2. Charisma in English and Arabic Political Speech Julia Hirschberg Columbia University Joint work with Andrew Rosenberg and Fadi Biadsy Stony Brook University, 9 Nov 2007

4. What is Charisma? The ability to attract, and retain followers by virtue of personal characteristics -- not traditional or political office (Weber ‘47) –E.g. Gandhi, Hitler, Castro, Martin Luther King Jr.,.. –Personalismo What makes an individual charismatic? (Bird ’93, Boss ’76, Dowis ’00, Marcus ’67, Touati ’93, Tuppen ’74, Weber ‘47) –Their message? –Their personality? –Their speaking style?

5. What is Charismatic Speech? Circularly… –Speech that leads listeners to perceive the speaker as charismatic What aspects of speech might contribute to the perception of a speaker as charismatic? –Content of the message? –Lexico-syntactic features? –Acoustic-prosodic features?

6. Why Study Charismatic Speech? It’s an interesting phenomenon To identify potential charismatic leaders To provide a feedback system for individuals who want to improve their speaking style -- politicians, professors, students… To create a charismatic Text-to-Speech system

7. Our Approach Collect tokens of charismatic and non-charismatic speech from a small set of speakers on a small set of topics Ask listeners to rate the ‘The speaker is charismatic’ plus statements about a number of other attributes (e.g. The speaker is …boring, charming, persuasive,…) Correlate listener ratings with lexico-syntactic and acoustic-prosodic features of the tokens to identify potential cues to perception of charisma

8. American English Perception Study Data: 45 2-30s speech segments, 5 each from 9 candidates for Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 2004 –2 ‘charismatic’, 2 ‘not charismatic’ –Topics: greeting, reasons for running, tax cuts, postwar Iraq, healthcare –4 genres: stump speeches, debates, interviews, ads 8 subjects rated each segment on a Likert scale (1- 5) for 26 questions in a web surveyrated26 questions Duration: avg. 1.5 hrs, min 45m, max ~3hrs

9. Results: How Much Do Subjects Agree with Each Other? Over all statements? –Using weighted kappa statistic with quadratic weighting, mean  = 0.207 On the charismatic statement?  = 0.232 (8 th most agreed upon statement) By token? –No significant differences across all tokens By statement? –Individual statements demonstrate significantly different agreements (most agreement: The speaker is accusatory, angry, passionate, intense; least agreement: The speaker is trustworthy, believable, reasonable, trustworthy)

10. Results: What Do Subjects Mean by Charismatic? Which other statements are most closely correlated with the charismatic statement? (determined by kappa): a functional definition The speaker is enthusiastic0.620 The speaker is persuasive0.577 The speaker is charming0.575 The speaker is passionate0.543 The speaker is boring-0.513 The speaker is convincing0.499

11. Results: Does Whether a Subject Agrees with the Speaker or Finds the Speaker ‘Clear’ Affect Charisma Judgments Whether a subject agrees with a token does not correlate highly with charisma judgments (  = 0.30) Whether a subject finds the token clear does not correlate highly with charisma judgments (  = 0.26)

12. Results: Does the Identity of the Speaker Affect Judgments of Charisma? There is a significant difference between speakers (p=2.20e-2) Most charismatic –Rep. John Edwards (mean 3.86) –Rev. Al Sharpton (3.56) –Gov. Howard Dean (3.40) Least charismatic –Sen. Joseph Lieberman (2.42) –Rep. Dennis Kucinich (2.65) –Rep. Richard Gephardt (2.93)

13. Results: Does Recognizing a Speaker Affect Judgments of Charisma? Subjects asked to identify which, if any, speakers they recognized at the end of the study. Mean number of speakers believed to have been recognized, 5.8 Subjects rated ‘recognized’ speakers as significantly more charismatic than those they did not (mean 3.39 vs. mean 3.30).

14. Results: Does Genre or Topic Affect Judgments of Charisma? Recall that tokens were taken from debates, interviews, stump speeches, and campaign ads –Genre does influence charisma ratings (p=.0004) –Stump speeches were the most charismatic (3.38) –Interviews were the least (2.96) Topic does affect ratings of charisma significantly (p=.0517) –Healthcare > post-war Iraq > reasons for running neutral > taxes

15. What makes Speech Charismatic? Features Examined Duration (secs, words, syls) Charismatic speech is personal: Pronoun density Charismatic speech is contentful: Function/content word ratio Charismatic speech is simple: Complexity: mean syllables/word (Dowis) Disfluencies Repeated words Min, max, mean, stdev F0 (Boss, Tuppen) –Raw and normalized by speaker Min, max, mean, stdev intensity Speaking rate (syls/sec) Intonational features: –Pitch accents –Phrasal tones –Contours

