@inproceedings{watson-etal-2025-language,
title = "Do language models practice what they preach? Examining language ideologies about gendered language reform encoded in {LLM}s",
author = "Watson, Julia and
Lee, Sophia S. and
Beekhuizen, Barend and
Stevenson, Suzanne",
editor = "Rambow, Owen and
Wanner, Leo and
Apidianaki, Marianna and
Al-Khalifa, Hend and
Eugenio, Barbara Di and
Schockaert, Steven",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics",
month = jan,
year = "2025",
address = "Abu Dhabi, UAE",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.80/",
pages = "1201--1223",
abstract = "We study language ideologies in text produced by LLMs through a case study on English gendered language reform (related to role nouns like congressperson/-woman/-man, and singular they). First, we find political bias: when asked to use language that is {\textquotedblleft}correct{\textquotedblright} or {\textquotedblleft}natural{\textquotedblright}, LLMs use language most similarly to when asked to align with conservative (vs. progressive) values. This shows how LLMs' metalinguistic preferences can implicitly communicate the language ideologies of a particular political group, even in seemingly non-political contexts. Second, we find LLMs exhibit internal inconsistency: LLMs use gender-neutral variants more often when more explicit metalinguistic context is provided. This shows how the language ideologies expressed in text produced by LLMs can vary, which may be unexpected to users. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for value alignment."
}
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Do language models practice what they preach? Examining language ideologies about gendered language reform encoded in LLMs
%A Watson, Julia
%A Lee, Sophia S.
%A Beekhuizen, Barend
%A Stevenson, Suzanne
%Y Rambow, Owen
%Y Wanner, Leo
%Y Apidianaki, Marianna
%Y Al-Khalifa, Hend
%Y Eugenio, Barbara Di
%Y Schockaert, Steven
%S Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
%D 2025
%8 January
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Abu Dhabi, UAE
%F watson-etal-2025-language
%X We study language ideologies in text produced by LLMs through a case study on English gendered language reform (related to role nouns like congressperson/-woman/-man, and singular they). First, we find political bias: when asked to use language that is “correct” or “natural”, LLMs use language most similarly to when asked to align with conservative (vs. progressive) values. This shows how LLMs’ metalinguistic preferences can implicitly communicate the language ideologies of a particular political group, even in seemingly non-political contexts. Second, we find LLMs exhibit internal inconsistency: LLMs use gender-neutral variants more often when more explicit metalinguistic context is provided. This shows how the language ideologies expressed in text produced by LLMs can vary, which may be unexpected to users. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for value alignment.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.80/
%P 1201-1223
Markdown (Informal)
[Do language models practice what they preach? Examining language ideologies about gendered language reform encoded in LLMs](https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.80/) (Watson et al., COLING 2025)
ACL