Lauren Hynde
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It's ok, I'm not going anywhere just yet.
Your gender and your writing
- Thread starter Pure
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Pure
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Hi LH,
Thanks for your thoughtful response. Yet I must say the overall 'drift' of the conversation is not clear to me.
Please remind me what we are arguing about,
other than your claim,
//they [Koppel et al.] may have totally succeeded. Not in their publicized objective, but the original one. They may have found a way of automatically separate cerebral and sentimental styles.//
You dismiss titles, abstracts and statements of objectives in two papers, so I'm not sure if you'd treat any other evidence differently. Of course there is a good deal. Were you correct, one would expect Method and Results to fit the objective you impute (as original). Instead, we find a learning algorithm, which scores 'successes' according to gender of author. And searches for features that best predict that. And gives statements of results in those terms.
You may say, perhaps the whole paper was set up, ex post facto, as a publicity stunt to mangle already existing data whose gathering was dictated by the objective you claim. Then where would one look for evidence? Have you accessed Koppel's secret correspondence?
Against all the explicit text, we have your alleged ability to descry 'original objective'. But it seems you place yourself outside the realm of evidence. I cannot refute you. It a bit like dealing with someone who, despite all disclosures continues to say "Well that does not fool me; I *know* what you're up to."
What else can I say; you've produced only a single phrase in support of your claim.
Your claim is further weakened since it's entirely unclear HOW, in a study one would 'separate cerebral and sentimental styles' if that were the intent?? How would one start such an investigation? What methodology? Consider how would items be separated initially; would one take a pile of physics texts and another of romance novels?
I suppose one Koppel substudy fits the sort of thing you're thinking of. They looked at non fiction and fiction (to compare to writings of the two genders). That's possible since the lines can be conventionally drawn. That would not hold for 'cerebral' and 'sentimental'. And to use your question, what would be the point? Why would a one want a program to tell if something's from a physics book or a romance novel?
Indeed, approaches based on a priori considerations are explicitly rejected by Koppel since it leads into a morass of preconceptions; thence to dubious findings: one 'knows' what cerebral looks like, and them searches out those markers; a dubious procedure.
The data from such a study wouldn't be very useful in distinguishing male and female writers--if that's what one wanted to twist it into, for a publicity stunt-- since the texts would be quite obviously different.
The interesting feat is to match for subject matter and scholarliness (or lack thereof) as in the two examples I've put in the next posting. I don't think the two examples fit very well into 'cerebral' (the male writer?) and 'sentimental,' for both are highly cerebral. Hence the features looked at stylometrically are interesting. To me. Why does the male writer efface the 'he's and the female writer insert them? The insertion does not seem like a sign of sentimentality, does it?
Other than the above, please summarize the issues..
Oh, I know you find the thing useless and liable to be used in oppressing women; a subtle, yet stereotype ridden demonstration of their inferior (perhaps too emotionally labile) physiology. But that doesn't interest me much. Most academic papers are justifiably called 'useless', esp. those which involve computer algorithms and stylometry. And certainly academic publishing is a mainstay of hegemonic white male discourse. I give you that.
----
Perhaps readers would be interested in this:
There was one practical application of a related Koppel program.
You'll see--at his website-- that he looked a email correspondence of a dozen people over a year, and looked for computer identifiable markers that would distiguish the authors (of both sexes). I was fascinated, but maybe that too would bore you.
Best regards to my very intelligent discussant, but I seem to have lost my way!
{above posting was revised substantially 8-13, 3 am edt}
Thanks for your thoughtful response. Yet I must say the overall 'drift' of the conversation is not clear to me.
Please remind me what we are arguing about,
other than your claim,
//they [Koppel et al.] may have totally succeeded. Not in their publicized objective, but the original one. They may have found a way of automatically separate cerebral and sentimental styles.//
You dismiss titles, abstracts and statements of objectives in two papers, so I'm not sure if you'd treat any other evidence differently. Of course there is a good deal. Were you correct, one would expect Method and Results to fit the objective you impute (as original). Instead, we find a learning algorithm, which scores 'successes' according to gender of author. And searches for features that best predict that. And gives statements of results in those terms.
You may say, perhaps the whole paper was set up, ex post facto, as a publicity stunt to mangle already existing data whose gathering was dictated by the objective you claim. Then where would one look for evidence? Have you accessed Koppel's secret correspondence?
Against all the explicit text, we have your alleged ability to descry 'original objective'. But it seems you place yourself outside the realm of evidence. I cannot refute you. It a bit like dealing with someone who, despite all disclosures continues to say "Well that does not fool me; I *know* what you're up to."
What else can I say; you've produced only a single phrase in support of your claim.
Your claim is further weakened since it's entirely unclear HOW, in a study one would 'separate cerebral and sentimental styles' if that were the intent?? How would one start such an investigation? What methodology? Consider how would items be separated initially; would one take a pile of physics texts and another of romance novels?
I suppose one Koppel substudy fits the sort of thing you're thinking of. They looked at non fiction and fiction (to compare to writings of the two genders). That's possible since the lines can be conventionally drawn. That would not hold for 'cerebral' and 'sentimental'. And to use your question, what would be the point? Why would a one want a program to tell if something's from a physics book or a romance novel?
