Few forces rival fear in their ability to mobilize societies, distort communication, and reshape collective behavior. In computational linguistics, fear is primarily studied as an emotion, but not as a distinct form of speech. Fear speech content is widespread and growing, and often outperforms hate-speech content in reach and engagement because it appears "civiler" and evades moderation. Yet the computational study of fear speech remains fragmented and under-resourced. This can be understood by recognizing that fear speech is a phenomenon shaped by contributions from multiple disciplines. In this paper, we bridge cross-disciplinary perspectives by comparing theories of fear from Psychology, Political science, Communication science, and Linguistics. Building on this, we review existing definitions. We follow up with a survey of datasets from related research areas and propose a taxonomy that consolidates different dimensions of fear for studying fear speech. By reviewing current datasets and defining core concepts, our work offers both theoretical and practical guidance for creating datasets and advancing fear speech research.

Rhymes and poems are a powerful medium for transmitting cultural norms and societal roles. However, the pervasive existence of gender stereotypes in these works perpetuates biased perceptions and limits the scope of individuals’ identities. Past works have shown that stereotyping and prejudice emerge in early childhood, and developmental research on causal mechanisms is critical for understanding and controlling stereotyping and prejudice. This work contributes by gathering a dataset of rhymes and poems to identify gender stereotypes and propose a model with 97% accuracy to identify gender bias. Gender stereotypes were rectified using a Large Language Model (LLM) and its effectiveness was evaluated in a comparative survey against human educator rectifications. To summarize, this work highlights the pervasive nature of gender stereotypes in literary works and reveal the potential of LLMs to rectify gender stereotypes. This study raises awareness and promotes inclusivity within artistic expressions, making a significant contribution to the discourse on gender equality.