Hasil untuk "English literature"

Laura Roldan-Sevillano

The article analyses how, in line with two recent literary trends—the turn to sincerity and realism in post-postmodern fiction as well as the emergence of literary works reconsidering the viability of the myth of the American Dream in the increasingly unequal US—Cameroonian-American writer Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers (2016) provides a realist view of the country which counters the master or grand narrative of the American Dream and the meritocratic ideals that sustain it. Although previous scholarly work on the novel has focused on its exposure of the limits that the promises behind the Dream present for racialised immigrants like the protagonist Cameroonian family in Mbue’s novel, this article seeks to contribute to the discussion by exploring an overlooked dimension of this immigrant narrative set around the Great Recession of 2008. Specifically, it examines how, through a deployment of social realism with touches of naturalism, Mbue portrays the clash between her characters’ former expectations of the United States as the Promised Land of equal opportunities through hard work and the harsh reality they encounter there. This reality is nothing but a country shaped by a hyper-individualistic and competitive neoliberal economic system that became particularly predatory in the aftermath of the 2008 crash. Hence, the article contends that, behind this formal choice, lies Mbue’s aim to expose and by extension dismount the dominant albeit fallacious narrative of the US meritocratic Dream. Ultimately, the article explores the protagonist family’s deep and cruel attachment to this widespread myth until their eventual awakening in an ambiguous ending of return to the homeland which, through its detailed reflection of the harmfulness underlying these characters’ blind faith in a constructed and thus elusive dream, counters the cultural narratives promoting it.

Calvin Yixiang Cheng, Scott A Hale

This study explores computational approaches for measuring moral foundations (MFs) in non-English corpora. Since most resources are developed primarily for English, cross-linguistic applications of moral foundation theory remain limited. Using Chinese as a case study, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of applying English resources to machine translated text, local language lexicons, multilingual language models, and large language models (LLMs) in measuring MFs in non-English texts. The results indicate that machine translation and local lexicon approaches are insufficient for complex moral assessments, frequently resulting in a substantial loss of cultural information. In contrast, multilingual models and LLMs demonstrate reliable cross-language performance with transfer learning, with LLMs excelling in terms of data efficiency. Importantly, this study also underscores the need for human-in-the-loop validation of automated MF assessment, as the most advanced models may overlook cultural nuances in cross-language measurements. The findings highlight the potential of LLMs for cross-language MF measurements and other complex multilingual deductive coding tasks.

Kartik Ravisankar, Hyojung Han, Sarah Wiegreffe et al.

Large language models (LLMs) can answer prompts in many languages, despite being trained predominantly on English; yet, the mechanisms driving this generalization remain poorly understood. This work asks: How does an LLM's ability to align representations of non-English inputs to English impact its performance on natural language understanding (NLU) tasks? We study the role of representation alignment in instance-level task decisions, complementing prior analyses conducted both at the language level and task-independently. We introduce the Discriminative Alignment Index ($\DALI$) to quantify instance-level alignment across 24 languages other than English and three distinct NLU tasks. Results show that incorrect NLU predictions are strongly associated with lower representation alignment with English in the model's middle layers. Through activation patching, we show that incorrect predictions in languages other than English can be fixed by patching their parallel English activations in the middle layers, thereby demonstrating the causal role of representation (mis)alignment in cross-lingual correctness.

Neal Bushaw, Sean English, Emily Heath et al.

The forbidden subgraph problem is among the oldest in extremal combinatorics -- how many edges can an $n$-vertex $F$-free graph have? The answer to this question is the well-studied extremal number of $F$. Observing that every extremal example must be maximally $F$-free, a natural minimization problem is also studied -- how few edges can an $n$-vertex maximal $F$-free graph have? This leads to the saturation number of $F$. Both of these problems are notoriously difficult to extend to $k$-uniform hypergraphs for any $k\ge 3$. Barefoot et al., in the case of forbidding triangles in graphs, asked a beautiful question -- which numbers of edges, between the saturation number and the extremal number, are actually realized by an $n$-vertex maximal $F$-free graph? Hence named the saturation spectrum of $F$, this has since been determined precisely for several classes of graphs through a large number of papers over the past two decades. In this paper, we extend the notion of the saturation spectrum to the hypergraph context. Given a graph $F$ and a hypergraph $G$ embedded on the same vertex set, we say $G$ is a {\bf{Berge-$F$}} if there exists a bijection $φ:E(F)\to E(G)$ such that $e\subseteq φ(e)$ for all $e\in E(F)$. We completely determine the saturation spectrum for $3$-uniform Berge-$K_{1,\ell}$ for $1\leq \ell\leq 4$, and for $\ell=5$ when $5\mid n$. We also determine all but a constant number of values in the spectrum for $3$-uniform Berge-$K_{1,\ell}$ for all $\ell\geq 5$. We note that this is the first result determining the saturation spectrum for any non-trivial hypergraph.

