Individuals, Institutions, and Innovation in the Debates of the French Revolution

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(CC Editorial 4.0 access the License by NonCommercial-NoDerivatives invited open editor guest This a is D.S.B. Submission. Direct PNAS Board. a is article This interest. of conflict no declare wrote authors S.D. The and R.L.S., J.H., A.T.J.B., and data; paper. analyzed reagents/analytic the S.D. new and contributed R.L.S., S.D. J.H., A.T.J.B., and and tools; R.L.S., R.L.S., J.H., J.H., A.T.J.B., A.T.J.B., research; research; performed designed S.D. 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PSYCHOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES (much as evolutionary biology analyzes both mechanisms of one agent’s language patterns are used and copied by another transmission/selection and the particular phenotypes for which (9, 10). To study the flow of rhetorical influence and attention an environment selects). in the NCA over time, we characterize how patterns of lan- We find, at high significance, a bias in favor of the propaga- guage use, uncovered by topic modeling, are propagated from tion of novel patterns. In the framework of cultural evolution, speech to speech. We do so using Kullback–Leibler Divergence the flow of ideas through NCA is out of equilibrium: the system (KLD) (11): KLD, or “surprise,” measures the extent to which reveals itself as having preferentially selected for what violated the expectations of an optimal learner, trained on one pattern, prior expectations. This effect was driven in part by charismatic are violated by later patterns. Other work has demonstrated that political radicals such as Robespierre and Pétion de Villeneuve, surprise (in the Kullback–Leibler sense) is a cognitive as well as who not only introduced new patterns more often than their an information-theoretic quantity. It predicts what a subject will peers but did so in a way such that others followed. By contrast, look at in a dynamically evolving visual scene (12) and can be influential conservative figures such as Abbé Maury and Cazalès used to map an individual’s higher level activities (detecting, for acted as inertial dampeners: their speeches maintained past pat- example, biographically significant transitions in a subject’s intel- terns and carried them forward, despite the Assembly’s overall lectual life) (3). Methodologically, this paper extends that work bias toward innovation. Conservatives of the French Revolution by considering surprise in relation to both past and future. “conserved”: not only did they refer to past traditions, but they We use surprise to analyze a corpus of speeches by many did so with familiar discursive strategies and inherited word-use different individuals. Surprise here measures both the devia- patterns. tion of one speech from the patterns of prior ones (novelty) In parallel with these individual-level differences, our methods and from patterns that appear in the future (transience). High reveal a major transition in how the parliament as a whole pro- surprise compared with the past indicates the topic mixture is cessed novelty. Roughly halfway through the NCA’s existence, new compared with previous speeches, hence the term “nov- committees—which met outside the parliament but reported elty”; high surprise compared with the future indicates that later to it—gained new power to raise and resolve questions. Ora- speeches do not retain that pattern very strongly, hence the term tors on the left and right continued to confront each other in “transience”. We provide a detailed introduction to these public speeches from the floor, but those on the left also cap- methods in SI Appendix. tured this new institutional mechanism and used it to their own Novelty and transience track a number of different effects. In advantage. The consolidation of this structural shift was accom- addition to capturing intuitive notions of influence—a speaker panied by radicalization of the left and an accelerating flight of with high novelty and low transience may have successfully conservatives from both the parliament and the country itself. shifted the terms of a discussion—they also track strategic effects (speakers who angle to speak early in a debate may have higher Results novelty) and external common causes (the first speech after Social systems are characterized by heteroglossia: the coexis- a major event outside the chamber will have higher novelty). tence, sharing, and competition of different patterns of speech. We test for a number of these latter effects (see SI Appendix), Heteroglossia makes linguistics and rhetoric (the reception, through day-level fixed effects and debate-level position analy- influence, and propagation of language within a community) (4, sis, to which our results below are robust. Our methods track the 5) core components in the quantitative study of culture. Track- replications of patterns of speech and subject matter, rather than ing changes in speech patterns within a social body allows us (for example) agreement: A speaker may introduce a new sub- to examine cultural evolution: the circulation, selection, and ject (high novelty) that is discussed by others (low transience), differential propagation of speech patterns in the group as a only to have his position contradicted or rejected. whole (rather than, say, tracking the ideas of a single individual). Patterns of heteroglossia demonstrate existing power Innovation Bias. Speeches in the NCA span a wide range in both relations, create new ones, and are a key method for the defi- novelty and transience; Fig. 1 summarizes the system at the level nition of both institutions and genres (6–8). Our methods here of individual speeches, in this case at the relatively rapid time quantify a key aspect of cultural evolution: the extent to which scale (window width, w) of seven speeches. While the majority

selected speech, time j

time speeches......

j-w j-d j-1 j j+1 j+d j+w

Novelty Transience

Fig. 1. Novelty, transience, and resonance in the French Revolution. (Left) A density plot of transience vs. novelty per speech at scale w = 7. Resonant speeches, with low transience compared with their novelty, fall below the identity (x = y) line. Resonant speeches at any time j are more surprising compared with preceding speeches (time j − d, 1 ≤ d ≤ w) than successors (time j + d). This temporal asymmetry can be seen in the center plot of surprise for speech delay d surrounding highly resonant speeches from the selection at Left.(Right) Resonance vs. novelty, with regression line. Although novelty is tied to transience, it is also necessary to achieve resonance.

