AI RESEARCH
Variation is the Norm: Embracing Sociolinguistics in NLP
arXiv CS.CL
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ArXi:2603.24222v1 Announce Type: new In Natural Language Processing (NLP), variation is typically seen as noise and "normalised away" before processing, even though it is an integral part of language. Conversely, studying language variation in social contexts is central to sociolinguistics. We present a framework to combine the sociolinguistic dimension of language with the technical dimension of NLP. We argue that by embracing sociolinguistics, variation can actively be included in a research setup, in turn informing the NLP side.