@inproceedings{chang-2026-language,
    title = "Language Models as Measurement Apparatus for Culture",
    author = "Chang, Kent K.",
    editor = "Elazar, Yanai  and
      Ettinger, Allyson  and
      Kassner, Nora  and
      Ruder, Sebastian",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of The Big Picture v2: Crafting a Research Narrative",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "San Diego, CA, USA",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.bigpicture-main.11/",
    pages = "131--143",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-416-3",
    abstract = "Language models are increasingly used to quantify cultural phenomena, but what makes such measurement distinctively cultural? This paper argues that NLP work on culture is a material-discursive practice: the apparatus{---}model, data, annotation, evaluation{---}participates in constituting the cultural reality it measures, rather than passively recording it. Drawing on Karen Barad{'}s concept of the agential cut{---}the contingent boundary between phenomenon and instrument{---}I show that the apparatus{'}s substantive design choices draw such boundaries, and that the boundary is entangled from the start because language models have already internalized much of the cultural material they measure. I illustrate this through three case studies on television and film dialogue and two examinations of the apparatus itself: erasure of character names as cultural markers, and attunement to historically distant Restoration drama. This big picture analysis proposes a research program that is theory-driven, empirically rigorous, and culturally contingent, treating each agential cut as a conscious commitment."
}