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Evaluating stance-annotated sentences from the Brexit Blog Corpus: A quantitative linguistic analysis

Simaki, Vasiliki LU ; Paradis, Carita LU orcid and Kerren, Andreas (2018) In ICAME Journal 42. p.133-165
Abstract
This paper offers a formally driven quantitative analysis of stance-annotated sentences in the Brexit Blog Corpus (BBC). Our goal is to identify features that determine the formal profiles of six stance categories (CONTRARIETY, HYPOTHETICALITY, NECESSITY, PREDICTION, SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE and UNCERTAINTY) in a subset of the BBC. The study has two parts: firstly, it examines a large number of formal linguistic features, such as punctuation, words and grammatical categories that occur in the sentences in order to describe the specific characteristics of each category, and secondly, it compares characteristics in the entire data set in order to determine stance similarities in the data set. We show that among the six stance categories in the... (More)
This paper offers a formally driven quantitative analysis of stance-annotated sentences in the Brexit Blog Corpus (BBC). Our goal is to identify features that determine the formal profiles of six stance categories (CONTRARIETY, HYPOTHETICALITY, NECESSITY, PREDICTION, SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE and UNCERTAINTY) in a subset of the BBC. The study has two parts: firstly, it examines a large number of formal linguistic features, such as punctuation, words and grammatical categories that occur in the sentences in order to describe the specific characteristics of each category, and secondly, it compares characteristics in the entire data set in order to determine stance similarities in the data set. We show that among the six stance categories in the corpus, CONTRARIETY and NECESSITY are the most discriminative ones, with the former using longer sentences, more conjunctions, more repetitions and shorter forms than the sentences expressing other stances. NECESSITY has longer lexical forms but shorter sentences, which are syntactically more complex. We show that stance in our data set is expressed in sentences with around 21 words per sentence. The sentences consist mainly of alphabetical characters forming a varied vocabulary without special forms, such as digits or special characters. (Less)
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author
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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
ICAME Journal
volume
42
pages
133 - 165
publisher
De Gruyter Open
ISSN
1502-5462
DOI
10.1515/icame-2018-0007
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
c64201e5-4495-46c7-baca-84504a42dddc
date added to LUP
2018-04-19 20:27:51
date last changed
2019-03-08 02:29:11
@article{c64201e5-4495-46c7-baca-84504a42dddc,
  abstract     = {{This paper offers a formally driven quantitative analysis of stance-annotated sentences in the Brexit Blog Corpus (BBC). Our goal is to identify features that determine the formal profiles of six stance categories (CONTRARIETY, HYPOTHETICALITY, NECESSITY, PREDICTION, SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE and UNCERTAINTY) in a subset of the BBC. The study has two parts: firstly, it examines a large number of formal linguistic features, such as punctuation, words and grammatical categories that occur in the sentences in order to describe the specific characteristics of each category, and secondly, it compares characteristics in the entire data set in order to determine stance similarities in the data set. We show that among the six stance categories in the corpus, CONTRARIETY and NECESSITY are the most discriminative ones, with the former using longer sentences, more conjunctions, more repetitions and shorter forms than the sentences expressing other stances. NECESSITY has longer lexical forms but shorter sentences, which are syntactically more complex. We show that stance in our data set is expressed in sentences with around 21 words per sentence. The sentences consist mainly of alphabetical characters forming a varied vocabulary without special forms, such as digits or special characters.}},
  author       = {{Simaki, Vasiliki and Paradis, Carita and Kerren, Andreas}},
  issn         = {{1502-5462}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{133--165}},
  publisher    = {{De Gruyter Open}},
  series       = {{ICAME Journal}},
  title        = {{Evaluating stance-annotated sentences from the Brexit Blog Corpus: A quantitative linguistic analysis}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/41819846/_ICAME_Journal_Evaluating_stance_annotated_sentences_from_the_Brexit_Blog_Corpus_A_quantitative_linguistic_analysis.pdf}},
  doi          = {{10.1515/icame-2018-0007}},
  volume       = {{42}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}