Beware of negative utterance they can b
Beware of negative utterance; they can be most devastating.
The Use of Negation on Twitter during the
2014 European Elections
Elena ALBU
LiLPa, University of Strasbourg
elena_albu84@yahoo.com
9e Journées Internationales de la Linguistique de Corpus
Grenoble, 4-6 juillet
Twitter at the European Elections: A Comparative International
Study of the Use of Twitter by Candidates at the European
Parliamentary Elections in May 2014 [TEE2014]
●
http://iutdijon.u-bourgogne.fr/pedago/src/politicsmediastic/en/partenaires-tee2014/
2
Main Aim
●
the use of negation on Twitter during the EE 2014:
- What types of negatives utterances are used in the electoral tweets?
- To what extent does negation shape the candidates' political
discourse on Twitter?
3
Overview
●
The linguistics of Twitter
●
Negation – prefatory remarks
●
Types of negative utterances used on Twitter during EE 2014
●
The argumentative force of negation
●
Conclusions
4
The Linguistics of the Tweets
5
Negation
●
a complex cognitive and linguistic phenomenon:
- forms of expression vs. meanings
●
various interpretations:
- as a logical connective: it has a wide scope, reversing the truth value of a
proposition p in ¬ p (Horn and Wansing 2015)
- at the linguistic level: a narrow scope constituent negation (Moeschler 2013)
- its processing: non-incremental, involving a two-step interpretation (Kaup
et al. 2007)
6
The Use of Negation during EE 2014
●
Corpus of data:
- 72860 tweets were collected overall
- 309 Twitter accounts of the UK candidates for the EE 2014
- time span of 4 weeks
●
AntConc (Anthony 2014): quantitative analysis
7
The Use of Negation during EE 2014
●
negative utterances containing not, n't
●
form vs. meaning:
→ apparent sentential negation, functioning as a constituent
negation and having different meanings assigned
=> mental structure vs. discursive functions
8
Results - NOT
- concordance hits for not = 5068
→ exclusion of negative words, negative prefixes, negatives
meanings or connotations
!!! *not* = 7227
- nothing, another, #we’rerenotgoingawayyouknow, JonNott
- concordance hits n't: 4982
- concordance hits NOT: 272
9
not - collocates
10
not - clusters: 2 on the left
11
not - clusters: 2 on the right
12
not - clusters: 3 on the right
13
Types of negative utterances
- different mental structures:
●
[not (X)]
+ rejection NOT
●
[(X') not (X)] vs. [not (X) but (X')]
=> metarepresentational negation (MetNeg) (Albu 2017)
- an action of rejection
- “the contradiction and elimination of an existing assumption”
- (X) - the rejected representation
- different types and sources
14
[not (X)]
= > [(N.R. says) not (Lab will give Referendum)]
!!! as they are expected to, as everyone expects them to
→ argumentative force: premise for the conclusion Vote Conservative
15
Rejection NOT - [Not (X)]
16
[(X') not (X)] vs. [not (X) but (X')]
17
Conclusions
- not generates a variety of negative utterances:
●
MetNeg [Not (X)]
●
MetNeg [(X') not (X)]
Negative campaigning
●
●
18
negative vs. positive binary
the alternative is activated in the audience's mind
References
Albu, E. (2017): Description vs. rejection in the Analysis of Negation: Evidence from Romanian
and English, Lingua, 191-192, 22-41.
Albu, E. (2016): Love Britain? Vote UKIP! The Pragmatics of Electoral Tweets during the EE2014,
in Frame, A., Mercier, A., Brachotte, G., Thimm, C. (eds) Tweets from the Campaign Trail:
Researching the Use of Twitter during the European Parliamentary Elections, Peter Lang,
145-169.
Horn, L. and Wansing, H. (2015): "Negation", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), URL: .
Kaup et al. (2007): Experiential simulation of negated text information. Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 60, 976-990.
Moeschler, J. (2013): 'How ‘Logical’ are Logical Words? Negation and its Descriptive vs.
Metalinguistic Uses', in Taboada M. & Trnavac R. (eds.), Nonveridicality, evaluation and
coherence relations, Leiden, Brill, 76-110.
