Bundestag speeches are easier to understand than expected

Comprehensibility Index

March 5, 2024 10:36 p.m. Robert Klatt

Speeches in the Bundestag are often considered difficult to understand. The Hohenheim Comprehensibility Index now shows whether this is actually true.

Stuttgart (Germany). In Germany, many people think that the speeches given in the Bundestag are difficult for the general public to understand. Researcher of University of Hohenheim around communications specialist Frank Brettschneider have published a study which analyzes the formal intelligibility of almost 100 Bundestag speeches on the budget debate between August 5, 2023 and September 5, 2023.

To evaluate the speeches, the researchers used the “Hohenheim comprehensibility index” that they themselves developed, which makes it possible to measure the formal intelligibility of texts and speeches using objective criteria. Factors include, but are not limited to, sentence length, word length, number of abstract words, and the presence of complex nested sentences. Speeches and texts are rated on a scale from 0 (difficult to understand) to 20 (easy to understand).

Most understandable speech by Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger

According to the Hohenheim Comprehension Index, Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) delivered the most formally comprehensible speech during the study period. Jens Spahn (CDU) occupies second place and third place is shared by Gesine Lötzsch (left), Victor Perli (left), Reinhard Brandl (CDU) and Sepp Müller (CDU).

The speeches that were formally most difficult to understand were given by Claudia Raffelhüschen (FDP) and Agnieszka Brugger (Greens). In particular, the sentence length, which was on average twice as long as Stark-Watzinger, significantly reduced its comprehensibility.

Level of intelligibility of speeches in the Bundestag

According to scientists, the overall level of comprehensibility of speeches in the Bundestag is good. Nearly three-quarters (70%) of the speeches reached at least the level of CEOs of DAX companies.

“On average, budget speeches are somewhat more understandable than CEO speeches at the annual general meetings of DAX 40 companies. However, for some there is still room for improvement.

However, almost a third of the Bundestag speeches (30%) were below the intelligibility level of business CEOs. This was mainly due to specialized words, foreign words, compound words, nominalizations, anglicisms and Denglish.