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PSYCHOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES Table 1. Mean novelty and resonance by speaker at scale 36, for The Emergence and Evolution of the Committee. Committees role and type (in bold) and the top 40 orators were a key NCA innovation, allowing the system to manage vast amounts of information without overwhelming legislative Name z(N ) z(R) ∆z(R) Type debate. Committees in the NCA did not appear overnight. Our High novelty, high resonance previous section establishes their unusual functional role, but the Jer´ omeˆ Petion´ de Villeneuve 0.10 0.28∗∗∗ +0.25∗∗∗ 3g AP’s comprehensive coverage allows study of their role’s emer- Maximilien Robespierre 0.11 0.18∗∗ +0.14∗ 3g gence as well. In this section, we show how returns to novelty, Γ, Jean-Denis Lanjuinais 0.06 0.16∗∗∗ +0.15∗∗ 3g were modulated by committee roles over time. We fit, separately, Alexandre Lameth 0.17∗ 0.14 +0.09 2g two terms that quantify the additional boost (or decrement) to Charles Antoine Chasset 0.31∗∗∗ 0.13 +0.04 3g the novelty–resonance relationship when speeches either intro- ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ Committee (new item) 1.31 0.12 −0.27 — duce new committee items (Γn ) or advocate on behalf of a ∗∗∗ Philippe-Antoine Merlin 0.27 0.05 −0.03 3g committee during debate (Γd ). A speech of novelty N , for exam- ∗∗∗ ∗ Pierre-François Gossin 0.65 0.03 −0.17 3g ple, achieves on average a resonance R equal to (Γ + Γn )(N − ∗∗∗ Jacques François Menou 0.40 0.02 −0.10 2g N0) when made by a committee member introducing a new ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ Committee (in debate) 0.29 0.02 −0.07 — item, compared with Γ(N − N0) when the speaker acts on his Left wing 0.07∗∗∗ 0.02∗ 0.00 (g) own behalf. 3rd estate 0.06∗∗∗ 0.01 −0.02∗ — We look for discrete shifts in committee function, doing High novelty, low resonance change-point detection with a maximum-likelihood model of the ∗∗ Jacques Guillaume Thouret 0.16 0.00 −0.05 3g novelty–resonance relationship where Γ, Γn , and Γd are allowed Jacques-Joseph Defermon 0.35∗∗∗ −0.03 −0.13∗ 3- to vary in time. Following ref. 3, we consider a two-epoch model, François Denis Tronchet 0.24∗∗∗ −0.04 −0.11∗ 3g where all three quantities are fixed to constant values in each Armand-Gaston Camus 0.29∗∗∗ −0.04 −0.13∗∗∗ 3g epoch, with a single discrete change at a particular time point President 0.02 −0.07∗∗∗ −0.08∗∗∗ — whose position is a free parameter. The two-epoch model is pre- Theodore´ Vernier 0.55∗∗∗ −0.14 −0.31∗∗∗ 3g ferred to a single-epoch model, as well as to a linear (secular Low novelty, high resonance shift) model under AIC. Our maximum likelihood change-point Guillaume Goupil-Prefelne´ −0.21∗∗∗ 0.13 +0.20∗∗∗ 3g in the nature of committee functions occurs in late 1790; the Jean-François Reubell −0.18∗∗∗ 0.11 +0.16∗∗ 3g modal best fit date across all scales is October 31, 1790. Allowing Jacques Antoine de Cazales` −0.44∗∗∗ 0.08 +0.21∗∗∗ 2d the intercepts of the new-item and in-debate speeches, as well Pierre Victor Malouet −0.27∗∗∗ 0.08 +0.16∗∗∗ 3d as their slopes, to vary produces nearly identical results. A sep- Jean-Siffrein Maury −0.46∗∗∗ 0.07 +0.20∗∗∗ 1d arate frequentist analysis rejects a randomly ordered null model Pierre-Louis Prieur −0.27∗∗∗ 0.05 +0.13∗∗ 3g at p < 10−2 (see SI Appendix). 1st and 2nd estates −0.10∗∗∗ 0.03∗∗∗ +0.05∗∗∗ — Jean-François Gaultier de −0.13∗ 0.03 +0.06 3g Biauzat Right wing −0.32∗∗∗ 0.03∗ +0.10∗∗∗ (d) Low novelty, low resonance Antoine de Folleville −0.44∗∗∗ −0.01 +0.12 2d Michel Le Peletier de −0.20∗∗∗ −0.01 +0.05 2g Saint-Fargeau François-Dominique de −0.61∗∗∗ −0.02 +0.17∗ 2d Montlosier Louis Foucauld de Lardimalie −0.53∗∗∗ −0.05 +0.11 2d Charles Lameth −0.15∗ −0.06 −0.02 2g Pierre François Bouche −0.09∗ −0.10 −0.07 3g Antoine Barnave −0.04 −0.12∗∗ −0.11 3g

