3.2 Speeches Table

This table contains the speeches held in the parliament along with meta information and foreign keys.

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id session electoralTerm firstName lastName politicianId speechContent factionId documentUrl positionShort positionLong date
0 2 1 Köhler 11001150 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01002.pdf Presidium of Parliament präsident 1949-09-12
1 2 1 Arnold -1 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01002.pdf Guest präsident des bundesrats 1949-09-12
2 2 1 Köhler 11001150 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01002.pdf Presidium of Parliament präsident 1949-09-12
3 2 1 Heuss -1 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01002.pdf Guest bundespräsident 1949-09-12
4 2 1 Köhler 11001150 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01002.pdf Presidium of Parliament präsident 1949-09-12
5 2 1 Heuss -1 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01002.pdf Guest bundespräsident 1949-09-12
6 3 1 köhler 11001150 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01003.pdf Presidium of Parliament präsident 1949-09-15
7 3 1 adenauer 11000009 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] 4 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01003.pdf Member of Parliament NA 1949-09-15
8 3 1 köhler 11001150 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01003.pdf Presidium of Parliament präsident 1949-09-15
9 4 1 köhler 11001150 [Content of speech is hidden in this preview table] -1 https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/01/01004.pdf Presidium of Parliament präsident 1949-09-15

this preview depicts the first 10 rows of the speeches table. The speech content is not included in this preview.


The speeches table has the following dimensions:

Feature Total
Number of observations 899526
Number of variables 12

3.2.1 Speeches summary table

Variable Class # unique Missing Values Description
id integer64 899526 0.00% Primary Key
session integer64 280 0.00% Number of the parliamentary session in the respective electoral term the speech was held
electoralTerm integer64 19 0.00% Electoral term. This is the number of the electoral term a speech was held. It can also be used as a foreign key to link the electoral term number with the electoral term table.
politicianId integer64 3815 4.21% Foreign key of the politician. This ID can be used to link the observations with the politicians table.
speechContent character 776828 0.02% The raw text of the speeches held in parliament. The raw text can contain positional IDs which are a foreign key to the contributions tables. See additional remarks below for further details.
factionId integer64 22 58.85% Foreign key of the faction. This ID can be used to link the observations with the factions table. (The high amount of missing values is caused by speeches of persons that do not speak on behalf of a specific faction (e.g. members of the presidium of the Parliament))
documentUrl character 4296 0.00% Link to original PDF document of the respective protocol.
positionShort character 7 0.00% A short identifier of the speakers position - can be one of 7 values. For more details see section below.
positionLong character 1085 41.44% The long position describes the position exactly as mentioned in the original protocol.
date Date 4253 0.00% POSIX timestamp of the day the speech was held. This timestamp uses the Europe/Berlin time zone (CEST).

3.2.2 Additional Remarks

3.2.2.1 Position Variables

 

The position variables (positionShort & positionLong) provide information about the function of the speaker. It is divided into a short, generic form and a long form. The positionLong variable is the exact extraction of the functional description of the speaker as can be found in the original protocol. The positionShort variable is a factor variable of seven different levels. The list below provides more information about the meaning of the seven levels.

 

Short Position Mapping:

positionShort Description
Chancellor The federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Guest Every speaker that does not belong to the other positionShort levels and thus is an external person.
Member of Parliament Every speaker that is mentioned alongside a faction abbreviation is considered a MP.
Minister Every speaker that has the function of a minister of state.
Not Found No positionShort information could be retrieved from the protocol.
Presidium of Parliament This category contains all speeches held by the (Vice-)Presidents of the Bundestag, the Father/Mother of the House (“Alterspräsident_in”), as well as secretaries (“Schriftführer_in”).
Secretary of State This category contains both the permanent secretaries (beamtete Staatssekretär_in) as well as secretaries of state (parlamentarische Staatssekretär_in).

3.2.2.2 Speech Content Variable

NOTICE! The speech content variable only contains the actual spoken words of the respective politician. Any kind of interjection or reaction from the plenum is deleted from the speech content variable and replaced by a positional ID in the format of ({ID}). This positional ID can be used to link each speech with every contribution during the speech. The contributions can be found in the two Contributions Tables. Furthermore the positional ID represents the exact order and position a contribution occurred and hence can be used to reassemble the original structure of the speeches and interjections/contributions.