# RSA-Control: A Pragmatics-Grounded Lightweight Controllable Text Generation Framework

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.19109 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19109/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 58 of its 85 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 58)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09675/) (2019)
- [Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01652/) (2021)
- [Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08593/) (2019)
- [Qwen2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10671/) (2024)
- [Don't Stop Pretraining: Adapt Language Models to Domains and Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10964/) (2020)
- [RealToxicityPrompts: Evaluating Neural Toxic Degeneration in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11462/) (2020)
- [Teaching Machines to Read and Comprehend](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03340/) (2015)
- [Language (Technology) is Power: A Critical Survey of "Bias" in NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14050/) (2020)
- [Exploiting Cloze Questions for Few Shot Text Classification and Natural Language Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07676/) (2020)
- [Plug and Play Language Models: A Simple Approach to Controlled Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02164/) (2019)
- [CTRL: A Conditional Transformer Language Model for Controllable Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.05858/) (2019)
- [CrowS-Pairs: A Challenge Dataset for Measuring Social Biases in Masked Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00133/) (2020)
- [DExperts: Decoding-Time Controlled Text Generation with Experts and Anti-Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03023/) (2021)
- [SummaC: Re-Visiting NLI-based Models for Inconsistency Detection in Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09525/) (2021)
- [GeDi: Generative Discriminator Guided Sequence Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06367/) (2020)
- [FUDGE: Controlled Text Generation With Future Discriminators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05218/) (2021)
- [Self-Diagnosis and Self-Debiasing: A Proposal for Reducing Corpus-Based Bias in NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00453/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models in Theory of Mind Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.02083/) (2023)
- [Societal Biases in Language Generation: Progress and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04054/) (2021)
- [COLD Decoding: Energy-based Constrained Text Generation with Langevin Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11705/) (2022)
- [Controlling Linguistic Style Aspects in Neural Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02633/) (2017)
- [Detoxifying Language Models Risks Marginalizing Minority Voices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06390/) (2021)
- [Prompt Compression and Contrastive Conditioning for Controllability and Toxicity Reduction in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03162/) (2022)
- [Language Generation Models Can Cause Harm: So What Can We Do About It? An Actionable Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07700/) (2022)
- [Reasoning About Pragmatics with Neural Listeners and Speakers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.00562/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Value of Information: A Framework for Human-Agent Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06407/) (2026)
- [B-cos LM: Efficiently Transforming Pre-trained Language Models for Improved Explainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12992/) (2025)
- [Steering Language Models Before They Speak: Logit-Level Interventions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10960/) (2026)
- [C3TG: Conflict-aware, Composite, and Collaborative Controlled Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.09292/) (2025)
- [Collaborative Rational Speech Act: Pragmatic Reasoning for Multi-Turn Dialog](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14063/) (2025)
- [LaPA2: Length-Aware Prefix and Prompt Attention Augmentation for Long-Form Controllable Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04047/) (2025)
- [Bye Bye Perspective API: Lessons for Building and Governing Measurement Infrastructure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25580/) (2026)
- [PG-CE: A Progressive Generation Dataset with Constraint Enhancement for Controllable Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17669/) (2025)
- [Bridging Fairness and Explainability: Can Input-Based Explanations Promote Fairness in Hate Speech Detection?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22291/) (2025)
- [Controllable Narrative Rendering for Enhanced Assisted Writing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.00009/) (2026)
- [Sentence Specificity Scores for Collaborative Technical Documentation: A Domain-Transfer Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01046/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite significant advancements in natural language generation, controlling language models to produce texts with desired attributes remains a formidable challenge. In this work, we introduce RSA-Control, a training-free controllable text generation framework grounded in pragmatics. RSA-Control directs the generation process by recursively reasoning between imaginary speakers and listeners, enhancing the likelihood that target attributes are correctly interpreted by listeners amidst distractors. Additionally, we introduce a self-adjustable rationality parameter, which allows for automatic adjustment of control strength based on context. Our experiments, conducted with two task types and two types of language models, demonstrate that RSA-Control achieves strong attribute control while maintaining language fluency and content consistency. Our code is available at https://github.com/Ewanwong/RSA-Control.