16. Results: Lexico-Syntactic Correlates of Charisma Length: Greater number of words positively correlates with charisma (r=.13; p=.002) Personal pronouns: –Density of first person plural and third person singular pronouns positively correlates with charisma (r=.16, p=0; r=.16, p=0) –Third person plural pronoun density correlates negatively with charisma (r=-.19,p=0) Content: Ratio of adjectives/all words negatively correlates with charisma (r=-.12,p=.008) Complexity: Higher mean syllables/word positively correlates with charisma (p=.034)

17. Disfluency: greater % negatively correlates with charisma (r=-.18, p=0) Repetition: Proportion of repeated words positively correlates with charisma (r=.12, p=.004)

18. Results: Acoustic-Prosodic Correlates of Charisma Pitch: –Higher F0 (mean, min, mean HiF0, over male speakers) positively correlates with charisma (r=.24,p=0;r=.14 p=0;r=.20,p=0) Loudness: Mean rms and sdev of mean rms positively correlates with charisma (r=.21,p=0;r=.21,p=0) Speaking Rate: –Faster overall rate (voice/unvoiced frames) positively correlates with charisma (r=.16,p=0)

19. Duration: Longer duration correlates positively with charisma (r=.09,p=.037) Length of pause: sdev negatively correlates with charisma (r=-.09,p=.004)

20. Results: Intonational Correlates of Charisma (Hand-Annotated Features) Pitch Accent Type: –Positive correlation with !H* and L+H* accents (r=.09,p=0;r=.09,p=.034) –Negative correlation with L*, H* and L*+H accents (r=-.13,p=.002;r=-.11,p=.014;r=-.08,p=.052) Phrasal Types –Negative correlation with !H-L% and !H- endings (r=-.11,p=.015;r=-.10,p=.026)

21. Summary for American English In Standard American English, charismatic speakers tend to be those also highly rated for enthusiasm, charm, persuasiveness, passionateness and convincingness – they are not thought to be boring Charismatic utterances tend to be longer than others, to contain a lower ratio of adjectives to all words, a higher density of first person plural and third person singular pronouns and fewer third person plurals, fewer disfluencies, a larger percentage of repeated words, and more complex words than non-charismatic utterances

22. Charismatic utterances are higher in pitch (mean, min) with more regularity in pause length, louder with more variation in intensity, faster, and with more !H* and L+H* accents and fewer L*, H*, and L*+H accents and fewer !H- and !H-L% phrasal endings

23. Replication of Perception Study from Text Alone Lower statement agreement, much less on charismatic statement, different speakers most/least charismatic `Agreement with speaker’, genre and topic had stronger correlations Lexico-syntactic features show weaker correlations –1 st person pronoun density negatively correlated and complexity not at all –Similar to speech experiment for duration, function/content, disfluencies, repeated words

24. Hypothesis: Charisma is a Culture-Dependent Phenomenon People of different languages and cultures perceive charisma differently In particular, they perceive charisma in speech differently –Do Arabic listeners respond to American politicians the same way Americans do? –Do Americans hear Swedish professors the same way Swedish students do?

25. Charismatic Speech in Palestinian Arabic Are these tokens charismatic?: Are these?:

26. Palestinian Arabic Perception Study Same paradigm as for SAE Materials: –44 speech tokens from 22 male native-Palestinian Arabic speakers taken from Al-Jazeera TV talk shows –Two speech segments extracted for each speaker from the same topic (one we thought charismatic and one not) Web form with statements to be rated translated into Arabic Subjects: 12 native speakers of Palestinian Arabic

27. Data Total corpus duration: 10.3 minutes Token with min duration: 3 seconds Token with max duration: 28 seconds Average token duration: 14 seconds Total number of words: 1322 words Token with min words: 9 words Token with max words: 65 words Average number of words in token: 30 words

28. How Does Charisma Differ in Arabic? Subjects agree on judgments a bit more (κ=.225) than for English (κ=.207) but still low –Agree most on clarity of msg, enthusiasm, charisma, intensity – all differing from Americans –Agree least on desperation (as Amer), friendliness, ordinariness, spontaneity of speaker –Charisma statement correlates (positively) most strongly with speaker toughness, powerfulness, persuasiveness, charm, and enthusiasm and negatively with boringness