Indeed, approaches based on a priori considerations are explicitly rejected by Koppel since it leads into a morass of preconceptions; thence to dubious findings: one 'knows' what cerebral looks like, and them searches out those markers; a dubious procedure.
The data from such a study wouldn't be very useful in distinguishing male and female writers--if that's what one wanted to twist it into, for a publicity stunt-- since the texts would be quite obviously different.
The interesting feat is to match for subject matter and scholarliness (or lack thereof) as in the two examples I've put in the next posting. I don't think the two examples fit very well into 'cerebral' (the male writer?) and 'sentimental,' for both are highly cerebral. Hence the features looked at stylometrically are interesting. To me. Why does the male writer efface the 'he's and the female writer insert them? The insertion does not seem like a sign of sentimentality, does it?
Other than the above, please summarize the issues..
Oh, I know you find the thing useless and liable to be used in oppressing women; a subtle, yet stereotype ridden demonstration of their inferior (perhaps too emotionally labile) physiology. But that doesn't interest me much. Most academic papers are justifiably called 'useless', esp. those which involve computer algorithms and stylometry. And certainly academic publishing is a mainstay of hegemonic white male discourse. I give you that.
----
Perhaps readers would be interested in this:
There was one practical application of a related Koppel program.
You'll see--at his website-- that he looked a email correspondence of a dozen people over a year, and looked for computer identifiable markers that would distiguish the authors (of both sexes). I was fascinated, but maybe that too would bore you.
Best regards to my very intelligent discussant, but I seem to have lost my way!
{above posting was revised substantially 8-13, 3 am edt}
Last edited:
Pure
Fiel a Verdad
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Non fiction examples showing gender diffs, same journal.
(Lauren, I believe the analysis of these passages shows that something else is going on besides checking for 'cerebral' or 'sentimental' styles. Both, imo, are highly cerebral. The more apposite term, mentioned by the authors is 'involved'. But of course that concept is applied *after* the data are analyzed.
{Added: I think this example and analysis count against the idea that gendered writing reflects publishers tastes in genres, and stereotypes about female readers; for why would ms blackmore write differently for this journal than mr simpson? or do you think the editors were looking for 'sentimental' articles from women scholars, and selecting for that characteristic?})
http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/~koppel/male-female-text-final.pdf
"Gender Genre and Writing Style" (Argamon, Koppel, Fine, Shimoni}
we consider opening passages of two
articles published in the same journal (Language and Literature), one by a male author (Paul
Simpson) and one by a female author (Diane Blakemore).
Language and Literature Vol. 1 (1992). Simpson, Paul
The main aim of this article is to propose an exercise in stylistic analysis which can be employed in the teaching of English language. It details the design and results of a workshop
activity on narrative carried out with undergraduates in a university department of English. The methods proposed are intended to enable students to obtain insights into aspects of
cohesion and narrative structure: insights, it is suggested, which are not as readily obtainable through more traditional techniques of stylistic analysis.
The text chosen for analysis is a short
story by Ernest Hemingway comprising only 11 sentences. A jumbled version of this story is presented to students who are asked to assemble a cohesive and well formed version of the
story. Their re-constructions are then comp ared with the original Hemingway version.
Language and Literature Vol. 2 (1993). Blakemore, Diane
My aim in this article is to show that given a relevance theoretic approach to utterance interpretation, it is possible to develop a better understanding of what some of these so-called apposition markers indicate. It will be argued that the decision to put something in other words is essentially a decision about style, a point which is, perhaps, anticipated by Burton - Roberts when he describes loose apposition as a rhetorical device. However, he does not justify this suggestion by giving the criteria for classifying a mode of expression as a rhetorical device. Nor does he specify what kind of effects might be achieved by a reformulation or explain how it achieves those effects.
In this paper I follow Sperber and Wilson's ( 1986 ) suggestion that rhetorical devices like metaphor, irony and repetition are particular means of achieving relevance. As I have suggested, the corrections that are made in unplanned discourse are also made in the pursuit of optimal relevance. However, these are made because the speaker recognises that the original formulation did not achieve optimal relevance. In contrast, deliberate reformulations are designed to achieve particular contextual effects, and they should not be taken to indicate a failure to communicate any more than, for, repetition .
Already from the first phrase of each passage, we might venture a guess which is which. Indeed, it is the female Blakemore who writes "My aim", while the male Simpson uses the less
personal and more specified "The main aim". Blakemore further personalizes by using the phrases "I follow" and "As I have suggested". Simpson, by contrast, uses only a single personal
pronoun in the whole passage and it is plural. Moreover, after introducing Burton-Roberts, Blakemore emphasizes his personhood by following up twice with references to he.
By contrast, Simpson, having referred to Hemingway, makes no effort to personalize and refers subsequently only to "Hemingway's version". In addition, Blakemore's use of 12 present tense active verbs (base form, _s), as opposed to Simpson's use of only 3, effectively places the
actors at the center of her narrative.
Furthermore, in six sentences Simpson uses eight of phrases to modify nouns (e.g., "more traditional techniques of stylistic analysis"), while in eight sentences, Blakemore uses only six
of modifiers. Finally, Blakemore uses four negatives (not, nor), while Simpson uses only one.
