@inproceedings{corvi-etal-2025-taxonomizing,
    title = "Taxonomizing Representational Harms using Speech Act Theory",
    author = "Corvi, Emily  and
      Washington, Hannah  and
      Reed, Stefanie  and
      Atalla, Chad  and
      Chouldechova, Alexandra  and
      Dow, P. Alex  and
      Garcia-Gathright, Jean  and
      Pangakis, Nicholas J  and
      Sheng, Emily  and
      Vann, Dan  and
      Vogel, Matthew  and
      Wallach, Hanna",
    editor = "Che, Wanxiang  and
      Nabende, Joyce  and
      Shutova, Ekaterina  and
      Pilehvar, Mohammad Taher",
    booktitle = "Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2025",
    month = jul,
    year = "2025",
    address = "Vienna, Austria",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/display_plenaries/2025.findings-acl.202/",
    pages = "3907--3932",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-256-5",
    abstract = "Representational harms are widely recognized among fairness-related harms caused by generative language systems. However, their definitions are commonly under-specified. We make a theoretical contribution to the specification of representational harms by introducing a framework, grounded in speech act theory (Austin 1962), that conceptualizes representational harms caused by generative language systems as the perlocutionary effects (i.e., real-world impacts) of particular types of illocutionary acts (i.e., system behaviors). Building on this argument and drawing on relevant literature from linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics, we provide new definitions of stereotyping, demeaning, and erasure. We then use our framework to develop a granular taxonomy of illocutionary acts that cause representational harms, going beyond the high-level taxonomies presented in previous work. We also discuss the ways that our framework and taxonomy can support the development of valid measurement instruments. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our framework and taxonomy via a case study that engages with recent conceptual debates about what constitutes a representational harm and how such harms should be measured."
}