Why study Charismatic Speech?
Inter-Subject Agreement Acoustic/Prosodic Analysis Abstract
Charisma, the ability to lead by virtue of personality alone, is difficult to define but relatively easy to identify. However, cultural factors clearly affect perceptions of charisma. In this paper we compare results from parallel perception studies investigating charismatic speech in Palestinian Arabic and American
English. We examine acoustic/prosodic and lexical correlates of charisma ratings to determine how the two cultures differ with respect to their views of charismatic speech.
What is Charisma?
• Ability to attract and retain followers by virtue of personal characteristics – not traditional or political office (Weber ‘47)
• What makes an individual charismatic?
• Their message?
• Their personality?
• Their speaking style?
• Charisma arising from the faith of a leader’s listener-followers
(Marcus, 1967)
• It as a combination of a ‘gift of grace’, an inspiring message and an important crisis (Boss, 1976)
• Tannen (1984) identifies a number of pragmatic dimensions that vary cross-culturally including when to talk, formulacity, and degree of indirectness, cohesion and coherence.
What is Charismatic Speech?
• It is an intriguing 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, when compelling speech is needed (e.g.,
Intelligent tutoring system)
Our Approach
• Collect tokens of charismatic and noncharismatic 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 other 25 attributes (e.g., The speaker is
)
• Correlate listener ratings with lexico-syntactic and acoustic-prosodic features of the tokens to identify potential cues to perception of charisma
American and Palestinian Perception Studies
• 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 message?
• Lexico-syntactic features?
• Acoustic-prosodic features?
• Subjects for English experiment: 12 native
American English speakers (6 f, 6 m)
• They were presented with 45 speech segments of 2 –28 seconds duration, 5 each from 9 candidates for Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 2004
• Topics:
Is Charisma a Culture-Dependent
Phenomenon?
• Do people of different languages and cultures perceive charisma differently?
• Do they perceive charismatic 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?
• Subjects for Arabic experiment: 12 native
Palestinian Arabic speakers (6 f, 6 m)
• Presented with 44 speech tokens of 3–28 seconds, 2 each from Palestinian politicians and authors
• Tokens extracted from Aljazeera talk shows, topics:
‘Functional’ Definition of Charisma
H-H%
Influence of Speaker and Topic on Charisma Ratings
• Identity of speaker of a segment: significantly influences subjects ’ ratings of charisma in
studies.
• Subject ’s Recognition of speaker: positively influences perceptions of charisma in
.
• Topic (in English): approaching statistical significance on subjects ’ ratings of charisma. Healthcare (mean rating 3.31), postwar Iraq (3.29), reasons for running (3.28), content-neutral
(3.07), and taxes (2.97).
• Topic (in Arabic): influences charisma ratings. The Israeli separation wall (3.96), the assassination of the Hamas leader
(3.37), the debate among the Palestinian groups (3.23), the
Palestinian Authority and calls for reforms (3.21), and the
Intifada and resistance (3.17)
Arabic English
Lexical Analysis
•
•
Token duration: charisma in
Pause: in the token gives a positive correlate only in
Arabic both
positive correlate with studies number of pauses to number of words
• Sdev of length of pauses: negative correlate in English but positive in Arabic
• Number of words: positively correlated with charisma in both studies
• Disfluency: rate of disfluencies (repetitions, repairs, and filled pauses) negatively correlated with charisma in both
• The filler “yaEony” (ينعي): negatively correlate with charisma in Arabic
• Ratio of repeated words: positive correlate in both
• The use of Arabic regional dialect: negative correlation with charisma
•
•
•
• Speaking Rate: positive correlate in English and approaching negative correlate in Arabic
Speaking rate of fastest intonational phrase: positive correlation in both
• Mean F0: positive correlate in both studies
• Min F0: positive correlate in English but negative in Arabic
• Max and Sdev F0: positive correlate in Arabic only
HiF0 max and Sdev:
Arabic only
Mean HiF0: positive correlate in positive correlate in both
• First person plural pronoun: positive correlate in English only
• Third person singular pronouns: negative correlate in Arabic but positive in English
• Third person plural pronouns: negative correlate in English but positive in Arabic
• Ratio of adverbs, prepositions, and nouns: negative correlate in Arabic
• Ratio of adverbs and adjectives: negative correlate in English
•
• Max F0:
approaching significance with negative correlation in
• Mean HiF0: positive correlate in both
• Max and Sdev HiF0: positive correlate in
Arabic only
English
Mean and Sdev of rms of IPs: correlate in both positive
• Sdev Intensity: positive correlate in Arabic only
• Ratio of H* pitch accents: negative correlate in English only
• Ratio of !H* and L+H* pitch accents: positive correlate in both
• Ratio of L* pitch accent: negatively correlates with charisma in both languages
• Ratio of H- phrase accent: phrase accent approaches positive significance in English only
• L% boundary tone: positively correlate with charisma in Arabic only
• H% boundary tone: negatively correlate with charisma in Arabic only
Conclusions and Future Work
• While American and Palestinian speakers share some notion of a ‘functional’ definite of charisma — both find speakers who are persuasive, charming, enthusiastic and not boring to be charismatic — American speakers also find passionate and convincing speakers to be charismatic, while Palestinians associate the qualities of toughness and powerfulness with charisma
• Arabic subjects tended to be more homogenous in their judgments than were
English subjects
• When we examine the acoustic/prosodic and lexical correlates of charisma in each study, we again find some broad similarities and some major differences
Future Work
• Machine learning experiments to predict degree of charisma for a given speech token based on our features
• Perception experiments:
• Palestinian and Swedish subjects rate
English
• American subjects rate Arabic