It appears that wording propositions in the negative is another device for relating to the reader by setting up a contrast with the reader's expected state of the world (e.g., "they should not be
taken to indicate a failure to communicate....").
====
end excerpt
(Lauren, I believe the analysis of these passages shows that something else is going on besides checking for 'cerebral' or 'sentimental' styles. Both, imo, are highly cerebral. The more apposite term, mentioned by the authors is 'involved'. But of course that concept is applied *after* the data are analyzed.
{Added: I think this example and analysis count against the idea that gendered writing reflects publishers tastes in genres, and stereotypes about female readers; for why would ms blackmore write differently for this journal than mr simpson? or do you think the editors were looking for 'sentimental' articles from women scholars, and selecting for that characteristic?})
http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/~koppel/male-female-text-final.pdf
"Gender Genre and Writing Style" (Argamon, Koppel, Fine, Shimoni}
we consider opening passages of two
articles published in the same journal (Language and Literature), one by a male author (Paul
Simpson) and one by a female author (Diane Blakemore).
Language and Literature Vol. 1 (1992). Simpson, Paul
The main aim of this article is to propose an exercise in stylistic analysis which can be employed in the teaching of English language. It details the design and results of a workshop
activity on narrative carried out with undergraduates in a university department of English. The methods proposed are intended to enable students to obtain insights into aspects of
cohesion and narrative structure: insights, it is suggested, which are not as readily obtainable through more traditional techniques of stylistic analysis.
The text chosen for analysis is a short
story by Ernest Hemingway comprising only 11 sentences. A jumbled version of this story is presented to students who are asked to assemble a cohesive and well formed version of the
story. Their re-constructions are then comp ared with the original Hemingway version.
Language and Literature Vol. 2 (1993). Blakemore, Diane
My aim in this article is to show that given a relevance theoretic approach to utterance interpretation, it is possible to develop a better understanding of what some of these so-called apposition markers indicate. It will be argued that the decision to put something in other words is essentially a decision about style, a point which is, perhaps, anticipated by Burton - Roberts when he describes loose apposition as a rhetorical device. However, he does not justify this suggestion by giving the criteria for classifying a mode of expression as a rhetorical device. Nor does he specify what kind of effects might be achieved by a reformulation or explain how it achieves those effects.
In this paper I follow Sperber and Wilson's ( 1986 ) suggestion that rhetorical devices like metaphor, irony and repetition are particular means of achieving relevance. As I have suggested, the corrections that are made in unplanned discourse are also made in the pursuit of optimal relevance. However, these are made because the speaker recognises that the original formulation did not achieve optimal relevance. In contrast, deliberate reformulations are designed to achieve particular contextual effects, and they should not be taken to indicate a failure to communicate any more than, for, repetition .
Already from the first phrase of each passage, we might venture a guess which is which. Indeed, it is the female Blakemore who writes "My aim", while the male Simpson uses the less
personal and more specified "The main aim". Blakemore further personalizes by using the phrases "I follow" and "As I have suggested". Simpson, by contrast, uses only a single personal
pronoun in the whole passage and it is plural. Moreover, after introducing Burton-Roberts, Blakemore emphasizes his personhood by following up twice with references to he.
By contrast, Simpson, having referred to Hemingway, makes no effort to personalize and refers subsequently only to "Hemingway's version". In addition, Blakemore's use of 12 present tense active verbs (base form, _s), as opposed to Simpson's use of only 3, effectively places the
actors at the center of her narrative.
Furthermore, in six sentences Simpson uses eight of phrases to modify nouns (e.g., "more traditional techniques of stylistic analysis"), while in eight sentences, Blakemore uses only six
of modifiers. Finally, Blakemore uses four negatives (not, nor), while Simpson uses only one.
It appears that wording propositions in the negative is another device for relating to the reader by setting up a contrast with the reader's expected state of the world (e.g., "they should not be
taken to indicate a failure to communicate....").
====
end excerpt
Last edited:
MlledeLaPlumeBleu
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First, the "cerebral":
If they used pre-existing writing samples, there was no way they obtained a viably neutral result.
The data would be more convincing if they had given both male and female authors a sheet of paper and the same topic, same category [fiction or non], and the same POV [third, first, omniscient, whatever], and had them write for this specific study.
Had they all written on the same topic, the results might begin to be somewhat "scientific".
But otherwise there is no real isolation of variables. You have topical variance, which influences style, and of course, the publishing industry's bias.
As it stands this is at best a sociological "study" using the framework of gender roles and cultural mores. Not a scentific study of the true inherent biogenic differences between people with double Xs and XYs.
Now, the "emotional":
I was absolutely fucking appalled at some of the patronizing things you somehow felt entitled to say to Lauren, who is more concise, cohesive and literate in her second language than 99 percent of people who call themselves the English speaking populace.
To Lauren, from Pure:
You are shitting in my mouth and calling it a sundae, Pure.
That has got to be the most infantile, manipulative, cowardly, passive-aggressive piece of shit post I've ever seen from a human being. What the fuck got into you?
