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Talking Like One of Us: Effects of Using Regional Language in a Humanoid Social Robot

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Social Robotics (ICSR 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 14454))

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Abstract

Social robots are becoming more and more perceptible in public service settings. For engaging people in a natural environment a smooth social interaction as well as acceptance by the users are important issues for future successful Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The type of verbal communication has a special significance here. In this paper we investigate the effects of spoken language varieties of a non-standard/regional language compared to standard language. More precisely we compare a human dialog with a humanoid social robot Pepper where the robot on the one hand is answering in High German and on the other hand in Low German, a regional language that is understood and partly still spoken in the northern parts of Germany. The content of what the robot says remains the same in both variants. We are interested in the effects that these two different ways of robot talk have on human interlocutors who are more or less familiar with Low German in terms of perceived warmth, competence and possible discomfort in conversation against a background of cultural identity. To measure these factors we use the Robotic Social Attributes Scale (RoSAS) on 17 participants with an age ranging from 19 to 61. Our results show that significantly higher warmth is perceived in the Low German version of the conversation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Information Systems, University of Lübeck, 23562, Lübeck, Germany

    Thomas Sievers & Nele Russwinkel

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  1. Thomas Sievers
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  2. Nele Russwinkel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Sievers .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    Abdulaziz Al Ali

  2. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    John-John Cabibihan

  3. Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    Nader Meskin

  4. University of Naples Federico II, Napoli, Italy

    Silvia Rossi

  5. Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

    Wanyue Jiang

  6. The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    Hongsheng He

  7. National University of Singapore, Queenstown, Singapore

    Shuzhi Sam Ge

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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Sievers, T., Russwinkel, N. (2024). Talking Like One of Us: Effects of Using Regional Language in a Humanoid Social Robot. In: Ali, A.A., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14454. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8718-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8718-4_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-99-8718-4

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