Trump's simple language fits long-term political trend: Study

US President Donald Trump language, perceived by many as unconventional, is actually similar to the simple, straightforward speeches of the past and present world leaders that exudes confidence, a study has found.

The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the recipe that likely helped Trump become a successful presidential candidate was set in motion almost 100 years ago.

"The findings confirm that President Trump and leaders like him did not emerge out of nowhere, but rather are the most recent incarnation of long-term political trends," said Jamie Pennebaker, a professor at University of Texas at Austin in the US.

"Taken together, the trends suggest that voters may increasingly be drawn to leaders who can make difficult, complex problems easier to understand with intuitive, confident answers," Pennebaker said.

For linguists, function words -- such as prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions -- say a lot about how people think.

Prior research has linked high rates of pronouns, negations and auxiliary verbs to low analytic, or more intuitive, thinking. The heavy use of the pronouns "you" and "we" has been shown to indicate higher status, confidence or clout than the use of impersonal pronouns or "I" and "me."