Donald Trump himself has an idiosyncratic speaking style that relies on simple words and phrases, which worked for him in the primaries but may be coming up short for him now.

Even if you close your eyes, you'll still hear Donald Trump sniffing. Linguists might call [these visuals] paralinguistics, every form of information including facial gestures and facial features. Obviously these things get scrutinized in tremendous detail, so that a cough can be of outsized importance. [But] that's all part of the package.

Hillary Clinton has been portrayed as robotic, someone who is trying to approximate real human emotion.

Donald Trump himself has an idiosyncratic speaking style that relies on simple words and phrases, which worked for him in the primaries but may be coming up short for him now.

When words come out of politician's mouth that are linguistically incorrect, people see it reflecting their intelligence. Sarah Palin was called out for "refudiate," which seemed to combine refute and repudiate. One favourite Bushism was "misunderestimate."

Donald Trump speaks extemporaneously, often through stream of consciousness, where it doesn't seem to follow a trajectory.

Sometimes people are primed to hear in a certain way. When a word like braggadocious suddenly appears, it's like, 'What, is he just making that up?'