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Cohesion & coherence
The study of cohesion and coherence: repetition typology, the repetition matrix of central utterances, and intertextuality in televised political discourse.
Pragmatic & paralinguistic features of televised political discourse
A research instrument for the televised political debate.
Code the evidence. Review the interpretation. Trace every figure back to the recording.
DebateLens carries a doctoral analytical framework into a working environment. It records turns, codes them across five domains, and builds the repetition matrix, gaze proportions, and culturemic lexical fields the framework requires — while keeping every claim traceable to something observable in the recording.
The comparative interpretation tallies, element by element, which participant's discourse is denser in the framework evidence counted for this corpus, and states which participant holds the stronger observed profile — the analytical upper hand — in this recording. It is not a statement of who won the debate, a ranking of candidates, or a prediction of an election.
Accounts are free to create — and your first study is a complete free analysis of a debate transcript, report included. Unlimited studies and the analysis of televised recordings need a researcher subscription of $50 per month — cancel any time — payable securely by card after you sign in.
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The five domains
Every observation in the workspace is filed under one domain and one category. Nothing is stored outside the framework.
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Pragmatic study
A pragmatic study of political discourse in a televised political debate: institutionalisation, systematic breaching of the co-operative principle and Gricean maxims, the movement from explicit to implicit, implicature as the real message, and code-switching.
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Paralinguistic dimension
The paralinguistic dimension: facial gesture, kinesics and their cultural background, eye gaze and direction of gaze, and the proportional analysis of q-gaze and a-gaze across fluent speech, hesitant speech, and phrase pausing.
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Ideology & bipartisanship
Ideology and bipartisanship in the televised political debate and its impact upon the audience: media language, the nature of media discourse, and political discourse as a commodity.
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Culturemic & pragmemic
ADAR culturemic analysis: cultural keywords, lexical fields, pragmemic patterns, audience orientation, and the cultural framing of political claims in televised discourse.
The repetition matrix
Mark the central utterances of the debate, then link turn to turn by repetition. The matrix is computed from those links, never hand-tallied.
Gaze proportions
Eye gaze is read across the whole recording and returned as proportional distributions per speaker, with denominators shown.
Culturemic fields
Group cultural keywords into lexical fields, trace pragmemic patterns, and record how turns orient to an imagined cultural audience — all tied back to the transcript.
Evidence before reading
Observable evidence and researcher interpretation are separate fields on every record. Anything machine-drafted stays a draft, excluded from every computed figure until you accept it.
What is automatic, and what needs your review
The analysis runs on its own from end to end. What it produces enters the record as a draft, and drafts stay outside every computed figure until you accept or qualify them.
Draft material
Transcription and segmentation
Visible at once so you can correct it. Not yet a research finding.
Draft observations
Automatic coding
Labelled as drafts and excluded from every calculation until reviewed.
Approved or qualified
Your review
Accepted records enter the matrices, proportions and tallies.
Traceable output
Report
States coverage, caveats, and what it excluded.
Sample report
Obama vs. Romney — First 2012 Presidential Debate
Status: preliminary, machine-derived descriptive case study of one recorded debate. Figures describe automated coding of this recording; they are not validated measures of debate performance.…
The full report explains every analysed aspect — the five domains, eye gaze, the Lexical Cohesive Trio, the repetition matrix, the lexical web, rhetorical moves, reliability, the comparative interpretation and its limitations.
What it does not do
- It does not judge whether a statement is true or false.
- It does not detect intention, sincerity, or state of mind.
- It does not diagnose personality or psychological condition.
- It does not declare a winner, rank candidates, or issue a universal candidate score. Where a corpus has been coded and reviewed, it presents a clearly labelled, evidence-linked comparative interpretation of it — an element-by-element tally of which participant holds the higher exposure-adjusted coded rate, with uncertainty, coverage and caveats attached.
One research family
DebateLens stands beside AWW and ADAR
Three instruments built on the same scholarship: academic writing coaching, the ADAR pragmemic–culturemic framework, and evidence-traceable debate analysis.
