LINGUISTIC STYLE IN THE MEXICAN ELECTORAL PROCESS: LANGUAGE STYLE MATCHING ANALYSIS

The debates of candidates for president of Mexico in 2012 were analyzed with the aim of knowing their linguistic style, that is, their use of function words. Then a measure of mimicry in language, the Language Style Matching (LSM), was obtained to verify if candidates matched their linguistic styles when interacting. ism was also calculated between Enrique Pena Nieto (EPN) and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's (AMLO) speeches throughout the electoral process. In the first debate LSM scored higher than the second. The linguistic style of candidates was similar, although there are individual differences: AMLO showed a more stable style and EPN showed variations on negations and quantifiers. The presence of some linguistic indicators that have been linked to psychological traits was also explored.