One Explanation Does Not Fit All The Promise of Interactive Explanations for Machine Learning Transparency

The need for transparency of predictive systems based on Machine Learning algorithms arises as a consequence of their ever-increasing proliferation in the industry. Whenever black-box algorithmic predictions influence human affairs, the inner workings of these algorithms should be scrutinised and their decisions explained to the relevant stakeholders, including the system engineers, the system's operators and the individuals whose case is being decided. While a variety of interpretability and explainability methods is available, none of them is a panacea that can satisfy all diverse expectations and competing objectives that might be required by the parties involved. We address this challenge in this paper by discussing the promises of Interactive Machine Learning for improved transparency of black-box systems using the example of contrastive explanations -- a state-of-the-art approach to Interpretable Machine Learning. Specifically, we show how to personalise counterfactual explanations by interactively adjusting their conditional statements and extract additional explanations by asking follow-up "What if?" questions. Our experience in building, deploying and presenting this type of system allowed us to list desired properties as well as potential limitations, which can be used to guide the development of interactive explainers. While customising the medium of interaction, i.e., the user interface comprising of various communication channels, may give an impression of personalisation, we argue that adjusting the explanation itself and its content is more important. To this end, properties such as breadth, scope, context, purpose and target of the explanation have to be considered, in addition to explicitly informing the explainee about its limitations and caveats...Comment: Published in the Kunstliche Intelligenz journal, special issue on Challenges in Interactive Machine Learnin

A Corpus-Based Cross-Linguistic Study

Effective communication requires texts to be organised into a coherent discourse structure. But languages vary considerably in how they do this, posing a challenge for effective intercultural communication. Instead of relying on our own preferred persuasion style to be the most effective, we need to take into consideration that people with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds do not necessarily employ the same linguistic means in similar communication situations. This is of particular importance in a business context, and a profound understanding of cross-linguistic differences in the organisation of argumentative texts is needed. In order to address this challenge, this thesis presents a study of structural characteristics in argumentative texts across three different languages. The aim of the study is to examine some of the linguistic means that writers of different languages employ when creating persuasive discourses. The study is based on 150 Danish, English and Italian speeches held by Members of the European Parliament in their native language. The linguistic means under investigation are conceptualised as belonging to three different structural domains which account for different ways of linking discourse units in a text: a syntactically organised text structure, a rhetorically organised discourse structure and an information packaging organised information structure. The structural domains are defined from a cognitive-functional perspective and juxtaposed into a single analytical framework. The analyses show that writers across the three languages generally use the same rhetorical relations to build up persuasive discourses. But the analyses also reveal that the Danish, English and Italian writers textualise relations differently. The Danish writers use almost exclusively finite verb forms in coordinate and subordinate structures. The English writers tend to avoid explicating the rhetorical relations between discourse units, and the Italian writers tend to include more units inside the same sentence than the Danish and English writers. The analyses also suggest that the cross-linguistic differences in textualisation can be correlated with certain persuasive strategies. The Danish writers tend to persuade by analogy, making use of typical features from narratives. The English writers make use of presentational persuasion style, involving themselves in a more personal way than the Danish and Italian writers. And lastly, the Italian writers make use of typical features from quasilogical persuasion style, adopting a formal register and argumentation. This thesis formulates an analytical framework for a systematic investigation of the structure of discourse across languages, pairing theories and methods from the two parallel disciplines of linguistics and rhetoric in order to gain more insights into effective intercultural communication

The construction of legitimacy in European patent law

Different elements in the patent community speak of inventions and the criteria through which property rights may be granted or withheld from them in ways that are often incongruent. In large part this is due to disagreements about the functional, if not normative legitimacy, of many patentability standards. This paper examines how the European Patent Office’s (EPO) practice Examination Guidelines designed to be a prosaic guide to legal standards, transforms contested inventive matter and methods into patent claims. In doing so these Guidelines manage and manipulate the legitimate expectations of the patent community. The analysis makes the broader conceptual point that patent law standards are shaped by a version of ‘textualisation’ that relies on linguistic and rhetorical structures to cumulatively entrench meanings, and manage the acceptance of the EPO’s legal positions by those who are governed by them. The scale of textualised outcomes in patent law is a threat to coherence but also explains the EPO’s ascendancy in the regulatory sphere

Black into white and preto no branco: can you tell one's colour by the company one keeps?

