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 (15) 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%
H-L%
L-H%
H-L%
H-H%
59%
26%
8%
6%
1%
Arabic Prosody – most common contours
H* LH* HL+H* LH* H* LH* !H* LL* LL+H* !H* LH* H* HH* !H* !H* LL+H* H-
21.9
13.4
9.7
7.6
4.1
4.1
3
3
2.3
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... ‫ يعني‬... ‫ لـ‬... ‫ولتأتي => و‬
– w- l- uh- yEny uh- t?ty instead of wlt?ty