Computational Sociolinguistics: A Survey

Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article we present a survey of the emerging field of "Computational Sociolinguistics" that reflects this increased interest. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of CL research on sociolinguistic themes, featuring topics such as the relation between language and social identity, language use in social interaction and multilingual communication. Moreover, we demonstrate the potential for synergy between the research communities involved, by showing how the large-scale data-driven methods that are widely used in CL can complement existing sociolinguistic studies, and how sociolinguistics can inform and challenge the methods and assumptions employed in CL studies. We hope to convey the possible benefits of a closer collaboration between the two communities and conclude with a discussion of open challenges.Comment: To appear in Computational Linguistics. Accepted for publication: 18th February, 201

The Future of Prediction: How Google Searches Foreshadow Housing Prices and Quantities

To make effective decisions, consumers, executives and policymakers must make predictions. However, most data sources, whether from the government or businesses, are available only after a substantial lag, at a high level of aggregation, and for a small set of variables that were defined in advance. This hampers real-time prediction. A critical advance in IT research has been the development of powerful search engines and the underlying Internet infrastructure. We demonstrate a highly accurate but simple way to predict future business activities by using data from such search engines. Applying our methodology to predict housing trends, we find that our index of housing search terms can predict future quantities and prices in the housing market. During our sample period, each percentage rise in our housing search index predicts sales of 121,400 additional houses in the next quarter. This approach can be applied to other markets, transforming the future of prediction