Some pragmatic peculiarities in sentiment analysis

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.6-16.013

Borisova Elena G.,

PhD (Linguistics), Doc. Hab, Professor

Moscow State Linguistic University, Department of PR, Professor,

Moscow City University, Institute for foreign Languages, guest professor

E-mail: efcomconf@list.ru  

The article deals with lexis that can reveal some information about the communicants (mostly about the Speaker) and the circumstances of their communication. This information can be presented as a part of the lexical meaning of the pragmatic nature along with the denotative, significative parts of meaning, connotations (marking emotions etc.) This is what to be taken into consideration by sentiment analysis. The article is focused on pragmatic pecuiarities of texts and points out information necessary for correct estimation of sentiments. The pragmatic component of meaning includes information about register (formal, vulgar etc.), associations with demographic characteristics (marked for usage by representatives of gender, age, territorial, professional groups), political manifestivity (words typical vs impossible for some political, confessional groups). This information is extremely important for sentimental strength analysis as it makes it possible to cope with sarcasm (rather often in media) that radically changes estimation expressed by the author of an article or a post in Social media. Some other peculiarities concerning opinion of social groups can also be of importance. The possible changing in positiveness/ negativeness of nouns and epithets are analyzed on material of psycholinguistic experiments in Russian in 1996—2012. The necessity of including neologism, quotations that are widely used in political texts and as mems in Internet is also discussed. The project of the dictionary that includes the pragmatic information necessary for sentimental strength analysis is proposed.

Keywords: sentiment strength, discourse, political text, social communication, neologisms, manifestive lexis.

References

1. Baranov, A.N., Parshin, P.B. Language structures for interpretation of reality as a tool of pressure on brains [Lingvisticheskie mekhanizmy interpretacii dejstvitel’nosti kak sredstvo vozdejstvija na soznanie. Rol’ jazyka v sredstvax massovoj kommunikacii]. Moscow: INION, 1986, pp. 100–143.

2. Borisova, E. Opposition discourse in Russia: Political Pamphlets 1989—91. Political Discourse in Transition in Europe 1989—91. Amsterdam; Philadelphia, 1998. P. 111–130.

3. Borisova, E.G., Nekrasova, K.I. Do you like democracy (Means of evaluation of the social lexis) [L’ubite li vy demokratiju? Ocenochnyj potencial obschestvennoj leksiki)] Sovremennaja politicheskaja kommunikaija (proceedings of international conference Ekaterinburg 21–24 sent.). A.P. Chudinov (Ed.). Ekaterinburgh, 2009, pp. 23–24.

4. Borisova, E.G. Wonderful or awful egoist? On variability of evaluation in lexical connotations [‘Egoist uzhasnyj/ prekrasnyj’ (o variativnosti ozenki v leksicheskih konnotacijah)]. L. Fedorova (Ed.). In: Variativnost’ v jazyke i kommunikacii. Moscow: RGSUH, 2012, pp. 140–146.

5. Borisova, E.G. Pirogova, J.K. Modelling non-trivial conditions of understanding messages, the case of sarcasm [Modelirovanie netrivial’nyh uslovij ponimanija soobschenia na primere ironii]. Computational Linguistics and Intellectual Technologies: Proceedings of the International Conference “Dialogue 2013”, 2 (19) [Komp’yuternaya Lingvistika i Intellektual’nye Tekhnologii: Trudy Mezhdunarodnoy Konferentsii “Dialog 2013”, 2(19)]. Moscow: RGGU, 2013.

6. Chetvirokin, I., Loukachevitch, N. Sentiment Analysis Track at ROMIP 2012. In: Proceedings of International Conference Dialog-2013, vol. 2, 2013, pp. 40–50.

7. Dondo, S.A. Mutual Understanding of Allies (linguistic problems) [Ponimanie mezhdu politicheskimi sojuznikami (lingvisticheskij aspekt)]. N. Anis’kina, E. Borisova (Eds.) In: Ponimanie v kommunikacii. A human being in Informational Space. Yaroslavl’, 2012, vol. 3, p. 117.

8. Dondo, S.A. Main Principles of revealing Type of Social-Politic Discourse [Osnovnye principy opredelenija tipov obschestvenno-politicheskogo diskursa]. Politicheskaja lingvistika, 2015, 1 (51), pp. 87–91.

9. Krongauz, M.A. Mem in Russian Internet. An Attempt of Deconstruction [Mem v russkijazychnom Internete. Opyt dekonstrukciji]. M. Ahmetova, V. Belikov (Eds.). In: Russkij jazyk I novye tehnologii. Moscow, 2014, pp. 87–95.

10. Shilikhina, K. M. Diskursivnaja praktika ironii: kognitivnyj, semanticheskij i discursivnyj aspecty. Author’s abstr. diss. (Dr. sc. Philol.). Voronezh: VSU, 2014 [Discourse practice of irony: cognitive, semantic and discourse aspects].

11. Thelwall, M., Buckley, K., & Paltoglou, G. (2012). Sentiment strength detection for the social Web, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(1), 163–173.

12. Zalizniak, Anna A. Semantics of inverted commas [Semantika kavychek] Computational Linguistics and Intellectual Technologies: Proceedings of the International Conference “Dialogue 2007”) [Komp’yuternaya Lingvistika i Intellektual’nye Tekhnologii: Trudy Mezhdunarodnogo seminara “Dialog 2007”. Moscow, 2007.