Deep Learning for Speech Accent Detection in Videogames

In video games, a wide range of characters make up the world players inhabit. These characters, NPCs, have traits, such as their appearance and speech accent, that determine certain things about them, including moral inclination, levels of trustworthiness, social class, levels of education, and ethnic background. But what does an accent say about a character in a video game? We use deep learning to train a neural network to detect speech accents and establish the degree to which machines can be used to recognize these accents. This research aims to help sociolinguists and discourse analysts establish critical study and content analytical findings for instance about stereotypical uses of speech accents, to better analyze who has what accent in video games, and what kind of language ideologies and social value judgments the use of accents in games construct and perpetuate. This paper presents the results of the first deep learning experiments, which were conducted on Standard North American, British Received Pronunciation, and Spanish English. We discuss our methodological considerations and some early deep learning results, which show relatively low levels of accuracy (61%). We discuss possibilities of improving our method, and of enriching our training datasets.