What's in a Conversation? | Megan Prakash and Kii Kang

What's in a Conversation? | Megan Prakash and Kii Kang

Animation of audio waveform

w h a t ' s i n a c o n v e r s a t i o n ?

By Megan Prakash, with contributions from Kii Kang (Nov 2022)
We recommend viewing this on desktop or tablet.

When you think about the data contained in a conversation, what comes to mind?

Maybe you think of the words being said:

Man speaking with captions overlaid

A video with captions.

Or, you might think of recording the conversation’s sound:

Audio waveform of speech recording

Waveform from a recording of someone speaking.

Of course, there's more to a conversation than just the plain words and sounds. As humans, we speak with each other to exchange deep sentiments and sense each others’ emotions. We can understand each others’ perspectives by comparing how we experience specific concepts—perhaps you might speak with a friend about a restaurant you both like or about the differences in your siblings’ behavior. These words convey our sentiments, i.e. our opinions and feelings, about the shared topic.

When we listen to each other speak, we also hear what’s known as "prosody": hesitancy, emphasis, and particular tones of voice, which convey nuances in our emotions and opinions. Prosody can even affect the perceived sentiment, such when something is spoken sarcastically. Revisiting the words and sounds of a conversation, we might say that the words contain the speakers’ sentiments, and the sounds contain prosody .

In this project, we explore methods for representing this information visually.

Screenshot of video thumbnail on YouTube

The YouTube video "Do You Feel American?: Immigrant Parents vs 1st Generation", by Jubilee, is our dataset for this project. In this video, three parents who are immigrants to the United States have a conversation with three US-born children of immigrants. They react to several prompts, such as "I feel out of touch with my roots," and find common understanding between their different life experiences.

The visualization on the next page shows snippets from the conversation between the immigrant parents (Fanny, Romi, and Soraia) and the children of immigrants (Christine, Kendra, and Marco).

Use the buttons at the top to filter the snippets and see how they spoke about common concepts throughout the conversation. Click on any snippet to watch the prosody of how it was spoken.

Be sure to turn your sound on 🔈

Click to continue

Filter the conversation to focus on...

Said by Child of Immigrants

Said by Immigrant Parent

"They worked so hard, and then they brought us to this country, and I'm very very grateful."

"My kids have tea with my dad every evening at 5 o'clock."

"Every city I go to, I make it a point to find the one Venezuelan restaurant."

"With my kids, it's been so difficult to teach them Spanish."

"It is not so much me accepting America and becoming an American. It's more about America accepting me and making me a part of this country."

"I feel like I'm more American now than I am Brazilian or than I am Arabic."

"We get judged a lot, also, by our names."

"The values, the culture, what it takes to be a good human being, I think that baseline remains the same."

"They didn't have the opportunity to go to school, and that's why they came here."

"My father fought in a war when he was eleven. When I was eleven, I was watching Nickelodeon."

"I feel like I was able to be more expressive here."

"When I think "cultural roots", I think family values that my parents instilled in me."

"I feel like I wouldn't be the person I am today if I wasn't able to meet the people I met."

"My parents wanted me to assimilate into the US as much as possible."

"Sometimes, I feel like I'm losing my Chinese."

"A lot of the cultural norms of Nigeria and Cameroon, I don't agree with."

"I didn't grow up in a family that spoke the same language at all."

"I was raised to fear my parents."

Click any quote to see how it was spoken.