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, Florianópolis, 2009.This Thesis was carried out at the interface between Corpus-based Translation Studies (CTS) and Systemic Functional Translation Studies (SFTS). CTS informs the methodological apparatus which framed this Thesis. SFTS provides conceptual tools to look at how the Brazilian entity mestiço is construed in North American English in the textualisation Black into White, and how it is construed in Brazilian Portuguese in the re-textualisation Preto no Branco by means of the categories of the experiential component of the ideational metafunction of language, and by means of the categories of lexical cohesion. The book was written by the Brazil-specialist Thomas Skidmore, and published for the first time in 1974. In 1976, the book was published in Brazil translated by the Brazilian diplomat Raul de Sá Barbosa. The book, which proposes to describe Brazilian racial thought, narrates Brazilian political and social turnabouts from the abolition of slavery until the late thirties of the twentieth century. In this vein, the research questions which guide this Thesis are: (i) How are the mestiços construed in terms of processes in the ideational metafunction of language both in Black into White and Preto no Branco? Do ideational patterns arise in the two representations? If so, which? (ii) Is the cohesive chain of the textualisation different from that of the re-textualisation? (iii) Do textualisation and re-textualisation reaffirm the racist thought of 1870-1930? Textualisation and re-textualisation do not diverge considerably in terms of ideational constructions, though interesting patterns of new language construction have arisen in the re-textualisation. Predominant material and relational processes seem to realise the mestiço in agreement with racist thought that influenced Brazilian political posture from late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The lexical cohesive chain of the re-textualisation follows pretty much the same patterns of the textualisation.Esta dissertação foi desenvolvida no âmbito dos Estudos da Tradução baseados em Corpora (ETC) e dos Estudos da Tradução Sistêmico-Funcionais (ETSF). Os ETC moldam os parâmetros metodológicos que desenham este trabalho. Os ETSF fornecem as ferramentas de análise que investigam como a entidade brasileira mestiço é construída em Inglês Norte-Americano na textualização Black into White e como é construída em Português Brasileiro na re-textualização Preto no Branco por meio de categorias do componente experiencial da metafunção ideacional da linguagem e por meio de categorias da coesão lexical. Black into White foi escrito pelo brasilianista Thomas Skidmore publicado pela primeira vez nos EUA em 1974. Em 1976, o livro foi publicado no Brasil na tradução do diplomata aposentado Raul de Sá Barbosa. O livro, uma proposta de descrição do pensamento racial brasileiro, narra os trâmites políticos e sociais iniciais da abolição da escravatura até a década de trinta do século XX. Com base nisso, as seguintes perguntas de pesquisa orientam este estudo: (i) quais processos constroem os mestiços na textualização e na re-textualização? Que padrões ideacionais e textuais surgem?; (ii) A cadeia coesiva lexical da textualização é diferente daquela da re-textualização? (iii) A textualização e a re-textualização reafirmam o suposto pensamento racista de 1870-1930? A textualização a e re-textualização não apresentam grandes diferenças em suas construções ideacionais, embora haja interessantes padrões de novas construções de linguagem na re-textualização. A predominância de processos materiais e relacionais parece apontar para a representação do mestiço em consonância com o pensamento racista que embasou posturas políticas de fins do século XIX a meados do século XX. A cadeia coesiva lexical da re-textualização tende a seguir os mesmos padrões da textualização

A literature survey of genre-based approaches to EST reading and writing from 1960 to 2002

The aim of this dissertation is to present a critical literature review and conceptual analysis of selected genre-based research materials from 1960-2002 on the theoretical and pedagogical issues involved in teaching reading and writing to students of English for Science and Technology. Methodologically, the comparative data-analysis is aimed at identifying commonalities and differences between the various data texts in terms of their definition, orientations, and pedagogical uses. Based on the analyses, suggestions are made for the additional practical applications of the approaches within a learning-centred, communicative framework. The main conclusion is that genre analysis is a fusion of textual-contextual orientations on a structural-linguistic, social-ethnographic cline, which involves simultaneous microlinguistic and macrorhetorical, social-ethnographic processing. Owing to the scope of genre analysis, it is suggested that a considerably expanded, in-depth investigation is needed to clarify the dynamic tensions between and within the individual genre-based approaches, as well as their pedagogical applications.English StudiesMA (TESOL

A genocidal geopolitical conjuncture: con-textualising the destruction of the Unión Patriótica in Colombia (1980s-2010)

