1. Tracing Antisemitic Language Through Diachronic Embedding Projections: France 1789-1914
- Author
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Tripodi, Rocco, Warglien, Massimo, Sullam, Simon Levis, and Paci, Deborah
- Subjects
Computer Science - Computation and Language ,Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence ,Computer Science - Digital Libraries - Abstract
We investigate some aspects of the history of antisemitism in France, one of the cradles of modern antisemitism, using diachronic word embeddings. We constructed a large corpus of French books and periodicals issues that contain a keyword related to Jews and performed a diachronic word embedding over the 1789-1914 period. We studied the changes over time in the semantic spaces of 4 target words and performed embedding projections over 6 streams of antisemitic discourse. This allowed us to track the evolution of antisemitic bias in the religious, economic, socio-politic, racial, ethic and conspiratorial domains. Projections show a trend of growing antisemitism, especially in the years starting in the mid-80s and culminating in the Dreyfus affair. Our analysis also allows us to highlight the peculiar adverse bias towards Judaism in the broader context of other religions., Comment: Accepted to the 1st International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change 2019 (ACL 2019). 11 pages, 7 figures
- Published
- 2019