Too bad I don't have the grace of character that she does- she sidestepped it and kept her hemline out of the muck. Kudos to Lauren.
I have a new idea for a study- we can identify the gender of people based solely on who responds to Pure's threads- based on my observations so far it's been skewed towards the well-meaning nurturers- apparently the men are too smart to bother, much as I hate to admit it girls.
Who wants to keep nursing a five year old who bites your nipples?
If they used pre-existing writing samples, there was no way they obtained a viably neutral result.
The data would be more convincing if they had given both male and female authors a sheet of paper and the same topic, same category [fiction or non], and the same POV [third, first, omniscient, whatever], and had them write for this specific study.
Had they all written on the same topic, the results might begin to be somewhat "scientific".
But otherwise there is no real isolation of variables. You have topical variance, which influences style, and of course, the publishing industry's bias.
As it stands this is at best a sociological "study" using the framework of gender roles and cultural mores. Not a scentific study of the true inherent biogenic differences between people with double Xs and XYs.
Now, the "emotional":
I was absolutely fucking appalled at some of the patronizing things you somehow felt entitled to say to Lauren, who is more concise, cohesive and literate in her second language than 99 percent of people who call themselves the English speaking populace.
To Lauren, from Pure:
You are shitting in my mouth and calling it a sundae, Pure.
That has got to be the most infantile, manipulative, cowardly, passive-aggressive piece of shit post I've ever seen from a human being. What the fuck got into you?
Too bad I don't have the grace of character that she does- she sidestepped it and kept her hemline out of the muck. Kudos to Lauren.
I have a new idea for a study- we can identify the gender of people based solely on who responds to Pure's threads- based on my observations so far it's been skewed towards the well-meaning nurturers- apparently the men are too smart to bother, much as I hate to admit it girls.
Who wants to keep nursing a five year old who bites your nipples?
Pure
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Mlledelaplumebleu
//
The data would be more convincing if they had given both male and female authors a sheet of paper and the same topic, same category [fiction or non], and the same POV [third, first, omniscient, whatever], and had them write for this specific study.
Had they all written on the same topic, the results might begin to be somewhat "scientific".//
Something close to this was done in Koppel's email study; attempts to stylometrically identify among several writers, though not, iirc, to determine gender.
But otherwise there is no real isolation of variables. You have topical variance, which influences style, and of course, the publishing industry's bias.
There is no serious topical variance in the non-fiction examples posted [Blackemore and Simpson's; see above]; they appeared in the same language studies journal in about the same time period. Admittedly the examples were chosen to illustrate, and not to prove, but how do you explain the diffs? Do you think the editors of the journal, without being aware of it, select women scholar's writing that seems 'feminine' or 'sentimental'?
J.
(nipple biter)
//
The data would be more convincing if they had given both male and female authors a sheet of paper and the same topic, same category [fiction or non], and the same POV [third, first, omniscient, whatever], and had them write for this specific study.
Had they all written on the same topic, the results might begin to be somewhat "scientific".//
Something close to this was done in Koppel's email study; attempts to stylometrically identify among several writers, though not, iirc, to determine gender.
But otherwise there is no real isolation of variables. You have topical variance, which influences style, and of course, the publishing industry's bias.
There is no serious topical variance in the non-fiction examples posted [Blackemore and Simpson's; see above]; they appeared in the same language studies journal in about the same time period. Admittedly the examples were chosen to illustrate, and not to prove, but how do you explain the diffs? Do you think the editors of the journal, without being aware of it, select women scholar's writing that seems 'feminine' or 'sentimental'?
J.
(nipple biter)
MathGirl
Cogito
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MG's SOL POV
I personally think that women write fiction as they do because it's a conscious choice they make. They write on subjects and from a perspective which is chosen.
For example, I don't think the "hard boiled" detective type of story need be testosterone fueled. I like stories like that which are well written. E.g. Robert Parker or Joe Landsdale. If I was ever to write a novel (which I might) it would be in that genre. I would defy anyone to tell it was written by a female.
MG
I personally think that women write fiction as they do because it's a conscious choice they make. They write on subjects and from a perspective which is chosen.
For example, I don't think the "hard boiled" detective type of story need be testosterone fueled. I like stories like that which are well written. E.g. Robert Parker or Joe Landsdale. If I was ever to write a novel (which I might) it would be in that genre. I would defy anyone to tell it was written by a female.
MG
Pure
Fiel a Verdad
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// I don't think the "hard boiled" detective type of story need be testosterone fueled.//
I'm not sure anyone, including Koppel and co. suggested that.
(but you are a bit testosterone fuelled, ya know)
PS: this is just an impression, but of your writing to date, I'd say it appears to fit with some of the characteristics K and Co. found in women writers.
I'm not sure anyone, including Koppel and co. suggested that.
(but you are a bit testosterone fuelled, ya know)
PS: this is just an impression, but of your writing to date, I'd say it appears to fit with some of the characteristics K and Co. found in women writers.
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Lauren Hynde
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Pure-
Excuse me for taking so long to come back and answer, I know you must be positively fidgety with eagerness, waiting my recapitulation. Tell me something, do you think it's odd for a person like yourself to lose the thread of rational thought during such a discussion? I reckon it's not, considering you're still going strongly at it, whatever it is. That's the spirit.
