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Say It Differently: Linguistic Styles as Jailbreak Vectors

Authors: Srikant Panda, Avinash Rai

Published: 2025-11-13

arXiv ID: 2511.10519v1

Added to Library: 2025-11-14 23:00 UTC

Red Teaming

📄 Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) are commonly evaluated for robustness against paraphrased or semantically equivalent jailbreak prompts, yet little attention has been paid to linguistic variation as an attack surface. In this work, we systematically study how linguistic styles such as fear or curiosity can reframe harmful intent and elicit unsafe responses from aligned models. We construct style-augmented jailbreak benchmark by transforming prompts from 3 standard datasets into 11 distinct linguistic styles using handcrafted templates and LLM-based rewrites, while preserving semantic intent. Evaluating 16 open- and close-source instruction-tuned models, we find that stylistic reframing increases jailbreak success rates by up to +57 percentage points. Styles such as fearful, curious and compassionate are most effective and contextualized rewrites outperform templated variants. To mitigate this, we introduce a style neutralization preprocessing step using a secondary LLM to strip manipulative stylistic cues from user inputs, significantly reducing jailbreak success rates. Our findings reveal a systemic and scaling-resistant vulnerability overlooked in current safety pipelines.

🔍 Key Points

  • The paper systematically investigates linguistic styles as a vulnerability vector for jailbreak attacks on large language models (LLMs), proposing a novel angle of analysis beyond semantic perturbations.
  • It constructs a style-augmented jailbreak benchmark using templates and LLM-generated rewrites across multiple emotional and pragmatic styles, demonstrating how these variations increase the effectiveness of jailbreak attempts.
  • Results show significant increases in jailbreak success rates (up to +57 percentage points) with styles like fear, curiosity, and compassion proving most effective, revealing a previously overlooked dimension in model alignment safety concerns.
  • The authors introduce and test a style-neutralization preprocessing step using a secondary LLM, which significantly lowers the success rates of jailbreak attempts by stripping harmful stylistic cues from user inputs.
  • The methodology and findings highlight a gap in current safety protocols and suggest that linguistic variations should be integrated into safety evaluations and model alignment practices.

💡 Why This Paper Matters

This paper sheds light on the underappreciated impact of linguistic styles on the robustness of large language models against jailbreak attacks, emphasizing the need for renewed focus on this vulnerability in model training and evaluation. The introduction of a style-neutralization strategy offers a promising mitigation path, making the findings relevant for improving AI safety mechanisms.

🎯 Why It's Interesting for AI Security Researchers

The paper is highly relevant to AI security researchers as it uncovers a novel attack vector—linguistic styles—demonstrating that the effectiveness of adversarial prompts can be significantly influenced by emotional and contextual framing. This challenges existing paradigms that primarily address semantic variations and opens new avenues for developing robust defenses against AI exploits.

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