Classist Tools: Social Class Correlates with Performance in NLP

arXiv:2403.04445v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Since the foundational work of William Labov on the social stratification of language (Labov, 1964), linguistics has made concentrated efforts to explore the links between sociodemographic characteristics and language production and perception. But while there is strong evidence for socio-demographic characteristics in language, they are infrequently used in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Age and gender are somewhat well represented, but Labov's original target, socioeconomic status, is noticeably absent. And yet it matters. We show empirically …

abstract arxiv class cs.cl evidence explore language linguistics nlp perception performance production social tools type work