White House. Bush said that he would show up every now to give his opinions and comments on serious matters going on in America. In (36), he said that he would not spend his time on beaches. Bush in that news conference noticeably used a large number of discourse markers, particularly you know. ijel.ccsenet.

Results
Before ana subjected representa Table 2 sh which is m  Vol. 10,No. 3; eory is chosen top-down flow yers of proces ries, with activ ed by a numb may be phone direction, from 7) below repre word destructi uction begins at is, when the 2020 n as it w of ssing: ation er of emes, m the sents on is with e idea of destroying something is selected, all of the nodes representing this idea such as morphemes, phonemes, semantics and syntax are activated, and this activation spreads to the adjacent nodes until one node, the node that is most highly activated is selected for the output string. Namely, when Bush selected the word destruction, all the nodes representing this word are activated.
The words production and direction are activated as they are phonologically similar to the target word, and the word construction is activated as it is, semantically, the opposite of the target. These words are activated at the lexical level that comprises two levels: the syntactic and the morphological. The nodes direction, production, construction, and destruction begin to compete for activation at the same level. The competition between the nodes often leads to the activation of the wrong node.
(37) "The law I sign today directs new funds and new focus to the task of collecting vital intelligence on terrorist threats and on weapons of mass production." (George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., November 27, 2002).
The errors in (38) and (39) show that non-count nouns and irregular plural nouns are improperly lexicalized. For example, the word internet is lexicalized a countable noun; whereas the word children is lexicalized as a singular regular countable noun. Therefore, when non-count nouns and irregular countable nouns are retrieved, a morphological interference takes place. This morphological interference takes the form of the plural '-s' morpheme. The errors in (38) and (39) below are errors of competence rather than performance.
(38) "We can have filters on internets where public money is spent." (George W. Bush, October 17, 2000) (39) "As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured." (George W. Bush, New York, September 26, 2007) A semantic error such as (40) below is due to the fact that the message or the idea is not well crystallized in the speaker's mind; therefore, the speaker retrieves many words at the semantic level, but all retrieved words are not semantically related. The retrieval of non-semantically related units may be a result of fatigue or distraction as Akram (2013) points out.
(40) "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." (George W. Bush, Michigan, September 29, 2000) Psychologically, Freud tries to explain why phonological, semantic and morphological speech errors take place. Further, he tries to point out the implications of the excessive occurrence of these errors. He generally points out that "a suppression of a previous intention to say something is the indispensable condition for the occurrence of a slip of the tongue" (Reason, 2000, p. 610). That is, a slip of the tongue occurs as a result of the continuous suppression of a wish or a desire. For Reason (2000), Freud pays much attention to a particular type of errors called parapraxes, known later as Freudian slip. It is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of an unconscious repressed wish, conflict, or train of thought. This suppression is guided by the ego and the rules of correct behavior. In addition to thought or emotion suppression, there are some psycho-physiological factors that lead to the occurrence of speech errors. These factors embrace fatigue, excitement, strong associations, distraction, and preoccupation and the like.
In contrast to psychoanalytic theorists, such as Freud, cognitive psychologists pay much attention to grammatical slips. They assume that grammatical slips represent a sequencing conflict in grammar production system. They attribute such a conflict to inattention, insufficient knowledge, and banalisation. Actually, banalization, for Reason (2000), means the replacement of unusual expressions with forms that are in more common use. As for George Bush's grammatical speech errors, it seems that they are due to insufficient knowledge rather than banalisation or inattention.
As for Bush's speech disfluencies, it should be noted that speech disfluencies indicate that the speech production apparatus requires time to search for the next word, phrase, or idea (Schachter, Christenfeld, & Bilous, 1991). Since Bush's speech disfluencies are rated the least recurrent type of errors, it indicates that Bush is marked by rashness as he was not given himself time to think of what he was going to say. In addition, it is believed that speeches "that contain disfluencies pose problems for speech recognition systems" (Bortfeld, Leon, Bloom, Schober, & Brennan, 2001, p. 124).

Conclusion
Depending on the previous sections, the research questions raised in this study can be answered as follows:

1) What are the categories of errors made in Bush's spontaneous speeches?
In the previous sections, 36 spontaneous speech errors made by George W. Bush have been categorized and studied via a psycholinguistic approach wherein the researcher has made use of the Connectionist Theory (Dell ijel.ccsenet.org International Journal of English Linguistics Vol. 10, No. 3;et al., 1999 to interpret the data collected. These errors have been categorized into six groups: (a) cognitive intrusions, meaning that "units from outside the message level are inserted into the utterance" (Levelt, 1989, p. 380), (b) phonological errors, (c) morphological errors, (d) syntactic errors, (e) semantic errors, and (f) speech disfluencies. Freudian slips, defined as the intrusion of unwanted thoughts, are the most recurrent type of cognitive intrusions found in Bush's spontaneous speeches. Phonological errors have been basically spoonerisms (i.e., switching of segments, morphemes or words) (Garrod, 2006), perseverations (i.e., the replacement of an earlier segment with a later one) (Carroll, 1986;Palmquist, 1981), and syllable substitution. The most notable type of morphological errors has been malapropisms (i.e. the replacement of a word with another that has similar sounds but an inappropriate meaning). The lack of subject-verb agreement has been the most notable syntactic error. As for semantic errors, they have categorized into repetitions, tautologies, and out-of-context errors, the ones that have notably exceeded all other types of semantic errors. The speech disfluencies, the final type of Bush's speech errors, have been basically discourse markers.

2) What are the psycholinguistic interpretations of Bush's speech errors?
The psycholinguistic interpretations of Bush's speech errors are outlined in the following table. 1) The interference of an unconscious repressed wish, conflict, or train of thought. 2) Some psycho-physiological factors, such as fatigue, excitement, strong associations, distraction, and preoccupation. (b) Phonological speech errors (c) Morphological speech errors Both phonological and morphological errors are due to a priming process (Dell et al., 1999). Priming can be defined as "an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus" (Gulan & Valerjev, 2010, p. 53). (d) Syntactic speech errors 1) Improper lexical insertion 2) Insufficient knowledge (i.e. poor linguistic competence) (e) Semantic speech errors Incorrect crystallization of the ideas as a result of fatigue or distraction. (f) Speech disfluencies 1) Bush has problems for speech recognition system.

3) What can speech errors reveal about Bush's character?
President George W. Bush is both one of the most popular and unpopular presidents in history of the United States of America. It is due to the fact that he has received the highest presidential approval ratings after the September 11 terrorist attacks, as well as one of the lowest approval ratings after the 2008 financial crisis. Internationally, he is an increasingly controversial person, with huge public protests taking place even during visits to close allies, such as the United Kingdom and France. Such a controversy has driven the researcher to do a research to try to settle this controversy via two linguistic tools: speech errors and body language. The speech errors made by George Bush reveal several aspects of his character. These aspects can be outlined in the following points: First, the phonological and morphological errors, caused by the psychological priming (i.e. an implicit memory or a non-conscious influence of past objects) reveal how much perplexity, confusion and pressure Bush underwent. Second, Bush's Freudian slips, caused by psycho-physiological factors, such as fatigue, excitement, and distraction, reveal the fact that he was not an open outright president as he repressed many thoughts and feelings more than he showed. Third, Bush's syntactic errors, caused by the improper lexical insertion, reveal his poor linguistic competence the matter that reveals low intelligence for many psychologists such as Pishghadam and Shams (2012). Fourth, the economical use of speech disfluencies in Bush's spontaneous speeches, caused by problems in the recognition system, reveals that he has a tendency of rashness.