# You Write Like You Eat: Stylistic variation as a predictor of social stratification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.07265 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07265/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Idiosyncratic but not Arbitrary: Learning Idiolects in Online Registers Reveals Distinctive yet Consistent Individual Styles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03158/) (2021)
- [Impoverished Language Technology: The Lack of (Social) Class in NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03874/) (2024)
- [Do Large Language Models Adapt to Language Variation across Socioeconomic Status?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11939/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Inspired by Labov's seminal work on stylistic variation as a function of social stratification, we develop and compare neural models that predict a person's presumed socio-economic status, obtained through distant supervision,from their writing style on social media. The focus of our work is on identifying the most important stylistic parameters to predict socio-economic group. In particular, we show the effectiveness of morpho-syntactic features as stylistic predictors of socio-economic group,in contrast to lexical features, which are good predictors of topic.