Mozhgan Ebrahimian, Bahman Gorjian, Zohreh Seifoori

<p>Complex structures, which consist of dependent and independent clauses, make it difficult for Iranian high school students to recognize their grammatical complexities. This study investigates the effect of collaborative tasks (i.e., co-practice task writers, corrective feedback providers, and evaluators) on the types of corrective feedback (i.e., teacher feedback vs. peer feedback) and their impact on EFL learners' recall and production of complex structures. A quasi-experimental design was adopted, involving three equal intact classes comprising 96 lower-intermediate students, selected through convenience sampling. A production pretest and posttest of complex structures, as well as recall pretests and posttests of complex structures, were implemented following a pilot study to validate the tests. A two-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was run. Findings revealed that collaborative tasks (co-practice task writers, corrective feedback providers, and evaluators) have a positive effect on high school students' recall and production of complex structures. Additionally, teacher feedback is a significant factor in students' recall and production of complex structures. No significant interaction was observed between explicit instruction of collaborative tasks and types of feedback on learners' recall and production of complex structures. The results address several suggestions for EFL teachers, learners, and pedagogical practitioners.</p>

Ksenia A. Blinova, Irina E. Mishina, Galina E. Ivanova et al.

INTRODUCTION. The use of antitumor therapy in patients with breast cancer has led not only to an increase in their life expectancy, but also to the need to correct various side effects, including manifestations of cardiotoxicity. Rehabilitation of such patients in Russia is currently lacking. AIM. To search and analyze the literature on the effectiveness of physical training for the prevention of cardiotoxic complications of antitumor therapy. MATERIALS AND METHODS. Publications from the PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PEDro databases over the past 15 years were collected and analyzed 15 years by keywords in Russian and English: “cardiotoxicity”, “exercise”, “breast cancer”. 126 sources were selected, including systematic reviews and a Cochrane review. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. Preclinical studies have shown that physical exercise reduces the accumulation of antitumor drugs in the myocardium and increases the proliferation of cardiomyocyte progenitor cells. Conducting physical training during and after anticancer treatment increases cardiorespiratory endurance and reduces the manifestations of anthracycline cardiotoxicity. This rehabilitation intervention leads to less fatigue, decreased depression, improved physical fitness, cognitive functions, and quality of life. The greatest effectiveness during and after anticancer therapy was shown by aerobic and strength exercises of moderate intensity, performed for 30–40 minutes 3–5 times a week, which provide 150 minutes of physical activity per week. The limitation of the use of physical training in patients is due to the impossibility of predicting the training heart rate by age, as well as the need to take into account concomitant diseases and the patient’s condition. CONCLUSION. The use of physical training can be used in cancer patients to prevent cardiotoxicity of anticancer therapy. Further research is needed to ensure their successful use in patients with different physical fitness and treatment tolerance.

Kholifatul Ummah, Bilqis Mustofa, Nurul Fathiyyah et al.

English is the primary language used in global communication. In the context of midwifery services, the application of English aims to equip students with communication skills that support international clinical practice. One instructional method considered effective in achieving this goal is role play, which enhances students’ clinical communication skills and critical thinking abilities. However, the success of its implementation largely depends on lecturers’ perceptions and readiness. This study aims to explore the factors influencing lecturers’ perceptions of using role play in postpartum midwifery care instruction delivered in English. Grounded in constructivist theory and the communicative language teaching approach, this research employs a qualitative design through in-depth interviews with midwifery lecturers at Dr. Soetomo University, Surabaya. Additional data were collected via questionnaires covering demographic backgrounds, teaching experience, English proficiency, and attitudes toward instructional innovation.  The findings reveal that lecturers’ perceptions are influenced by English language proficiency, previous experience using role play, positive attitudes toward active learning, and institutional support. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the dynamics between English language integration and active learning methods in midwifery education. The novelty of this study lies in its qualitative approach, which uncovers pedagogical adaptation processes in bilingual instruction contexts and highlights implications for professional development and the design of supportive learning environments.

