A Framework for the Computational Linguistic Analysis of Dehumanization
Dehumanization is a pernicious psychological process that often leads to extreme intergroup bias, hate speech, and violence aimed at targeted social groups. Despite these serious consequences and the wealth of available data, dehumanization has not yet been computationally studied on a large scale....
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2020-08-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frai.2020.00055/full |
| _version_ | 1828768314842677248 |
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| author | Julia Mendelsohn Yulia Tsvetkov Dan Jurafsky |
| author_facet | Julia Mendelsohn Yulia Tsvetkov Dan Jurafsky |
| author_sort | Julia Mendelsohn |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Dehumanization is a pernicious psychological process that often leads to extreme intergroup bias, hate speech, and violence aimed at targeted social groups. Despite these serious consequences and the wealth of available data, dehumanization has not yet been computationally studied on a large scale. Drawing upon social psychology research, we create a computational linguistic framework for analyzing dehumanizing language by identifying linguistic correlates of salient components of dehumanization. We then apply this framework to analyze discussions of LGBTQ people in the New York Times from 1986 to 2015. Overall, we find increasingly humanizing descriptions of LGBTQ people over time. However, we find that the label homosexual has emerged to be much more strongly associated with dehumanizing attitudes than other labels, such as gay. Our proposed techniques highlight processes of linguistic variation and change in discourses surrounding marginalized groups. Furthermore, the ability to analyze dehumanizing language at a large scale has implications for automatically detecting and understanding media bias as well as abusive language online. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-11T08:57:50Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-cd5615b65c45482dbd0dab03ae852e95 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2624-8212 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-11T08:57:50Z |
| publishDate | 2020-08-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence |
| spelling | doaj.art-cd5615b65c45482dbd0dab03ae852e952022-12-22T01:13:51ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence2624-82122020-08-01310.3389/frai.2020.00055540127A Framework for the Computational Linguistic Analysis of DehumanizationJulia Mendelsohn0Yulia Tsvetkov1Dan Jurafsky2School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesLanguage Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United StatesDepartment of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United StatesDehumanization is a pernicious psychological process that often leads to extreme intergroup bias, hate speech, and violence aimed at targeted social groups. Despite these serious consequences and the wealth of available data, dehumanization has not yet been computationally studied on a large scale. Drawing upon social psychology research, we create a computational linguistic framework for analyzing dehumanizing language by identifying linguistic correlates of salient components of dehumanization. We then apply this framework to analyze discussions of LGBTQ people in the New York Times from 1986 to 2015. Overall, we find increasingly humanizing descriptions of LGBTQ people over time. However, we find that the label homosexual has emerged to be much more strongly associated with dehumanizing attitudes than other labels, such as gay. Our proposed techniques highlight processes of linguistic variation and change in discourses surrounding marginalized groups. Furthermore, the ability to analyze dehumanizing language at a large scale has implications for automatically detecting and understanding media bias as well as abusive language online.https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frai.2020.00055/fullcomputational sociolinguisticsdehumanizationlexical variationlanguage changemediaNew York Times |
| spellingShingle | Julia Mendelsohn Yulia Tsvetkov Dan Jurafsky A Framework for the Computational Linguistic Analysis of Dehumanization Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence computational sociolinguistics dehumanization lexical variation language change media New York Times |
| title | A Framework for the Computational Linguistic Analysis of Dehumanization |
| title_full | A Framework for the Computational Linguistic Analysis of Dehumanization |
| title_fullStr | A Framework for the Computational Linguistic Analysis of Dehumanization |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Framework for the Computational Linguistic Analysis of Dehumanization |
| title_short | A Framework for the Computational Linguistic Analysis of Dehumanization |
| title_sort | framework for the computational linguistic analysis of dehumanization |
| topic | computational sociolinguistics dehumanization lexical variation language change media New York Times |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frai.2020.00055/full |
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