Bolded categories include all speeches by speakers who match either the type (estate or political affiliation; based on ref. 14), or role (committee or president; defined in text). z(N ): novelty compared with system average; z(R): resonance compared with system average; ∆z(R): resonance relative to predicted resonance given novelty. “Type” codes for estate (3: bourgeoisie; 2: nobility; 1: clergy) and political affiliation (g: gauche, left-; d: droit, right-wing). p values corrected for multiple comparisons using Holm–Bonferroni (15).

novelty but low resonance: they presented information that either failed to make an impact or (more likely) settled questions so conclusively that the room moved on to completely different discussions. Finally, prominent political conservatives such as Jean-Siffrein Maury and Jacques de Cazalès appear in the low- novelty, high-resonance quadrant. They break the system-level novelty bias and are notable not only for keeping the conversa- Fig. 2. Information-processing functions of NCA committees before (first tion on track (low novelty) but for speaking in ways that persist column) and after (second column) the late-1790 change-point. (Top) The shift in the novelty–resonance relationship for new-item and in-debate com- ` forward (high resonance). In this, Maury and Cazales are charac- mittee speech, with 99% confidence intervals. (Bottom) Scatter plots and fit teristic of the right-wing overall: while the novelty-biased left was lines at scale 27 for these speech types, compared with all other speeches. composed of both high- and low-resonance speakers, right-wing The “undebated tail” appears in the second epoch as a new cloud of green speech patterns persist, with positive z(R) and ∆z(R) despite points along the dotted line, generated by committees with new powers to their anomalously low novelty. propose and dispose.

4610 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1717729115 Barron et al. 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IAppendix SI | o 18 no. o details for | 4611

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES w word patterns (“topics”); any particular speech is a weighted combination 1 X (j) (j−d) Nw (j) = KLD s |s , [2] w of these topics. Many map remarkably well to the semantics of the speeches d=1 themselves. In addition to identifying subject matter content (topics in the ordinary sense, such as discussion of the church, finance, or corruption), they Any speech can break abruptly from its past, but the new patterns it intro- are also sensitive to rhetorical moves (e.g., logical arguments vs. appeals duces may not persist. Consider an interjection that other speakers ignore to patriotism). The SI Appendix presents interpretations of the LDA topics to return to the matter at hand. It would be surprising given the past but and a close reading of speeches from a particular debate. LDA allows for a equally surprising in comparison with the future. In contrast, a rhetorically variable number of topics, corresponding to an effective resolution; we use effective interjection would move the conversation in a new direction (that K = 100 topics. of its own rhetoric). This shift would appear as a surprise asymmetry around Having decomposed speeches into topics, we can then track the ways the interjection. We define this asymmetry as resonance, R: in which these topic combinations deviate from those in previous speeches w (novelty) and are discarded (or not) by speeches that follow (transience). 1 X h (j) (j−d) (j) (j+d)i Rw (j) = KLD s |s − KLD s |s w Novelty, Transience, Resonance. Novelty at the smallest time scales (a d=1 speech compared with the one just previous) is measured by the KLD of ≡ Nw (j) − Tw (j). [3] the jth speech, s(j), relative to the previous speech, s(j−1). Averaging this measure further backward in the debate allows us to see Resonance is novelty minus transience, T , where the latter is novelty in longer trends beyond the back-and-forth of a single exchange, Eq. 2 under time reversal. Novel speeches, which also influence future dis-

K (j) ! course, are pivot points in conversation. Novelty’s effectiveness, Γ, is the rate dE[R|N ] (j) (j−1) X (j) si KLD s |s = s log . [1] at which resonance increases with novelty, dN , approximated with a i 2 (j−1) i=1 si linear model.

to show the extent to which the current speaker has introduced new pat- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. J.H. acknowledges Research Experience for Under- terns to the debate given, say, the last 10 speeches. We refer to this quantity graduates National Science Foundation Grant ACI-1358567 at the Santa Fe as novelty N at time j on scale w, Institute.

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