Neil Zhao, Diana Zheng

The frequency with which the letters of the English alphabet appear in writings has been applied to the field of cryptography, the development of keyboard mechanics, and the study of linguistics. We expanded on the statistical analysis of the English alphabet by examining the average frequency which each letter appears in different categories of writings. We evaluated news articles, novels, plays, scientific publications and calculated the frequency of each letter of the alphabet, the information density of each letter, and the overall letter distribution. Furthermore, we developed a metric known as distance, d that can be used to algorithmically recognize different categories of writings. The results of our study can be applied to information transmission, large data curation, and linguistics.

Sean English, Anastasia Halfpap, Robert A. Krueger

Let $\mathrm{ex}(n,H,\mathcal{F})$ be the maximum number of copies of $H$ in an $n$-vertex graph which contains no copy of a graph from $\mathcal{F}$. Thinking of $H$ and $\mathcal{F}$ as fixed, we study the asymptotics of $\mathrm{ex}(n,H,\mathcal{F})$ in $n$. We say that a rational number $r$ is \emph{realizable for $H$} if there exists a finite family $\mathcal{F}$ such that $\mathrm{ex}(n,H,\mathcal{F}) = Θ(n^r)$. Using randomized algebraic constructions, Bukh and Conlon showed that every rational between $1$ and $2$ is realizable for $K_2$. We generalize their result to show that every rational between $1$ and $t$ is realizable for $K_t$, for all $t \geq 2$. We also determine the realizable rationals for stars and note the connection to a related Sidorenko-type supersaturation problem.

Ella Rabinovich

The Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis posits that speakers optimize the communicative properties of their utterances by avoiding spikes in information, thereby maintaining a relatively uniform information profile over time. This paper investigates the impact of UID principles on syntactic reduction, specifically focusing on the optional omission of the connector "that" in English subordinate clauses. Building upon previous research, we extend our investigation to a larger corpus of written English, utilize contemporary large language models (LLMs) and extend the information-uniformity principles by the notion of entropy, to estimate the UID manifestations in the usecase of syntactic reduction choices.

Bruce W. Lee, Jason Hyung-Jong Lee

Traditional English readability formulas, or equations, were largely developed in the 20th century. Nonetheless, many researchers still rely on them for various NLP applications. This phenomenon is presumably due to the convenience and straightforwardness of readability formulas. In this work, we contribute to the NLP community by 1. introducing New English Readability Formula (NERF), 2. recalibrating the coefficients of old readability formulas (Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Fog Index, SMOG Index, Coleman-Liau Index, and Automated Readability Index), 3. evaluating the readability formulas, for use in text simplification studies and medical texts, and 4. developing a Python-based program for the wide application to various NLP projects.

Mohan Raj Chanthran, Lay-Ki Soon, Huey Fang Ong et al.

Recently, ChatGPT has attracted a lot of interest from both researchers and the general public. While the performance of ChatGPT in named entity recognition and relation extraction from Standard English texts is satisfactory, it remains to be seen if it can perform similarly for Malaysian English. Malaysian English is unique as it exhibits morphosyntactic and semantical adaptation from local contexts. In this study, we assess ChatGPT's capability in extracting entities and relations from the Malaysian English News (MEN) dataset. We propose a three-step methodology referred to as \textbf{\textit{educate-predict-evaluate}}. The performance of ChatGPT is assessed using F1-Score across 18 unique prompt settings, which were carefully engineered for a comprehensive review. From our evaluation, we found that ChatGPT does not perform well in extracting entities from Malaysian English news articles, with the highest F1-Score of 0.497. Further analysis shows that the morphosyntactic adaptation in Malaysian English caused the limitation. However, interestingly, this morphosyntactic adaptation does not impact the performance of ChatGPT for relation extraction.

Juhee Son, Jiho Jin, Haneul Yoo et al.

