Inducing lexicons of in-group language with socio-temporal context

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for inducing in-group language lexicons that accounts for socio-temporal context, capturing the evolving nature of community-specific language in online communities.

Contribution

It presents a novel socio-temporal embedding approach for lexicon induction, along with a new test set and lexicon validated by human experts, demonstrating improved performance.

Findings

Outperforms prior lexicon induction methods

Develops a validated lexicon of manosphere language

Provides insights into in-group language dynamics

Abstract

In-group language is an important signifier of group dynamics. This paper proposes a novel method for inducing lexicons of in-group language, which incorporates its socio-temporal context. Existing methods for lexicon induction do not capture the evolving nature of in-group language, nor the social structure of the community. Using dynamic word and user embeddings trained on conversations from online anti-women communities, our approach outperforms prior methods for lexicon induction. We develop a test set for the task of lexicon induction and a new lexicon of manosphere language, validated by human experts, which quantifies the relevance of each term to a specific sub-community at a given point in time. Finally, we present novel insights on in-group language which illustrate the utility of this approach.