Usually, a normal person would tell you to go back and reread the posts, if you're so lost, but you're in luck: I'm in an extraordinarily good mood, tonight. The summary of what happened thus far:
To begin with, you posted an article about the research paper a team of computer scientists is about to publish regarding an algorithm allegedly capable of determining the gender of the author of any sample of writing.
Secondly, I said the allegations in the paper surmounted, in a literary and western philosophical points of view, to a substantial load of male (although I'm sure it was just a coincidence) bovine excrement, and included a brief justification. Basically, I said, the way any person writes is determined by his/her environment, his/her education, his/her conscious choice, and not by his/her genes.
You replied by asking for me to provide documental evidence that environment/education/conscious choice has more impact in how a person writes than an 80% educated guess based on the gender of a person, to which I laughed my ass off. Then you accused me of not reading the papers, which was fine by me, although missing the mark by about 80% of a month.
I then decided to repeat what I had already said, but this time much more slowly. I said the papers showed Moshe Koppel et al made an unacceptable leap of logic based of preconceptions, because the elements they used to differentiate [with very poor results] the gender of the authors (personal pronouns, determiners, cardinal numbers and quantifiers) were markers of style, and were only susceptible of discerning between a more factual, objective literature, historically reserved to and socially associated only with men, and a more involved, explicitly emotional literature, historically reserved and socially associated only with women. I said that these historical and social separation does not correspond to a true separation of genders, because the style in which each author writes derives essentially from a mixture of conscious decision and conformity to social expectations. To illustrate this, I gave you a list of women who were forced either by the publishing companies or by social pressure to use masculine or non-specific pseudonyms in order to see their works published, one of them, [not] coincidently, misclassified by Moshe Koppel's program.
I objected to the way the paper was presented, as if being capable of determining the gender of an author, not only because it wasn't (it could only differentiate between two opposite approaches wrongfully and discriminatingly imputed to the two genders) but also because the angle they chose to present their results would undoubtedly be used as a (weak as it is) tool to demonstrate biological differences between the processes of thought of men and women.
Here you replied "Ah, you make very fine points, but..." followed by incomprehensible dribble that had nothing to do with the points: apparently, the crux of my post was "the angle they chose to present their results", because you then accused me of being psychic, pointing out that there was no way of knowing if they had chosen anything. Also, in a brilliant debate-team text-book tactic, you asked if I had any dispute with the fact that they found a statistical pattern in 80% of the books analysed by the program. Evidently, you failed to understand that my and everyone else's point in this thread was that the pattern is merely indicative of authors who chose to conform their writing style to the social expectations and/or pressures for their gender. Too bad, you can't win them all.
In reply to your doubt (are you psychic?), I reiterated what I had said in both my previous posts, even more slowly, as to be sure you wouldn't miss any logic step. I said that everything in the study pointed in one direction: to find a way of differentiating text according to style, starting with the elements they selected to analyse (personal pronouns, determiners, cardinal numbers and quantifiers), again, markers of style. The only thing they could be trying to achieve was to automatically distinguish between the more cerebral style historic- and socially imputed to men, and the more emotional style historic- and socially imputed to women. Whether they chose to go with the "gender detection" approach because they were incompetent and prejudiced or because they sold their souls in exchange for publicity (my personal favourite) is a mood point. Either way, the fact that they ignored in the report the fact that they probably came up with a pretty good way of automatically discerning between the two styles and presented it as a pretty crappy way of discerning the gender of the authors (which has such a myriad of clever practical applications that none of us could mention one with a straight face) proved the bovine-excrement-theory very effectively.
To this your replied was to the effect of whine-whine-whine, "but the title of the papers is Automatically Categorizing Written Texts by Author Gender, not by style. The elements they selected to analyse (personal pronouns, determiners, cardinal numbers and quantifiers) are representative of gender, not style", whine-some-more. Here, I neglected to ask you how do you reckon that. Do these markers come handily tagged in blue and baby pink?
Now this is probably where you lost track: I said the exact same thing I had in the previous three posts. That no matter what the paper is called, what the program does is very clearly to automatically categorize written texts by style, more specifically, by the styles commonly and erroneously imputed to men and women. Once again, I gave you an illustrative example of why it is erroneous. I can see how confusing it must be to have the same arguments thrown at you over and over and over, but when you consistently skip them with the same informal savoir-faire as you apparently skipped the papers themselves, what's an educated, intelligently prejudiced young woman to do?
I see you altered your 08-12-2003 11:21 PM GMT post substantially (sic-not that substantially, my dear) since I had last read it, but let me give it one more try. Raise your hand if this sounds in any way familiar. I may have mentioned it before.
Look closely at Moshe Koppel's paper. Where in it do you find anything other than the result of a program that learns how to detect marks of style? Personal pronouns, determiners, cardinal numbers, quantifiers. Style, style, style, and more style. Ones occur in works of greater emotional tension, others in works more marked by objective description of fact, be it fictional or not. The premises, the method, the results. Everything in those papers point in the same direction. Do I have access to Moshe Koppel's private correspondence? Of course not. I'm psychic, why would I need to do that. Of course I must be one, to figure out that the hell does it matter if the "gender detection" angle came about by ill-intent or incompetence? The fact remains, that the results of the study have nothing to do with gender.