The Annals of Joseon Dynasty (AJD) contain the daily records of the Kings of Joseon, the 500-year kingdom preceding the modern nation of Korea. The Annals were originally written in an archaic Korean writing system, `Hanja', and were translated into Korean from 1968 to 1993. The resulting translation was however too literal and contained many archaic Korean words; thus, a new expert translation effort began in 2012. Since then, the records of only one king have been completed in a decade. In parallel, expert translators are working on English translation, also at a slow pace and produced only one king's records in English so far. Thus, we propose H2KE, a neural machine translation model, that translates historical documents in Hanja to more easily understandable Korean and to English. Built on top of multilingual neural machine translation, H2KE learns to translate a historical document written in Hanja, from both a full dataset of outdated Korean translation and a small dataset of more recently translated contemporary Korean and English. We compare our method against two baselines: a recent model that simultaneously learns to restore and translate Hanja historical document and a Transformer based model trained only on newly translated corpora. The experiments reveal that our method significantly outperforms the baselines in terms of BLEU scores for both contemporary Korean and English translations. We further conduct extensive human evaluation which shows that our translation is preferred over the original expert translations by both experts and non-expert Korean speakers.

Chinh Ngo, Trieu H. Trinh, Long Phan et al.

We introduce MTet, the largest publicly available parallel corpus for English-Vietnamese translation. MTet consists of 4.2M high-quality training sentence pairs and a multi-domain test set refined by the Vietnamese research community. Combining with previous works on English-Vietnamese translation, we grow the existing parallel dataset to 6.2M sentence pairs. We also release the first pretrained model EnViT5 for English and Vietnamese languages. Combining both resources, our model significantly outperforms previous state-of-the-art results by up to 2 points in translation BLEU score, while being 1.6 times smaller.

Ritesh Kumar, Atul Kr. Ojha, Bornini Lahiri et al.

In the present paper, we will present the results of an acoustic analysis of political discourse in Hindi and discuss some of the conventionalised acoustic features of aggressive speech regularly employed by the speakers of Hindi and English. The study is based on a corpus of slightly over 10 hours of political discourse and includes debates on news channel and political speeches. Using this study, we develop two automatic classification systems for identifying aggression in English and Hindi speech, based solely on an acoustic model. The Hindi classifier, trained using 50 hours of annotated speech, and English classifier, trained using 40 hours of annotated speech, achieve a respectable accuracy of over 73% and 66% respectively. In this paper, we discuss the development of this annotated dataset, the experiments for developing the classifier and discuss the errors that it makes.

Fatmah Al Thobaiti

Newspaper headlines show that awareness of intimate partner violence is a complicated issue that needs further examination. Works of fiction narrated by women trapped in abusive relationships are useful sites for the exploration of what intimate partner violence usually includes, and the identification of subtle behaviours that can be defined as violent and abusive but usually go unnoticed. This article submits two contemporary works of fiction, First Love and the Fifty Shades series, for a study of the covert mechanisms of emotional abuse. To understand such mechanisms, the article engages with feminist as well as postfeminist contemporary thinking on intimate partner violence. The analysis shifts the focus back to the male abuser by carefully depicting how he uses under-recognized, gendered forms of power to abuse his partner. The aim is to elucidate the capacity of first-person narratives to allow access to the abused woman’s mind, while simultaneously provoking questions about the abusers’ behaviours, making them a more powerful tool for understanding intimate partner violence than a newspaper report.

Mathilde Salmon, Mathilde Salmon, Jordan Sibeoni et al.

AimsSomatic complaints are a frequent cause for consultation in primary care. In a transcultural context, somatic complaints are typically associated with psychological distress. A recent review about somatic symptom disorders in adolescence showed some nosographic heterogeneity and outlined various etiological hypotheses (traumatic, environmental, or neurologic), separate from the cross-cultural considerations. Migrants' children encounter specific problems involving cultural mixing-issues of filiation (familial transmission) and affiliation (belonging to a group). This paper aims to provide a systematic review of somatization in transcultural contexts among teenagers and young adults, aged 13 to 24, over the past decade.MethodsThis review adheres to the quality criteria set forth by the PRISMA guidelines (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). Two authors queried three English databases (Medline, PsycInfo, WebOfScience) about somatization in transcultural contexts (migrant or non-Western population) among teenagers (13–18), young adults (19–24), or both. The methodological process comprised articles selection, data extraction, and then the analysis of emerging themes. Setting selection criteria to limit the transcultural field was difficult.ResultsThe study analyzed 68 articles. We present a descriptive analysis of the results, centered on three main themes. First, the literature highlights a nosographic muddle reflected in the combination of anxious and depressive symptoms together with the highly variable symptomatology. Second, discrimination issues were prevalent among the migrant population. Lastly, the literature review points out possibilities for improving a care pathway and reducing the diagnostic delay induced by migrants' hesitancy about Western care and the recurrent use of inappropriate diagnostic criteria.ConclusionThis review discusses the links between the nosographic muddle described here and the diagnostic delays these patients experience and raises concerns about rigid diagnostic compartmentalization. The work of the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon is here useful to understand externalized symptoms resulting from physical and psychological confinement. Discrimination issues raise questions about the cultural counter-transference health professionals experience in dealing with young migrants. Defining healthcare professionals' representations about somatic complaints in a transcultural context might be a fruitful path to explore in future research.Protocol PROSPERO registration numberCRD42021294132. Available from: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42021294132.

