@inproceedings{sun-xu-2022-tracing,
title = "Tracing Semantic Variation in Slang",
author = "Sun, Zhewei and
Xu, Yang",
editor = "Goldberg, Yoav and
Kozareva, Zornitsa and
Zhang, Yue",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing",
month = dec,
year = "2022",
address = "Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2022.emnlp-main.84",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2022.emnlp-main.84",
pages = "1299--1313",
abstract = "The meaning of a slang term can vary in different communities. However, slang semantic variation is not well understood and under-explored in the natural language processing of slang. One existing view argues that slang semantic variation is driven by culture-dependent communicative needs. An alternative view focuses on slang{'}s social functions suggesting that the desire to foster semantic distinction may have led to the historical emergence of community-specific slang senses. We explore these theories using computational models and test them against historical slang dictionary entries, with a focus on characterizing regularity in the geographical variation of slang usages attested in the US and the UK over the past two centuries. We show that our models are able to predict the regional identity of emerging slang word meanings from historical slang records. We offer empirical evidence that both communicative need and semantic distinction play a role in the variation of slang meaning yet their relative importance fluctuates over the course of history. Our work offers an opportunity for incorporating historical cultural elements into the natural language processing of slang.",
}
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Tracing Semantic Variation in Slang
%A Sun, Zhewei
%A Xu, Yang
%Y Goldberg, Yoav
%Y Kozareva, Zornitsa
%Y Zhang, Yue
%S Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
%D 2022
%8 December
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
%F sun-xu-2022-tracing
%X The meaning of a slang term can vary in different communities. However, slang semantic variation is not well understood and under-explored in the natural language processing of slang. One existing view argues that slang semantic variation is driven by culture-dependent communicative needs. An alternative view focuses on slang’s social functions suggesting that the desire to foster semantic distinction may have led to the historical emergence of community-specific slang senses. We explore these theories using computational models and test them against historical slang dictionary entries, with a focus on characterizing regularity in the geographical variation of slang usages attested in the US and the UK over the past two centuries. We show that our models are able to predict the regional identity of emerging slang word meanings from historical slang records. We offer empirical evidence that both communicative need and semantic distinction play a role in the variation of slang meaning yet their relative importance fluctuates over the course of history. Our work offers an opportunity for incorporating historical cultural elements into the natural language processing of slang.
%R 10.18653/v1/2022.emnlp-main.84
%U https://aclanthology.org/2022.emnlp-main.84
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2022.emnlp-main.84
%P 1299-1313
Markdown (Informal)
[Tracing Semantic Variation in Slang](https://aclanthology.org/2022.emnlp-main.84) (Sun & Xu, EMNLP 2022)
ACL
- Zhewei Sun and Yang Xu. 2022. Tracing Semantic Variation in Slang. In Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 1299–1313, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Association for Computational Linguistics.