29. Role of speaker identity important in judgments of charisma in Arabic as in English –Most charismatic speakers: Ibrahim Hamami (4.75), Azmi Bishara (4.42), Mustafa Barghouti (4.33) –Least: Shafiq Al-Hoot (3.10), Mohammed Al-Tamini (3.42), Azzam Al-Ahmad (3.33) –Raters claimed to recognize only.55 (of 22) speakers on average, perhaps because the speakers were less well known than the Americans Topic important in charisma ratings (r=0,p=.043) Israeli separation wall > assassination of Hamas leader > debates among Palestinian groups > the Palestinian Authority and calls for reform > the Intifada and resistance

30. Lexical Cues to Charisma Length in words positively correlates with charisma, as for Americans Disfluency rate negatively correlates, as for Americans Repeated words positively correlates with charisma, as for Americans Presence of Arabic ‘dialect markers’ (words, pronunciations) negatively correlates with charisma Density of third person plural pronouns positively correlates w/ charisma – differing from Americans

31. Acoustic/Prosodic Cues to Charisma Duration positively correlated with charisma, as for Americans Speaking rate approaches negative correlation – opposite from American –But rate of the fastest intonational phrase in the token positively correlated for both languages –Sdev of rate across intonational phrases positively correlated for charisma in Arabic Pauses –#pauses/words ratio positively correlated with charisma but not for Americans

32. –Sdev of length of pause positively correlated in Arabic but negatively for Americans Pitch: –Mean pitch positively correlates (as for Americans) but also F0 max and sdev –Min pitch negatively correlates (opposite from Americans) Intensity: Sdev positively correlates w/ charisma

33. How Are Perceptions of Charisma Similar Across Cultures? Level of subject agreement on statements Role of speaker ID, topic in charisma judgments Positive correlations with charisma –Mean pitch and range –Duration, repeated words –Speaking rate of fastest IP Negative correlations with charisma –Disfluencies

34. How Do Charisma Judgments Differ Across Cultures? Statements most and least agreed upon For Arabic vs. English: –Positive correlations with charisma Sdev of speaking rate, pause/word ratio, sdev of pause length, F0 max and sdev, sdev intensity –Negative correlations with charisma Dialect, density of third person plural pronouns Speaking rate, min F0

35. Future Work Machine learning experiments -- automatic detection of charisma Cross-cultural perception experiments: American raters/Arabic speech, Palestinian raters/English speech, Swedish raters/English speech –Do native and non-native raters differ on mean scores per token? (Yes, for Eng/Swe rating Eng and Eng/Pal rating Arabic) –Do mean scores correlate per token? (Yes, for all)

36. Amer and Swe rating English: –paired t-test betw means per token: p-value = 0.03064 –cor between means of rater-normalized ratings: r = 0.60, p-value = 1.170e-05 Amer and Pal rating English: –paired t-test betw means: p-value = 0.1048 –cor between means of rater-normalized ratings: r = 0.47, p-value = 0.0009849 Amer and Pal rating Arabic: –paired t-test betw means: p-value = 0.00164 –cor between means of rater-normalized ratings: r = 0.72, p-value = 3.049e-08 Swe and Pal rating English: –paired t-test betw means: p-value = 0.8479 (not normalized) –cor between means of rater-normalized ratings: (rater normalization) r = 0.55, p-value = 9.467e-05

37. Thank you!

38. Arabic Prosodic Phenomena MSA vs. Dialect A word is considered dialectal if: –It does not exist in the standard Arabic lexicon –It does not satisfy the MSA morphotactic constraints –Phonetically different (e.g., ya?kul vs. ywkil) In corpus of tokens –8% of the words are dialect. –80% of the dialect words are accented.

39. Arabic Prosody: Accentuation 70% of words are accented 60% of the de-accented words are function words or disfluent items –Based on automatic POS analysis (MADA) –12% of content words are deaccented Distribution of accent types: –H* or !H* pitch accent, 73% –L+H* or L+!H*, 20% –L*, 5% –H+!H*, 2%

40. Arabic Prosody: Phrasing Mean of 1.6 intermediate phrases per intonational phrase Intermediate phrases contain 2.4 words on average Distribution of phrase accent/boundary tone combinations –L-L%59% –H-L%26% –L-H%8% –H-L%6% –H-H%1%

41. Arabic Prosody – most common contours H* L-21.9 H* H-13.4 L+H* L-9.7 H* H* L-7.6 H* !H* L-4.1 L* L-4.1 L+H* !H* L-3 H* H* H-3 H* !H* !H* L-2.3 L+H* H-2.1

42. Arabic Prosody – Disfluency In addition to standard disfluency: –Hesitations –filled pauses –self-repairs In Arabic, speakers could produce a sequence of all of the above. (see praat: file: 1036 and 2016) Disfluency may disconnect prepositions and conjunctions from the content word: – ولتأتي => و... لـ... يعني... تأتي –w- l- uh- yEny uh- t?ty instead of wlt?ty