The two examples you used in your more recent post are completely fallacious. For one, they're not both "highly cerebral", whatever that is. The expression "cerebral" has always been being used in this thread by all of us as synonym of objective, descriptive, detached. These texts are examples of two completely different styles of non-fiction reports. One is objective, the author is as absent from the book as possible; the other is much more involved, and refers much more to the author's sensitive experience. Two different styles. Is it a stretch to think scientific journals' editors have the gender of an author when deciding if they'll publish a report or not? Maybe you think so, but I seriously doubt it. Either way, you're forgetting these women are also readers, the majority of whom built the basis of their literary persona on the same involved, emotional, socially-sanctioned books.
After all this running around, this systematic missing of points, this inability to read either other people's posts or the documents you're supposed to be discussing, all this without being able to produce one single original thought that hasn't been vampirized, I must ask you just one question, Pure.
Do you do this on purpose? Is it a specially designed character you made a bet to keep up? Because that's sort of cool, in a way.
PS: There is absolutely no way a good detective story in the style of Robert Parker or Joe Landsdale could be classified as being written by a woman by Moshe Koppel's team's algorithm. No matter what.
Excuse me for taking so long to come back and answer, I know you must be positively fidgety with eagerness, waiting my recapitulation. Tell me something, do you think it's odd for a person like yourself to lose the thread of rational thought during such a discussion? I reckon it's not, considering you're still going strongly at it, whatever it is. That's the spirit.
Usually, a normal person would tell you to go back and reread the posts, if you're so lost, but you're in luck: I'm in an extraordinarily good mood, tonight. The summary of what happened thus far:
To begin with, you posted an article about the research paper a team of computer scientists is about to publish regarding an algorithm allegedly capable of determining the gender of the author of any sample of writing.
Secondly, I said the allegations in the paper surmounted, in a literary and western philosophical points of view, to a substantial load of male (although I'm sure it was just a coincidence) bovine excrement, and included a brief justification. Basically, I said, the way any person writes is determined by his/her environment, his/her education, his/her conscious choice, and not by his/her genes.
You replied by asking for me to provide documental evidence that environment/education/conscious choice has more impact in how a person writes than an 80% educated guess based on the gender of a person, to which I laughed my ass off. Then you accused me of not reading the papers, which was fine by me, although missing the mark by about 80% of a month.
I then decided to repeat what I had already said, but this time much more slowly. I said the papers showed Moshe Koppel et al made an unacceptable leap of logic based of preconceptions, because the elements they used to differentiate [with very poor results] the gender of the authors (personal pronouns, determiners, cardinal numbers and quantifiers) were markers of style, and were only susceptible of discerning between a more factual, objective literature, historically reserved to and socially associated only with men, and a more involved, explicitly emotional literature, historically reserved and socially associated only with women. I said that these historical and social separation does not correspond to a true separation of genders, because the style in which each author writes derives essentially from a mixture of conscious decision and conformity to social expectations. To illustrate this, I gave you a list of women who were forced either by the publishing companies or by social pressure to use masculine or non-specific pseudonyms in order to see their works published, one of them, [not] coincidently, misclassified by Moshe Koppel's program.
I objected to the way the paper was presented, as if being capable of determining the gender of an author, not only because it wasn't (it could only differentiate between two opposite approaches wrongfully and discriminatingly imputed to the two genders) but also because the angle they chose to present their results would undoubtedly be used as a (weak as it is) tool to demonstrate biological differences between the processes of thought of men and women.
Here you replied "Ah, you make very fine points, but..." followed by incomprehensible dribble that had nothing to do with the points: apparently, the crux of my post was "the angle they chose to present their results", because you then accused me of being psychic, pointing out that there was no way of knowing if they had chosen anything. Also, in a brilliant debate-team text-book tactic, you asked if I had any dispute with the fact that they found a statistical pattern in 80% of the books analysed by the program. Evidently, you failed to understand that my and everyone else's point in this thread was that the pattern is merely indicative of authors who chose to conform their writing style to the social expectations and/or pressures for their gender. Too bad, you can't win them all.
In reply to your doubt (are you psychic?), I reiterated what I had said in both my previous posts, even more slowly, as to be sure you wouldn't miss any logic step. I said that everything in the study pointed in one direction: to find a way of differentiating text according to style, starting with the elements they selected to analyse (personal pronouns, determiners, cardinal numbers and quantifiers), again, markers of style. The only thing they could be trying to achieve was to automatically distinguish between the more cerebral style historic- and socially imputed to men, and the more emotional style historic- and socially imputed to women. Whether they chose to go with the "gender detection" approach because they were incompetent and prejudiced or because they sold their souls in exchange for publicity (my personal favourite) is a mood point. Either way, the fact that they ignored in the report the fact that they probably came up with a pretty good way of automatically discerning between the two styles and presented it as a pretty crappy way of discerning the gender of the authors (which has such a myriad of clever practical applications that none of us could mention one with a straight face) proved the bovine-excrement-theory very effectively.
