@inproceedings{lutgen-etal-2026-variation,
title = "Variation Is the Norm: Embracing Sociolinguistics in {NLP}",
author = "Lutgen, Anne-Marie and
Plum, Alistair and
Blaschke, Verena and
Plank, Barbara and
Purschke, Christoph",
editor = "Piperidis, Stelios and
Bel, N{\'u}ria and
van den Heuvel, Henk and
Ide, Nancy and
Krek, Simon and
Toral, Antonio",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference",
month = may,
year = "2026",
address = "Palma de Mallorca, Spain",
publisher = "ELRA Language Resource Association",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.lrec-1.886/",
doi = "10.63317/3v3vhacxgfex",
pages = "11332--11344",
abstract = "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. To illustrate this, we provide a case study on Luxembourgish, an evolving language featuring a large amount of orthographic variation, demonstrating how NLP performance is impacted. The results show large discrepancies in the performance of models tested and fine-tuned on data with a large amount of orthographic variation in comparison to data closer to the (orthographic) standard. Furthermore, we provide a possible solution to improve the performance by including variation in the fine-tuning process. This case study highlights the importance of including variation in the research setup, as models are currently not robust to occurring variation. Our framework facilitates the inclusion of variation in the thought-process while also being grounded in the theoretical framework of sociolinguistics."
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<abstract>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. To illustrate this, we provide a case study on Luxembourgish, an evolving language featuring a large amount of orthographic variation, demonstrating how NLP performance is impacted. The results show large discrepancies in the performance of models tested and fine-tuned on data with a large amount of orthographic variation in comparison to data closer to the (orthographic) standard. Furthermore, we provide a possible solution to improve the performance by including variation in the fine-tuning process. This case study highlights the importance of including variation in the research setup, as models are currently not robust to occurring variation. Our framework facilitates the inclusion of variation in the thought-process while also being grounded in the theoretical framework of sociolinguistics.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Variation Is the Norm: Embracing Sociolinguistics in NLP
%A Lutgen, Anne-Marie
%A Plum, Alistair
%A Blaschke, Verena
%A Plank, Barbara
%A Purschke, Christoph
%Y Piperidis, Stelios
%Y Bel, Núria
%Y van den Heuvel, Henk
%Y Ide, Nancy
%Y Krek, Simon
%Y Toral, Antonio
%S Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
%D 2026
%8 May
%I ELRA Language Resource Association
%C Palma de Mallorca, Spain
%F lutgen-etal-2026-variation
%X 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. To illustrate this, we provide a case study on Luxembourgish, an evolving language featuring a large amount of orthographic variation, demonstrating how NLP performance is impacted. The results show large discrepancies in the performance of models tested and fine-tuned on data with a large amount of orthographic variation in comparison to data closer to the (orthographic) standard. Furthermore, we provide a possible solution to improve the performance by including variation in the fine-tuning process. This case study highlights the importance of including variation in the research setup, as models are currently not robust to occurring variation. Our framework facilitates the inclusion of variation in the thought-process while also being grounded in the theoretical framework of sociolinguistics.
%R 10.63317/3v3vhacxgfex
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.lrec-1.886/
%U https://doi.org/10.63317/3v3vhacxgfex
%P 11332-11344
Markdown (Informal)
[Variation Is the Norm: Embracing Sociolinguistics in NLP](https://aclanthology.org/2026.lrec-1.886/) (Lutgen et al., LREC 2026)
ACL
- Anne-Marie Lutgen, Alistair Plum, Verena Blaschke, Barbara Plank, and Christoph Purschke. 2026. Variation Is the Norm: Embracing Sociolinguistics in NLP. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, pages 11332–11344, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. ELRA Language Resource Association.