2. Counting Words & Phrases to Trace the Distribution of Meaning -[E3] Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Cristian, Lillian Lee, B. Pang, and John Kleinberg.

[lkcao]

Post questions here for this week's exemplary readings:

3. Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Cristian, Lillian Lee, B. Pang, and John Kleinberg. 2012. “Echoes of Power: Language Effects and Power Differences in Social Interaction.” Proc. 21st Int. Conf. World Wide Web: 699–708.

[cty20010831]

When it comes to the findings on Wikipedia, the authors found that admins coordinate to other people more than non-admins do. To explain this contradicting finding, the authors referred to Hypothesis B about personal characteristics. While I do think it is a reasonable way to try teasing apart the effect of personal characteristics from the effect of power, the authors seem to have an implicit assumption that the personal characteristics that can helps to explain differences in language coordination is related to status (specifically, "ambition" as they called). Granted that explaining in this way does help the authors not only to corroborate Hypothesis B but also support Hypothesis P′ (i.e., Hypothesis P when controlling for personal characteristics). My question is how can the authors explain between-individual differences in other personal characteristics (such as agreeableness) that may explain differences in language coordination?

[ddlxdd]

I think the idea of studying lingustic style marks is brilliant, and this is a very intriguing approach. Finding the categories of function words in language that carry little semantic meaning on their own but play a crucial role in defining a speaker's or writer's unique style. I am wondering how those marks are being caculated and defined in the study, and what are the particular words to be considered? Also, since this is considered a social pattern, can we duplicate this result in different languages? Do all languages have marks?

[michplunkett]

I thought this paper was rather fascinating! Specifically, I found myself most interested in the amount of coordination among the up-and-coming Wikipedia community members. At work and in life, more generally, we've all seen people who seem to have a knack for climbing ladders of power, and I have yet to hear a substantial theory for it that didn't seem overly simplistic or crass. I'd be interested to see if these differences in coordination habits are evident between people of the same hiring, social club, etc., cohort.

[Vindmn1234]

The study found that individuals in online communities and legal settings display linguistic coordination, subtly mirroring the language of those with higher status; those in positions of power also exhibit this behavior, suggesting a complex interplay between language and social hierarchy. I'm curious that how the researchers generalized their findings to a broader area. Admittedly, the findings could be representative for interaction contexts in other fields share similarities (e.g., clear hierarchies, established roles, online communication platforms). But for some organizations that don't have a clear power Hierarchies, does the linguistic coordination still exist?

[chanteriam]

I thought this paper was incredibly interesting. The authors discussed how they were able to develop a model that didn't rely on context to predict power and status in textual interactions, based on the reflection of function words between the speaker and the target. However, I wonder: would the same theories of language coordination apply for languages that aren't English? Would someone who spoke German show language coordination similar to someone who spoke English? Though the authors control for personal attributes, how could cultural attributes affect how power and status are reflected in conversion, and how could these then affect the model and predictions the authors are able to make? Are power and status reflected similarly between German and US culture?

[alejandrosarria0296]

This paper was a fascinanting read and even now I'm still thinking of possible applications for the methods used by the authors in different contexts. I was particularlly drawn to how collaboration in the wikipedia editor community could be seen via linguistic coordination. Could this methods be used to predict collaborative outputs? (i.e. a significant "collaboration index" between two or more congress members could a predictor of a future co-authored bill)

[yuzhouw313]

Aligning one's linguistic coordination with the listener or target audience based on their status and the dynamics of dependence is an intuitive aspect of effective communication. This coordination is often measured by the usage of specific categories of function words within a communication and their alignment with a designated marker. However, a critical question arises when attempting to generalize these findings: how applicable are they to different communication contexts, specifically in distinguishing between professional or specific conversations and casual daily interactions? I would imagine that in professional conversations, the likelihood of using similar word utterances might be higher due to the specialized nature of the discourse within a particular field. While the authors acknowledge the domain independence of their designs and findings, an intriguing consideration emerges. Is there a mechanism in place to control for personal traits that could potentially influence linguistic coordination and, in turn, context setting?

[joylin0209]

This article talks about the power relations of language style in social interaction, which I found interesting and also generated some curiosity. First of all, I would like to know more about the strategic content of language style change. For example, under different power relationship interactions, is it common to use different words for the same meaning, and what are the examples? The second question is, can this analysis method even be used in other language systems, or even compared with English? For example, in Chinese, there are two different words to refer to "you", which are divided into honorific terms (usually used for people with greater age, rank, and power) and non-honorific terms. Therefore, a text containing the honorific "you" can easily convey the meaning of respecting the reader. Is it possible to express the difference in power relations through a single word in English? I think it would be interesting if we could compare the language style strategies of different language systems in social interaction.