Chia Wei Hsu, Subahari Raviskanthan, Peter W. Mortensen et al.

Purpose: The purpose of this case report was to detail a unique patient with proven systemic cobaltism from metal-on-metal prosthetic hip articulation who then presented with clinical and radiographic signs of increased intracranial pressure. Observations: A 59-year-old man with a past medical history of degenerative joint disease of the hip that status post total hip arthroplasty with cobalt-chromium implant presented with clinical and radiographic signs of increased intracranial hypertension. He underwent a revision arthroplasty with local debridement and removal of the cobalt-chromium implant and his serum cobalt level was elevated at 0.9 microg/L (normal range 0.1–0.4microg/L). One year after removal of the implant, the patient was asymptomatic and stable on acetazolamide. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first such report in the English literature to associate increased intracranial hypertension with systemic cobaltism, and publication of this case report would make clinicians aware of the potential neurologic and neuro-ophthalmic presentation of metal-on-metal orthopedic prosthetics.

bigom naseri, somaye hamidi, Hosein Farzanepour

Abstract Introduction By the emergence of Modernity in Iran in Qajar Era many intellectuals believed in developing reformations in Iran’s Community. Besides reformations, the society of Iran should be awakened from deep sleep by thinking transformation and reach Modernity and this issue is evident in all works of intellectuals in Qajar. Undoubtedly many trips of intellectuals of this era to European countries have influenced their thoughts. Pre-constitutional intellectuals enumerated the reasons for Iran’s mustiness as despotisms, lack of legal governance, invasion of Arabs to Iran and finally religion and superstitions. So they tried to find a solution for solving these problems. They became familiar with modern government elements in West and proposed some solutions for mustiness of Iran like: reformation of governance structure, making law, reformation or changing the procedure, renewing ancient traditions, eliminating or reforming religion, etc. the thoughts of these intellectuals aren’t limited to a same realm of meaning and the method of each case is different for solving the problems of the country. However, their thought is related to modern governance. Among the pre-constitutional intellectuals is Mirza Agha Khan Kermani. He found out the reasons for Iran’s mustiness by observing western countries’ situation and comparing it with Iran. He became aware of Modern governance elements and criticized traditional situation of society of Iran and tried to find a solution for solving this crisis.   Methodology The current paper is based on analytical-descriptive method and governance theory of Michel Foucault and examines perception of Mirza Agha Khan Kermani of nature of Modern governance on the basis of his work, seven treatises.  The problem is that what are the basics of modern governance in the thought of Mirza Agha Khan Kermani? The hypothesis of this paper is that Mirza Agha Khan Kermani criticized the nature of traditional system of Iran and his different perceptions of Modernity and modern governance led to a different interpretation of mustiness. About the research literature we should say that some works have been written about thoughts of Mirza Agha Khan Kermani that the most important ones are Facing with Modernity by Abdollah Ansari, Basics of Modern Government in Thinkers’ Perspective in Constitutional Era by Shah Mohammadi, Thoughts of Mirza Agha Khan Kermani by Feridon Adamiyat. These works have examined dimensions of Mirza Agha Khan Kermani’s thought.   Discussion Mirza Agha Khan Kermani is one of the intellectuals of Qajar Era. His thought is full of nationalism, documenting the governance right of nation, freedom, fighting with Russian and English colonialism, fighting with despotism, litigation, human rights, Islamic unity thought and criticizing social situation (Ajoudani, 2014: 79). He criticized the nature of traditional system in Iran and his different thinking tendencies have influenced his perception of Modernity and modern governance elements. This has caused that he has a different perception to lagging behind. One of the modern governance factors in his thoughts is national government. He considers the reason of the emergence of government the human being’s requirement to meet his needs and necessity of cooperation with others in meeting them. In his opinion (Kermani, 1945: 69) establishing a society and necessity of leader I the factor of people’s solidarity and prevents disunion in society and it is considered as main motivation of community to modernity.  