charismatic speech
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Charismatic Speech. CS 4706. 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 - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Charismatic Speech
CS 4706
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?
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?
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
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
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 survey
• Duration: avg. 1.5 hrs, min 45m, max ~3hrs
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 (8th 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)
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 enthusiastic 0.620
The speaker is persuasive 0.577
The speaker is charming 0.575
The speaker is passionate 0.543
The speaker is boring -0.513
The speaker is convincing 0.499
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)
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)
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).
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
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
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)
• Disfluency: greater % negatively correlates with charisma (r=-.18, p=0)
• Repetition: Proportion of repeated words positively correlates with charisma (r=.12, p=.004)
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)
• Duration: Longer duration correlates positively with charisma (r=.09,p=.037)
• Length of pause: sdev negatively correlates with charisma (r=-.09,p=.004)
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)
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
• 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
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– 1st person pronoun density negatively correlated and
complexity not at all– Similar to speech experiment for duration,
function/content, disfluencies, repeated words
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?
Charismatic Speech in Palestinian Arabic
• Are these tokens charismatic?:
• Are these?:
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
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
• 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
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
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
– 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
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
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
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)
• 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
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.
Next
• Summing up and preview of the take-home final
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%
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%
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
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:– تأتي ... ... ... <ولتأتي = يعني لـ و – w- l- uh- yEny uh- t?ty instead of wlt?ty