with Nicholas P. Camp, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, William L. Hamilton, Rebecca C. Hetey, Camilla M. Griffiths, David Jurgens,
Dan Jurafsky, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt
How is respect instantiated linguistically in the police-community interactional context?
Are black community members treated with less respect by officers than is afforded white community members?
Use human judgments as training data
for a machine-learned model of respect
by operationalizing theories of politeness
Negative Politeness
(hearer's freedom of action)
Positive Politeness
(hearer's self-image)
apologizing, gratitude, reassurance ("it's okay"), hedges, etc
formal vs. informal titles ("sir" vs "bro"), introductions, mentioning safety, etc
32 hand-engineered features
formal titles: sir, ma'am, vs. informal titles: bro, dude
introductions: (i|my name).+officer | officer.+(oakland|opd))
adverbial "just": "just" appears as head of advmod relation
bald commands: sentence starts with bare verb
(e.g. "stand", "give", "wait")
Example | Score |
Sorry to stop you. My name's Officer [name] with the Police Department. |
0.84 |
Example | Score |
There you go, ma'am. |
1.21 |
Example | Score |
It just says that, uh, you've fixed it. No problem. Thank you very much, sir. |
2.07 |
Example | Score |
Where are you guys coming from? Don't lie. |
-0.57 |
Example | Score |
So let me see that registration stuff, bro. |
-1.03 |
How do we interpret one another's behavior?
... recognize one another's intentions?
... validate one another's personhood?
Computational Linguists are
uniquely positioned to contribute!