Culture is Not Trivia: Sociocultural Theory for Cultural NLP

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2502.12057v1
• Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:25:11 GMT
• Title: Culture is Not Trivia: Sociocultural Theory for Cultural NLP
• Authors: Naitian Zhou, David Bamman, Isaac L. Bleaman,
• Abstract summary: We argue that these methodological limitations are symptomatic of a theoretical gap. We draw on a well-developed theory of culture from sociocultural linguistics to fill this gap.
• Score: 10.76392030245232
• License:
• Abstract: The field of cultural NLP has recently experienced rapid growth, driven by a pressing need to ensure that language technologies are effective and safe across a pluralistic user base. This work has largely progressed without a shared conception of culture, instead choosing to rely on a wide array of cultural proxies. However, this leads to a number of recurring limitations: coarse national boundaries fail to capture nuanced differences that lay within them, limited coverage restricts datasets to only a subset of usually highly-represented cultures, and a lack of dynamicity results in static cultural benchmarks that do not change as culture evolves. In this position paper, we argue that these methodological limitations are symptomatic of a theoretical gap. We draw on a well-developed theory of culture from sociocultural linguistics to fill this gap by 1) demonstrating in a case study how it can clarify methodological constraints and affordances, 2) offering theoretically-motivated paths forward to achieving cultural competence, and 3) arguing that localization is a more useful framing for the goals of much current work in cultural NLP.

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