This thesis is a critique of the idea that genocide is a domestic process and that only some groups are worthy of protection against genocide. By looking at the destruction of the Unión Patriótica in the con-text of a genocidal geopolitical conjuncture, in which a polarised circulation of sympathy, antipathy, indifference and oblivion occurred, the thesis not only challenges the notion that genocides occur in locations detached from the international community, but also unveils how affect is mobilised through narratives which support and contest this fantasy. Thus, the thesis contends that geopolitical narratives can help solidify a genocidal conjuncture by allowing the amalgamation of various actors into a perpetrator bloc, but also disintegrate it by bringing about a fluid transnational network of resistance to genocide. In contrast to the two-dimensional geopolitical imagery that genocide takes place within the borders of the nation-state, it is argued, instead, that a fragmented geography, galvanised by a continuous victimisation-resistance spiral that links different actors, places, and dramas together, enables genocide to unfold. The thesis therefore proposes con-textualisation as a new method to research genocide as a geopolitical phenomenon

Comparabilité entre modalités d’évaluation TIC et papier-crayon : cas de productions écrites en français en cinquième secondaire au Québec

Au niveau méthodologique, ce travail innove en combinant plusieurs moyens d'observation complémentaires sur le processus d'écriture et sur le processus de correction. Les observations qualitatives ainsi recueillies sont retranscrites en les combinant selon l'ordre chronologique d'apparition, puis elles sont traitées et analysées sous le logiciel QDA Miner.De nos jours, la compétence à écrire ne se limite plus aux habiletés développées dans l’usage du papier-crayon traditionnel. Le traitement de texte est omniprésent et tend à devenir indispensable à l’individu dans les situations authentiques d’écriture. Évaluer la compétence à écrire uniquement sur la base de productions manuscrites suscite alors des interrogations pour des raisons d’authenticité et de validité dans la perspective de Messick (1989). Des études ont du reste révélé que les élèves habitués à l’ordinateur ont de meilleures performances en modalité informatisée (traitement de texte) qu’en modalité manuscrite (Russell et Haney, 2000). Il convient cependant de mieux connaître les deux modalités d’évaluation, l’une par rapport à l’autre. Le processus d’écriture est-il modifié chez le scripteur ? Les conditions de passation sont-elles équivalentes? Faut-il désactiver les correcticiels? Le processus de correction se déroule-t-il de la même manière chez l’enseignant ? Les deux modalités d’évaluation conduisent-elles à des résultats équivalents ? Ce sont là des questions de recherche au centre du présent travail qui a pour objectif de faire une comparaison entre modalités d’évaluation manuscrite et informatisée à l’aide de productions écrites d’élèves de cinquième année secondaire au Québec. Le cadre théorique repose sur deux concepts-clés : processus d’écriture et évaluation de l’écrit. La méthode adoptée est à la fois quantitative et qualitative. Deux tâches d’écriture déjà retenues à l’épreuve unique d’écriture en français du MELS ont été utilisées pour administrer respectivement un test en modalité informatisée et un autre en modalité manuscrite à 127 élèves provenant de deux écoles. Dans la première, il s’agit d’un programme ordinaire avec accès aux TIC. Les correcticiels y étaient désactivés. Dans la deuxième, il s’agit d’un programme favorisant particulièrement les TIC dans l’apprentissage. Dans ce groupe, les correcticiels étaient accessibles. Trois scripteurs étaient observés en modalité informatisée et deux en modalité manuscrite. Les moyens utilisés (verbalisation et caméra vidéo pour les deux modalités, capteur d’écran en plus pour la modalité informatisée) permettaient de recueillir des observations sur le processus d’écriture. En outre, pour recueillir des observations sur le processus de correction, grâce à la verbalisation et une caméra vidéo, deux enseignants étaient observés en cours de tâche en modalité de correction papier-imprimé, un autre correcteur en modalité de correction à l’écran et tous les trois en modalité papier-manuscrit. Des observations qualitatives sur les stratégies d’écriture et de correction étaient ainsi collectées puis retranscrites. Les scores attribués par les mêmes correcteurs en appliquant la grille de correction du MELS aux 254 copies (127 manuscrites, 77 imprimées et 50 à l’écran) ont été analysés. D’abord, l’analyse des observations recueillies sur le processus d’écriture révèle des stratégies déployées exclusivement en modalité informatisée et des stratégies qui y sont plus fréquentes. Ces stratégies relevant de sous-processus