Creating and Using a Correlated Corpora to Glean Communicative Commonalities Jade Goldstein-StewartKerri A. GoodwinRoberta E. SabinRansom K. Winder U.S. Dept. of DefenseLoyola College MITRE Corporation

May 30, 2008LREC2 Outline Motivation Corpora collection General Corpora Characteristics –Word count –Readability Future directions

May 30, 2008LREC3 Motivation How do computer-mediated communication genres differ from traditional genres? interview blog essay chat discussion How consistent are communicative features across genres for a single individual? If such commonalities exist, how can they be utilized for document classification?

May 30, 2008LREC4 sample (2E1S3) I do not feel that gender discrimination is a problem in the United States at the moment. My supervisor at my current job is a woman, and everyone respects her the same as the owner of the company, who is a man. I think this issue was more prevalent earlier last century. In these modern times, it really is not an issue in my opinion.

May 30, 2008LREC5 Blog sample (2B1S2) While gender discrimination is something that should always be avoided ideally, there are some problems I have with the issue in general. As the discussion starter states, discrimination because of sex is defined as adverse action against another person, that would not have occurred had the person been of another sex.

May 30, 2008LREC6 Chat sample (2C1S1) – Are there a lot of issues like this in the news, because to me generder discrimination is a thing of the past – Aren't men found to be naturally more apt in certain fields, and women in others? – Did any of you experienece any personal discrimination at your jobs, or witness it or anything? – I definitely agree with that – Unless one person decides another person is not right for a job solely based on gender, I don't believe it is discrimination

May 30, 2008LREC7 Aim: Collect a correlated corpora of text samples Including both computer-mediated and not c-m Including both individual and interactive, spoken and text Across 6 genres: – , essay, interview (phone) – blog, chat, discussion From the same individuals On 6 distinct topics

May 30, 2008LREC8 Corpora Collection September 2006 through November 2007 Participants All college students, aged students in pilot study 21 participants completed both Phase 1 ( , essay, interview) & Phase 2 (blog, chat, discussion) 10M/11W 18 Caucasian/3 African-American all had English as the primary language spoken at home

May 30, 2008LREC9 Topics Piloted via individual interviews with a separate group Selected for –production of expression –comfort of participates for the topic Topics: 1.Catholic Church 2.Gay Marriage 3.Iraq War 4.Legalization of Marijuana 5.Privacy as a U.S. Citizen 6.Gender Discrimination Each introduced via a “starter” question

May 30, 2008LREC10 Other Design Issues Individual instructions standardized Environments controlled –In-house system –Single discussion leader and phone interviewer –Relaxed discussion and interview setting –Chat sessions “gently” moderated Ordering of genres and topics controlled Group membership randomized –gender balance 2M/2W

May 30, 2008LREC11 All.txt files produced Interviews and Discussions transcribed –by trained psychology students –punctuation inserted –non-fluencies preserved Discussion and Chat dismembered to individual files Multiple blog entries combined to a single file

May 30, 2008LREC12 Resulting Corpora Blogs entries were combined into single files. The 21 fully parallel corpora were used in this paper. Limitations: size, homogeneity of subjects, non- spontaneity of discourse

May 30, 2008LREC13 General Corpora Characteristics Word Count –by topic –by genre –by gender of communicant Readability: Flesch reading ease & Flesch- Kincaid grade level –by topic –by genre –by gender of author

May 30, 2008LREC14 Word Count No main effect for gender No main effect for topic Significant topic x gender interaction for Church and Discrimination

May 30, 2008LREC15 Word Count (con’t) Significant Main Effect for genre Discussion had highest word counts Direct communication produced higher word counts

May 30, 2008LREC16 Readability No significant main effect for gender Significant main effect for genre –Discussion and interview had highest reading ease –Main effect for topic

May 30, 2008LREC17 Readability (con’t) reading ease of conversational genres high reading ease of non-conversational genres low

May 30, 2008LREC18 Future Possibilities additional features for genderID, authorship sentence complexity cohesion of text feature change across time within a topic classification by topic order classification by genre conversational dynamics in chat vs. discussion

May 30, 2008LREC19 Thank you. Questions?