If you’ve watched any of JD Vance’s recent TV appearances, you may have noticed a verbal habit that’s hard to ignore once you catch it: He drops the interviewer’s first name into many of his responses.
Appearing on “The View” on Tuesday, the vice president frequently started his sentences with the panelists’ names ― for example, “Well, Joy...” and “What he said, Ana...”
It’s a longstanding practice for Vance. Looking at the transcript of a 2024 interview he did with Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation,” you can see he said “Margaret” at least 20 times.
Politicians are often taught to communicate this way in one-on-one interactions with voters, Karrin Anderson, a communications studies professor at Colorado State University, told HuffPost.
“When politicians are preparing for so-called ‘retail politics,’ they are encouraged to use people’s first names because it communicates presence and attention if someone introduces themselves and you remember their name,” she explained. “It’s analogous to a teacher calling a student by name ― it signals that you care enough to learn and use their name.”