To this your replied was to the effect of whine-whine-whine, "but the title of the papers is Automatically Categorizing Written Texts by Author Gender, not by style. The elements they selected to analyse (personal pronouns, determiners, cardinal numbers and quantifiers) are representative of gender, not style", whine-some-more. Here, I neglected to ask you how do you reckon that. Do these markers come handily tagged in blue and baby pink?
Now this is probably where you lost track: I said the exact same thing I had in the previous three posts. That no matter what the paper is called, what the program does is very clearly to automatically categorize written texts by style, more specifically, by the styles commonly and erroneously imputed to men and women. Once again, I gave you an illustrative example of why it is erroneous. I can see how confusing it must be to have the same arguments thrown at you over and over and over, but when you consistently skip them with the same informal savoir-faire as you apparently skipped the papers themselves, what's an educated, intelligently prejudiced young woman to do?
I see you altered your 08-12-2003 11:21 PM GMT post substantially (sic-not that substantially, my dear) since I had last read it, but let me give it one more try. Raise your hand if this sounds in any way familiar. I may have mentioned it before.
Look closely at Moshe Koppel's paper. Where in it do you find anything other than the result of a program that learns how to detect marks of style? Personal pronouns, determiners, cardinal numbers, quantifiers. Style, style, style, and more style. Ones occur in works of greater emotional tension, others in works more marked by objective description of fact, be it fictional or not. The premises, the method, the results. Everything in those papers point in the same direction. Do I have access to Moshe Koppel's private correspondence? Of course not. I'm psychic, why would I need to do that. Of course I must be one, to figure out that the hell does it matter if the "gender detection" angle came about by ill-intent or incompetence? The fact remains, that the results of the study have nothing to do with gender.
The two examples you used in your more recent post are completely fallacious. For one, they're not both "highly cerebral", whatever that is. The expression "cerebral" has always been being used in this thread by all of us as synonym of objective, descriptive, detached. These texts are examples of two completely different styles of non-fiction reports. One is objective, the author is as absent from the book as possible; the other is much more involved, and refers much more to the author's sensitive experience. Two different styles. Is it a stretch to think scientific journals' editors have the gender of an author when deciding if they'll publish a report or not? Maybe you think so, but I seriously doubt it. Either way, you're forgetting these women are also readers, the majority of whom built the basis of their literary persona on the same involved, emotional, socially-sanctioned books.
After all this running around, this systematic missing of points, this inability to read either other people's posts or the documents you're supposed to be discussing, all this without being able to produce one single original thought that hasn't been vampirized, I must ask you just one question, Pure.
Do you do this on purpose? Is it a specially designed character you made a bet to keep up? Because that's sort of cool, in a way.
PS: There is absolutely no way a good detective story in the style of Robert Parker or Joe Landsdale could be classified as being written by a woman by Moshe Koppel's team's algorithm. No matter what.
Pure
Fiel a Verdad
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- 15,135
Ok Lauren, I read your posting and thanks for making the effort.
If we're not communicating as you say, there's probably no point in my answering, esp. given my inability to understand your thoughts, improper debating techniques, whining etc.
There's a single point I'd reiterate, and I said it to MM. I have no problem with the view that women write in particular ways due to upbringing and to editors' and publishers' demands. And ultimately readers' expectations. Nor with the idea of "choice" by the woman, according to situation.
Yet Koppel did not get into speculatons about reasons, just 'surface' and syntactic stuff. *From that angle* reasons don't matter. It's just as if I went to a community and find that the women often wear brown pants, and the men hardly ever do, but prefer black. I then propose the sociological hypothesis: "Women of community X are distinguished from men, in the area of dress, by their apparent preference for the color brown, in pants."
It's a sociological and group pattern. (Of course it could be false.) It's true, as you might say, that each woman in the morning 'decides' to wear those brown pants, and maybe she's thinking "that's what's expected around here; I hate brown, but I guess I better do it, -[-say, ]to get the job."
None of that matters as far as the sociological or group phenemenon goes. It may well be there, regardless of the personal details that can be imagined. Neither does it matter, as in Math Girl's arguement, that yes, any woman, one day might say, "I'm gonna wear black pants, and public opinion be damned." Im sure Blakemore, a smart woman, could re-write to sound like Simpson.
I also think it's pretty unlikely your idea that the editors expected that of Blakemore since 'she's a girl' and pushed her towards the female style. (Though of course throughout her life, teachers and editors may have been saying, "Be scholarly, yes, but be feminine, personal, and personable.)
So maybe let's leave this, and maybe others have something to say, but if not we've had a good 'go round' and thanks for the time you took.
Best,
J.
If we're not communicating as you say, there's probably no point in my answering, esp. given my inability to understand your thoughts, improper debating techniques, whining etc.
There's a single point I'd reiterate, and I said it to MM. I have no problem with the view that women write in particular ways due to upbringing and to editors' and publishers' demands. And ultimately readers' expectations. Nor with the idea of "choice" by the woman, according to situation.
