Who wrote the text? Computer identifies language user

What are the individual characteristics and stylistic features of a text? Was the author male or female? Young or old? Happy or depressed? Can the source be derived from the text? Everyone who writes a text leaves unconscious and unintended traces behind. Clever computer systems can use these traces to identify the language users, and they are getting better and better at it. This field is called computational linguistics. Malvina Nissim teaches this at the University of Groningen. Recently she was elected Lecturer of the Year, after a mini-lecture explaining her research.

More information

• Malvina Nissim
• Nissim Lecturer of the Year
• More on this topic: article in 'The Economist'