Style of language

Jimmy Carter’s style of language in his “Crisis of Confidence” speech is formal, since the issue he addresses is important for the future of the US economy. 

When it comes to sentence structure, Carter mostly uses middle-length and long sentences, to reflect the complexity of the problems he addresses. For example, Carter uses a long sentence when he mentions the first step that he wants to take in order to stop the crisis:

The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over four and a half million barrel of imported oil per day.

T...