[Audacity88]

I am interested in the conflict between the authors' hypothesis P and B, raised by the finding that Wikipedia admins coordinate more than non-admins rather than less. The authors' explanation that this is a selection effect due to admins being predisposed to coordination seems logical. However, there seems to be a major decrease in coordination after adminship, shown in figure 3b, which would seemingly require admins to have an extremely high starting level if they are to remain higher than average.

Meanwhile, if this explanation is correct, would we expect to see it on other platforms or in other fields? Or does the volunteer and democratic nature of the Wikipedia platform make it an outlier in having high-status users who also exhibit high coordination?

[ana-yurt]

I find it impressive and interesting that the changes of language coordination only show up "when you use computational methods to explicitly tune in to them." I also admire the authors' ingeniousness in coming up with a new P'speaker hypothesis to explain the apparent inconsistency in data.

The authors believe their result is domain-independent. As Wikipedia is a platform of collective work and court speech relies on a set of language patterns to convey credibility, interactions in both seem to benefit from coordination. I wonder if there are domains where it is rewarding for one to differ in the style of language.

[donatellafelice]

"Moreover, since our methods are based on function words, it means one can apply them to language samples from which the content words have been redacted, raising intriguing implications for compact representations and user privacy." p.2 - I wonder how or if this could technique could be leveraged to assess other types of data that are normally considered private. Is there a way that this methodology could be adapted to look at, for example, conversations between patients and health care providers, to learn more about how doctors might better provide care? I can imagine perhaps investigating if this dynamic might be at play and impacting how symptoms are described (although that would need some further information)? Or maybe in police interviews? or other sensitive situations in which power dynamics could produce very adverse outcomes (ie coerced confessions or people withdrawing charges in cases of domestic violence).

[LyuZejian]

This work provides an interesting connection between the measurable language pattern and social dynamic, which is interaction influenced by power differences. Besides, the authors exploited multiple facets of language uptake and language coordination.

The usage of SVM deserves further interpretation or quantification, from my point of view. It woule be more informative if author could provide more supportive data and analysis like the support vector, the true and false case analysis, etc.

Moving forward, I think this work provides intriguing foundation for more content analysis based social study. I am curious about how this design could be accommodated on a group level, like tracing the group-level circulation of language among communities.

[YucanLei]

I am surprised this paper used large amounts of data to pick up subtle effects and explicitly vary underlying conditions for coordination across different subsets of the data. Additionally, the study examines status change within online communities and extends the analysis to broader notions of power, including situation-dependent power.

That said, I am wondering the application of this paper. Perhaps we may use ut to inform the development of educational programs aimed at promoting more effective communication and collaboration within diverse social groups and communities?

[chenyt16]

This paper inspired me a lot for social interaction studies. By examining language coordination, where individuals mimic the linguistic style of their conversational partners, the study reveals that those with less power often adjust their language more towards those in higher power positions. This phenomenon is observed in various settings, including online forums and legal arguments. Thus, I wonder if it's possible to use language coordination to predict shifts in power dynamics within a group over time? For example, how is the hierarchy established for a new team? Additionally, will a popular kid still maintain their popularity when transferred to another school?

[XiaodiYang2001]

The interaction of language is highly dependent on context. The article conducted research on Wikipedia and legal hearings and came to the conclusion that "people with low power are more likely to coordinate language than people with high power." But there will be a big difference between dialogue and text interaction, and changes in the social relationships between people and changes in the specific matters discussed will also make a big difference. So does more research need to verify this conclusion?

[anzhichen1999]

The third paper gives the significance of language coordination in deciphering power dynamics when other cues are unavailable. So for people with lower power exhibit greater language coordination, how might these patterns be influenced in online settings where anonymity or pseudonymity is prevalent, and traditional power dynamics may be less clear, considering the impact of online anonymity or pseudonymity? To be more specific, how the absence of physical cues and the presence of anonymity might alter the patterns of language coordination and power dynamics observed in digital communication, which could provide valuable insights into the evolving nature of power relations in the digital age?

[QIXIN-LIN]

I am curious about the dynamics of status reversal. This research focuses on how a change in status (such as being promoted to an admin in Wikipedia) affects language style and its adoption by others. My question extends this inquiry: What happens when someone loses a position of power, like no longer being an admin? Will others continue to mirror their language style as they did when the person was in power, or does the language style influence diminish along with the status?

[floriatea]

How might cultural differences influence the patterns of linguistic coordination and power dynamics observed in online interactions? Considering diverse cultural norms regarding respect, hierarchy, and communication styles, could we expect similar patterns of language mimicry across different cultural contexts, or would there be notable deviations? In multilingual online communities, how does linguistic coordination manifest when interactions occur across languages? Are individuals who switch languages or incorporate multiple languages in their communication perceived differently in terms of power or status compared to monolingual speakers within the same community?