différents, la fréquence de leur déploiement en modalité informatisée implique des va-et-vient plus fréquents entre sous-processus distincts lorsque le scripteur utilise le traitement de texte. On peut alors déduire que le caractère récursif du processus rédactionnel est plus marqué en modalité informatisée. Ensuite, les résultats de l’analyse des données sur le processus de correction révèlent que : 1) Le correcteur identifie non seulement les erreurs, mais aussi les éléments pertinents positifs, ce qui remet en cause les cadres conceptuels antérieurs focalisés sur la détection des seules erreurs; 2) La modalité de correction n’a pas d’effet sur les stratégies d’identification d’éléments pertinents, mais les stratégies de rétroaction varient d’une modalité de correction à l’autre. Enfin, au niveau de la comparabilité des scores, l’analyse statistique suggère que : 1) La modalité de production et le programme de formation ont un effet; 2) l’activation des correcticiels a un effet positif faible alors que leur désactivation a un effet négatif important.Writing skills are no longer limited to those developed in performing paper-and-pencil tasks. Word processing is ubiquitous and becomes indispensable in writing authentic situations. In Messick (1989) perspective, writing assessment that is based on handwritten documents raises authenticity and validity problems. For instance, some studies have revealed that students who use to write with a computer perform better in word processing test conditions than on handwriting conditions (Russell and Haney, 2000). We need to better understand the impact of using a computer for a test as opposed to administering paper-and-pencil test: Is the writing process modified? Are the testing conditions equivalent? Should spell and grammar check software be disabled? Is the assessment process different when the reader has to rate in different modes of presentation - handwritten essays or word processed essays that are either printed or displayed on the screen? Do both assessment methods lead to equivalent results? The purpose of this study is to compare Grade 11 Quebec students’ writing assessments based on essays written with a computer versus handwritten essays. The conceptual framework is built on the concepts of Writing process and Writing assessment. The approach is both quantitative and qualitative. Two writing tasks previously used in the Grade 11MELS French writing exam were used to administer a test with a computer and a paper-and-pencil test. The sample consisted of 127 students from two schools. In the first school, students are enrolled in a regular program with access to ICTs and the spell and grammar check software was disabled. In the second school, ICT use is fully integrated in teaching and learning. In this group, the spell and grammar check software was available. Three writers were observed in the computer mode and two in the handwritten mode. Observations on the writing process were collected in three ways - verbalization and video camera for both modes, screen capture added in computerized mode. In addition, to collect data on the assessment process, the three teachers were observed during the rating task by two means (think-aloud and video camera) in different modes of presentation: two assessed a set of paper essays, one a set of paper that were displayed on the screen and three a set of manuscript essays. Qualitative observations on the writing process and the assessment process were collected and transcribed. Quantitative data consisted of scores given by the three raters using the MELS correction grid. 254 essays (127 handwritten, 77 word-processed and printed, 50 word-processed and displayed on the screen), were analyzed. First, the analysis of the qualitative data on the writing process revealed that some strategies from different writing sub-processes involved in word processing are used exclusively or more frequently when the writer uses a computer. Their application means moving more frequently between different sub-processes when the writer uses the word processor. Therefore, the writing process is more recursive with word processing. Then, the analysis of the quantitative data on assessment process revealed that : 1) the teacher not only identifies errors and problems in text; he also identifies positive features in the essay. This is important because previous frameworks focused on the errors detection; 2) The difference in the mode of presentation does not influence rater’s strategies in the detection of relevant features. Finally, as far as the comparability of scores is concerned, the statistical analysis revealed that: 1) Both the way an essay is produced (word processing or handwriting) and the type of program influence the outcome; 2) Enabling the spell and grammar check software seems to has a small impact whereas disabling it has an important impact

