@inproceedings{flesch-2026-using,
title = "Using Search Engines to Trace Metalinguistic Discussions of the Noun ``Female'' in Digital Discourse",
author = "Flesch, Marie",
editor = "Ortiz Suarez, Pedro and
Burchell, Laurie and
Ljube{\v{s}}i{\'c}, Nikola and
Scherrer, Yves and
Laippala, Veronika and
Dini{\'c}, Vuk and
Vaughan, Thom",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 13th Web-as-Corpus Workshop",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.wac-1.17/",
pages = "182--191",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-481-1",
abstract = "This contribution uses the web as corpus to investigate metalinguistic discourses of the noun ``female'' between 2001 and 2019. It presents the construction of a diachronic dataset using search engines and compares results provided by Google, DuckDuckGo and Yandex, and, for Google, searches made with four different combinations of parameters. It then uses the resulting corpus to create a repertoire of arguments and ideologies used by online critics of ``female''. Results show that, even though Google generated the most relevant results by far, supplementing it with other search engines was beneficial. They also suggest that, by 2015, the metalinguistic discourse of ``female'' had mostly solidified, with no new arguments emerging in the corpus, and that the debates are a response to new (at the time) and broader social tensions, specifically the rise of masculinist discourses in online spaces."
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<abstract>This contribution uses the web as corpus to investigate metalinguistic discourses of the noun “female” between 2001 and 2019. It presents the construction of a diachronic dataset using search engines and compares results provided by Google, DuckDuckGo and Yandex, and, for Google, searches made with four different combinations of parameters. It then uses the resulting corpus to create a repertoire of arguments and ideologies used by online critics of “female”. Results show that, even though Google generated the most relevant results by far, supplementing it with other search engines was beneficial. They also suggest that, by 2015, the metalinguistic discourse of “female” had mostly solidified, with no new arguments emerging in the corpus, and that the debates are a response to new (at the time) and broader social tensions, specifically the rise of masculinist discourses in online spaces.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Using Search Engines to Trace Metalinguistic Discussions of the Noun “Female” in Digital Discourse
%A Flesch, Marie
%Y Ortiz Suarez, Pedro
%Y Burchell, Laurie
%Y Ljubešić, Nikola
%Y Scherrer, Yves
%Y Laippala, Veronika
%Y Dinić, Vuk
%Y Vaughan, Thom
%S Proceedings of the 13th Web-as-Corpus Workshop
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-481-1
%F flesch-2026-using
%X This contribution uses the web as corpus to investigate metalinguistic discourses of the noun “female” between 2001 and 2019. It presents the construction of a diachronic dataset using search engines and compares results provided by Google, DuckDuckGo and Yandex, and, for Google, searches made with four different combinations of parameters. It then uses the resulting corpus to create a repertoire of arguments and ideologies used by online critics of “female”. Results show that, even though Google generated the most relevant results by far, supplementing it with other search engines was beneficial. They also suggest that, by 2015, the metalinguistic discourse of “female” had mostly solidified, with no new arguments emerging in the corpus, and that the debates are a response to new (at the time) and broader social tensions, specifically the rise of masculinist discourses in online spaces.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.wac-1.17/
%P 182-191
Markdown (Informal)
[Using Search Engines to Trace Metalinguistic Discussions of the Noun “Female” in Digital Discourse](https://aclanthology.org/2026.wac-1.17/) (Flesch, WAC 2026)
ACL