Disentangling Dialect from Social Bias via Multitask Learning to Improve Fairness

Dialects introduce syntactic and lexical variations in language that occur in regional or social groups. Most NLP methods are not sensitive to such variations. This may lead to unfair behavior of the methods, conveying negative bias towards dialect speakers. While previous work has studied dialect-related fairness for aspects like hate speech, other aspects of biased language, such as lewdness, remain fully unexplored. To fill this gap, we investigate performance disparities between dialects in the detection of five aspects of biased language and how to mitigate them. To alleviate bias, we present a multitask learning approach that models dialect language as an auxiliary task to incorporate syntactic and lexical variations. In our experiments with African-American English dialect, we provide empirical evidence that complementing common learning approaches with dialect modeling improves their fairness. Furthermore, the results suggest that multitask learning achieves state-of-the-art performance and helps to detect properties of biased language more reliably. # Offens. Intent Lewdn. Target Ingroup Post content 1 Yes Yes No No No You all make fucking terrible "music" 2 No No No No No "This guy tko's people. when I knock people out they don't fucking move."eddie alvarez 3 No No No No No She text me "i hate you, i hate you, i hate you, i hate you" but how the fuck can you hate me? 4 No No No No No A man already accused of killing two women and suspected in the deaths of as many as 30 more was charged with raping and murdering five other victims. 5 Yes Yes No No No Always remember, it was normies that enacted the holocaust, acted in the slave trade, and committed every atrocity in history normies are evil 6 No No No No No Amnesty for 3.6m colonizers would/will be the completion of the demographic coup 7 Yes Yes No No No Are orphans allowed in a family restaurant. I think you get it. 8 No No No No No Asking north korea not to make nuclear weapons is a bit like asking an audi driver not to drive too close to the car in front 9 No No No No No Bpd is a genetic condition caused by having two x chromosomes. When a man is diagnosed with bpd it's just a professional way of saying he's acting like a cunt. 10 No No No No No Draymond kill me with all that shit he be talking to the refs. Please be quiet boy before you get us all in trouble. 11 Yes Yes No Yes No Everytime I clean the room my mom tells me "what bitch is coming over this time" lmao what a dick !! 12 No No No No No gooooooooooaaallll goooooooooooaaalll gooooooooooooaallll pepe pepe pepe!!!! renew his fucking contract!!! 13 No No No No No I do not blame you, ottawa, like all of our cities, is a multicultural hell 14 Yes No No No No It's always the people who tell you not to be so obsessed about women and sex who are the ones who can get them anytime they want 15 No No No No No Natiis ka nya. It means he doesn't fucking care anymore 16 No No No No No On god I ain't never wanna plex with lil bro them at all. I ain't scared to squabble nobody I just refuse to fight a nigga i had love 4 17 No No No No No Bad bitches don't take days off 18 No No No No No I ain gone lie. Chuckie fucked w| my head a lil bit 19 Yes Yes No No No Sis don't assume I'm talking about yo nigga and get in yo feelings.. Yo nigga not the only one on my line 20 Yes No No No No Some of y'all lives don't even be bad.. Y'all jus either ungrateful or just don't know how to put things in perspective 21 No No No No No Vince once again fucked over undertaker over a blind push. 'taker is over now, and so is me as a fan. #vincescrewedtaker 22 Yes Yes