Kermani considers government a necessary tool for society progress (Kermani, 280). His attitude to government represents establishing a legal system based on Modernity because it is “legally bound” and its nation enjoys freedom rights (Kermani, 1933:162). He reprimands despotic traditional government as the people finally make a revolution. It doesn’t seem that he wants to transform all political structure and make a revolution in it but conversely, he is reformist and tries to avoid despotism. In his opinion the existence of law is the main technique for modern governance. Kermani focuses on law as the main element in reaching democracy in Iran and believes that it has been from the beginning and it has been eliminated by Arab attacks and their dominance to Iran (Kermani, 285). Mirza Agha Khan considers lawlessness of this event as the origin of all misfortunes of Iranians. One of the structural components in the transformation of Mirza Aga Khan's thought is the unpreparedness of the society and the illiteracy of the majority of the society. In this regard, he considers the basis of life and the basis of human civilization in science and knowledge and considers science impossible without education (Kermani, 1945: 16). He did not believe that Iran was useless in science; But with the invasion of this land by the Arabs, they destroyed their sciences and technologies and burned the books of Iran out of jealousy and ignorance and trampled on the sciences of Iran for several thousand years (Kermani, 1989: 23). The intense attacks that Mirza Aga Khan repeatedly pays attention to the ignorant Arabs and their customs and traditions in his works show his attention to the political system that ruled the situation in Iran at that time. In the face of the modern government in the West, Kermani considers the ruling tyranny as one of the reasons for the backwardness of the governments in Iran, which seeks power and has not paid attention to the development and education of the nation and deprives the people of their rights and freedoms. Kermani gives people legal rights (Kermani, Bita b: 74-73). According to him, the people should be aware of their rights and the nation should form a great force for itself against the strength of the government. His emphasis on the concept of the nation and the granting of equal rights demonstrates his efforts to involve the people in the political life of the country in order to achieve a modern government in society. Kermani has a broad view of women's rights among intellectuals before him, so much so that he pays special attention to women in all his works. In the field of women's rights, she believes that they should have equal rights with men: "Women should have equal rights with men and learn them from any science, technology and industry, and be aware of good and bad, and women should not wear hijab and not speak. He is not forbidden from having sex with a foreign man so that he does not produce any sins and obscene acts at all ”(Kermani, 1933: 10). Therefore, he considers women to have equal rights with men as a condition for the perfect progress of the human world.   Conclusion Mirza Aga Khan Kermani is one of the pioneers of modern government in Iran, who at the same time has tried to look at tradition in its historical context. His efforts to critique the past as an important component of his thought are influenced by the West. He can be considered an admirer of the ancient religion and cultural values ​​of Iran, which he tried to revive and to take the political foundations of the West, such as the establishment of national government, the expansion of social and political freedoms and finally the absolute separation of political institutions from religion. He emphasized. He brought government and religion together and considered the rule of law to be appropriate for Iranian society. Mirza Aga Khan's legacy not only reduced the role of tradition to advising the ruling system, but he also opposed and rejected the authoritarian system in the political sphere. Mirza Aga Khan Kermani, as one of the progressive intellectuals, called on the people to participate in the government and demanded the overthrow of the authoritarian government by the people.

Mingyang Li, Louis Hickman, Louis Tay et al.

Modeling politeness across cultures helps to improve intercultural communication by uncovering what is considered appropriate and polite. We study the linguistic features associated with politeness across US English and Mandarin Chinese. First, we annotate 5,300 Twitter posts from the US and 5,300 Sina Weibo posts from China for politeness scores. Next, we develop an English and Chinese politeness feature set, `PoliteLex'. Combining it with validated psycholinguistic dictionaries, we then study the correlations between linguistic features and perceived politeness across cultures. We find that on Mandarin Weibo, future-focusing conversations, identifying with a group affiliation, and gratitude are considered to be more polite than on English Twitter. Death-related taboo topics, lack of or poor choice of pronouns, and informal language are associated with higher impoliteness on Mandarin Weibo compared to English Twitter. Finally, we build language-based machine learning models to predict politeness with an F1 score of 0.886 on Mandarin Weibo and a 0.774 on English Twitter.