Suora siteeraus journalismissa - Haastattelupuheen rekontekstualisointi kirjallisiksi sitaateiksi

This research focused on the process of quoting in written journalism by asking 1) how journalistic interviews are recontextualised into quotations, and 2) what factors influence the outcome of this process. Mainly three types of data were exploited: recordings of authentic interviews conducted by journalists, published articles based on these interviews, and retrospective interviews with the journalists involved. The journalistic interview and the published article and its quotations were compared using the method of version analysis. Stimulated recall was then used to reconstruct the decision-making of the informant-journalists during their quoting. Finally, the findings were further analysed from the point of view of media concepts, in order to reveal the interdependencies of the everyday process of quoting and the fundamental aspects of production, such as publishers’ purposes, the needs and interests of the audience, and the current journalistic culture. The main findings were that modifications within quoting range from minor revisions to substantial alterations, both in terms of their linguistic form and situational meaning. On a larger scale, the interactive turn exchange between the journalist and the interviewee(s) is often simplified in several respects in the published article. A common means for doing so is obscuring the original involvement of the journalist. This phenomenon was labelled monologisation. Furthermore, the original journalistic interviews that are conducted specifically to gather raw material for written media items comprise much more than a plain series of questions and answers. Instead, the interaction in these interviews is often equal in terms of turn exchange and participatory roles. The research identified nine practices that characterise the linking of interviews and quotations as intertextual chains. The primary factor governing the quoting was revealed to be the objective(s) of the emerging article rather than the demand for “directness”. Furthermore, quoting was shown to be influenced by established institutional settings, which can also contradict each other. For these reasons, quoting turned out to be an internal negotiation process between aspects which originate from various fundamental conditions of media publishing and journalistic work. The findings imply that future research and the training of journalists should treat quoting in a more holistic way. On the other hand, this research also equips readers with tools to improve their critical media literacy. Furthermore, the results bear relevance to literacy education in schools, where newspapers are commonly exploited as complementary teaching materials. Keywords: Applied linguistics, media linguistics, print media; version analysis, stimulated recall, media concept; quoting, quotations, direct speech, journalistic interviews; recontextualisation, intertextual chain, monologisation.Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin toimittajien siteerauskäytänteitä kahdesta näkökulmasta: 1) Miten toimittajat rekontekstualisoivat toimituksellisessa haastattelussa esitettyä puhetta sitaateiksi lehtijuttuihin? 2) Mitkä tekijät ohjaavat tätä prosessia ja vaikuttavat siihen? Aineistona tutkimuksessa käytettiin toimittajien tekemien toimituksellisten haastatteluiden äänitallenteita sekä näiden haastatteluiden pohjalta kirjoitettuja lehtijuttuja. Tätä aineistoparia tutkittiin versioanalyysillä. Kolmannen aineistokokonaisuuden muodostivat retrospektiiviset haastattelut, joissa rekonstruoitiin informantti-toimittajien siteerausprosessin kulkua stimuloidulla mieleenpalauttamisella. Lisäksi mediakonseptin käsitteen avulla kuvattiin lähemmin sitä, miten journalistinen siteeraus heijastelee lehdenteon perustavanlaatuisia ehtoja kuten julkaisijan tavoitteita, yleisön tarpeita ja kiinnostuksen kohteita sekä vallitsevaa journalistista kulttuuria. Tutkimuksen mukaan se, missä määrin alkuperäisen puheen kieliasua ja myös tilanteista merkitystä muokataan ja muutetaan siteerattaessa, vaihtelee paitsi eri juttujen välillä, myös saman jutun sitaattien kesken ja yksittäisen sitaatin sisällä. Haastattelun ja lehtijutun tarkastelu laajempana kokonaisuutena puolestaan osoitti, että vaikka haastattelu rakentuu toimittajan ja haastateltavan yhteistyönä, lehtisitaateissa tämä vuorovaikutus pelkistyy. Monologisoinniksi nimeämäni pelkistysprosessi tapahtuu usein niin, että toimittajan rooli ja osuus häivytetään jutusta pois. Tutkimissani toimituksellisissa haastatteluissa, joilla tuotetaan raakamateriaalia nimenomaan lehtijuttuja varten (vrt. televisiouutishaastattelut), osallistujaroolit vaihtelevat ja ovat varsin tasavertaiset: yksioikoisen, toimittajan ohjaaman kysymys-vastaus-rakenteen sijaan keskustelu etenee molemminpuolisen aloitteellisuuden ja osallistumisen kautta. Tutkimuksessa käsitteellistettiin yhdeksän siteerauskäytäntöä, jotka selittävät haastattelun ja sitaattien muodostamaa intertekstuaalista ketjua. Tutkimus osoitti, että ”suoruuden” sijaan nämä siteerauskäytännöt pyrkivät ensisijaisesti palvelemaan tekeillä olevan jutun tavoitteita. Nämä tavoitteet voivat puolestaan olla keskenään ristiriitaisia, ja siksi journalistinen siteeraus onkin eräänlaista sisäistä neuvottelua, jota toimittajat joutuvat käymään erilaisten, julkaisutoiminnan ja toimitustyön lähtökohdista ja ihanteista juontuvien päämäärien välillä. Työni lopputulemana ehdotan, että siteerausta tulisi tarkastella niin tutkimuksessa kuin toimittajakoulutuksessakin kokonaisvaltaisena, lukuisista valinnoista koostuvana prosessina, jossa sitaatin tekstiasun muokkaus on vain yksi osaprosessi. Tutkimuksen tuloksia voi soveltaa medialukutaitojen kehittämisessä, esimerkiksi koulumaailmassa, jossa sanomalehtiä käytetään usein oppimateriaalina. Avainsanat: Soveltava kielentutkimus, medialingvistiikka, printtimedia; versioanalyysi, stimuloitu mieleenpalauttaminen, mediakonsepti; siteeraus, sitaatit, suora lainaus, suora esitys, toimituksellinen haastattelu; rekontekstualisointi, intertekstuaalinen ketju, monologisointi