Yet Koppel did not get into speculatons about reasons, just 'surface' and syntactic stuff. *From that angle* reasons don't matter. It's just as if I went to a community and find that the women often wear brown pants, and the men hardly ever do, but prefer black. I then propose the sociological hypothesis: "Women of community X are distinguished from men, in the area of dress, by their apparent preference for the color brown, in pants."
It's a sociological and group pattern. (Of course it could be false.) It's true, as you might say, that each woman in the morning 'decides' to wear those brown pants, and maybe she's thinking "that's what's expected around here; I hate brown, but I guess I better do it, -[-say, ]to get the job."
None of that matters as far as the sociological or group phenemenon goes. It may well be there, regardless of the personal details that can be imagined. Neither does it matter, as in Math Girl's arguement, that yes, any woman, one day might say, "I'm gonna wear black pants, and public opinion be damned." Im sure Blakemore, a smart woman, could re-write to sound like Simpson.
I also think it's pretty unlikely your idea that the editors expected that of Blakemore since 'she's a girl' and pushed her towards the female style. (Though of course throughout her life, teachers and editors may have been saying, "Be scholarly, yes, but be feminine, personal, and personable.)
So maybe let's leave this, and maybe others have something to say, but if not we've had a good 'go round' and thanks for the time you took.
Best,
J.
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Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
PS for Lauryn,
There is one central point of yours which I think underlies our differences, and since it's brief, I'll give it one last direct shot, though it's covered by implication in the preceding post.
You said.
Secondly, I [LH] said the allegations in the paper surmounted [amounted?], in a literary and western philosophical points of view, to a substantial load of male (although I'm sure it was just a coincidence) bovine excrement, and included a brief justification. Basically, I said, the way any person writes is determined by his/her environment, his/her education, his/her conscious choice, and not by his/her genes.
I have no problem at all with the last sentence about environment determination, though I wouldn't exclude some small genetic contribution. I don't think Koppel would either.
In any case he didn't really get into the sources of the characteristics of women's writing. It was not his topic.
You and several others seem to think Koppel was saying, that women being genetically/physiologically how they are, this is how they 'must' write (and ignoring those who don't fit.). Or that what diffs in writing we see are based in biology. I don't think that was said. If it was, I see no evidence for it being true, and part company with Koppel.
Let me give you a better analogy than my fanciful one, above.
Suppose a fellow takes films of people walking down the street.
From behind. He then says, "There is a peculiar 'gait' which identifies most of the men; same for women." He specifies it's moving the hips a certain way etc.
This proposal may or may not be true but it isn't a claim about women's phsiology, primarily at least. Nor is it a claim that women don't 'choose' in one sense, and get conditioned in another. I would completely agree with a statement like yours above, that western women's 'gait' and body carriage, like men's is mostly culturally determined.
In fact if you've read autobiographies of FTM persons, these former women did have to learn to walk like men. And they did. In other words the characteristics are not 'locked' up by one gender and its genes. Blakemore could well, as I said, write a more hardnosed article than she did, i.e., she could probably 'pass' as male if she knew and wanted to address the characteristics. Byatt apparently does so without trying.
None of this affects the Koppel claim, that for these women and men and this body of English lit, mostly published, the characteristics 'predicting' male or female authorship--on a statistical and group basis, as in Swedes tend to be taller than Sicilians-- are as follows.
J.
There is one central point of yours which I think underlies our differences, and since it's brief, I'll give it one last direct shot, though it's covered by implication in the preceding post.
You said.
Secondly, I [LH] said the allegations in the paper surmounted [amounted?], in a literary and western philosophical points of view, to a substantial load of male (although I'm sure it was just a coincidence) bovine excrement, and included a brief justification. Basically, I said, the way any person writes is determined by his/her environment, his/her education, his/her conscious choice, and not by his/her genes.
I have no problem at all with the last sentence about environment determination, though I wouldn't exclude some small genetic contribution. I don't think Koppel would either.
In any case he didn't really get into the sources of the characteristics of women's writing. It was not his topic.
You and several others seem to think Koppel was saying, that women being genetically/physiologically how they are, this is how they 'must' write (and ignoring those who don't fit.). Or that what diffs in writing we see are based in biology. I don't think that was said. If it was, I see no evidence for it being true, and part company with Koppel.
Let me give you a better analogy than my fanciful one, above.
Suppose a fellow takes films of people walking down the street.
From behind. He then says, "There is a peculiar 'gait' which identifies most of the men; same for women." He specifies it's moving the hips a certain way etc.
This proposal may or may not be true but it isn't a claim about women's phsiology, primarily at least. Nor is it a claim that women don't 'choose' in one sense, and get conditioned in another. I would completely agree with a statement like yours above, that western women's 'gait' and body carriage, like men's is mostly culturally determined.
In fact if you've read autobiographies of FTM persons, these former women did have to learn to walk like men. And they did. In other words the characteristics are not 'locked' up by one gender and its genes. Blakemore could well, as I said, write a more hardnosed article than she did, i.e., she could probably 'pass' as male if she knew and wanted to address the characteristics. Byatt apparently does so without trying.
None of this affects the Koppel claim, that for these women and men and this body of English lit, mostly published, the characteristics 'predicting' male or female authorship--on a statistical and group basis, as in Swedes tend to be taller than Sicilians-- are as follows.
J.
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