19
Thank you for your attention!
Elena ALBU
elena_albu84@yahoo.com
https://unistra.academia.edu/ElenaAlbu
20
The Use of Negation on Twitter during the
2014 European Elections
Elena ALBU
LiLPa, University of Strasbourg
elena_albu84@yahoo.com
9e Journées Internationales de la Linguistique de Corpus
Grenoble, 4-6 juillet
Twitter at the European Elections: A Comparative International
Study of the Use of Twitter by Candidates at the European
Parliamentary Elections in May 2014 [TEE2014]
●
http://iutdijon.u-bourgogne.fr/pedago/src/politicsmediastic/en/partenaires-tee2014/
2
Main Aim
●
the use of negation on Twitter during the EE 2014:
- What types of negatives utterances are used in the electoral tweets?
- To what extent does negation shape the candidates' political
discourse on Twitter?
3
Overview
●
The linguistics of Twitter
●
Negation – prefatory remarks
●
Types of negative utterances used on Twitter during EE 2014
●
The argumentative force of negation
●
Conclusions
4
The Linguistics of the Tweets
5
Negation
●
a complex cognitive and linguistic phenomenon:
- forms of expression vs. meanings
●
various interpretations:
- as a logical connective: it has a wide scope, reversing the truth value of a
proposition p in ¬ p (Horn and Wansing 2015)
- at the linguistic level: a narrow scope constituent negation (Moeschler 2013)
- its processing: non-incremental, involving a two-step interpretation (Kaup
et al. 2007)
6
The Use of Negation during EE 2014
●
Corpus of data:
- 72860 tweets were collected overall
- 309 Twitter accounts of the UK candidates for the EE 2014
- time span of 4 weeks
●
AntConc (Anthony 2014): quantitative analysis
7
The Use of Negation during EE 2014
●
negative utterances containing not, n't
●
form vs. meaning:
→ apparent sentential negation, functioning as a constituent
negation and having different meanings assigned
=> mental structure vs. discursive functions
8
Results - NOT
- concordance hits for not = 5068
→ exclusion of negative words, negative prefixes, negatives
meanings or connotations
!!! *not* = 7227
- nothing, another, #we’rerenotgoingawayyouknow, JonNott
- concordance hits n't: 4982
- concordance hits NOT: 272
9
not - collocates
10
not - clusters: 2 on the left
11
not - clusters: 2 on the right
12
not - clusters: 3 on the right
13
Types of negative utterances
- different mental structures:
●
[not (X)]
+ rejection NOT
●
[(X') not (X)] vs. [not (X) but (X')]
=> metarepresentational negation (MetNeg) (Albu 2017)
- an action of rejection
- “the contradiction and elimination of an existing assumption”
- (X) - the rejected representation
- different types and sources
14
[not (X)]
= > [(N.R. says) not (Lab will give Referendum)]
!!! as they are expected to, as everyone expects them to
→ argumentative force: premise for the conclusion Vote Conservative
15
Rejection NOT - [Not (X)]
16
[(X') not (X)] vs. [not (X) but (X')]
17
Conclusions
- not generates a variety of negative utterances:
●
MetNeg [Not (X)]
●
MetNeg [(X') not (X)]
Negative campaigning
●
●
18
negative vs. positive binary
the alternative is activated in the audience's mind
References
Albu, E. (2017): Description vs. rejection in the Analysis of Negation: Evidence from Romanian
and English, Lingua, 191-192, 22-41.
Albu, E. (2016): Love Britain? Vote UKIP! The Pragmatics of Electoral Tweets during the EE2014,
in Frame, A., Mercier, A., Brachotte, G., Thimm, C. (eds) Tweets from the Campaign Trail:
Researching the Use of Twitter during the European Parliamentary Elections, Peter Lang,
145-169.
Horn, L. and Wansing, H. (2015): "Negation", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), URL: .
Kaup et al. (2007): Experiential simulation of negated text information. Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 60, 976-990.
Moeschler, J. (2013): 'How ‘Logical’ are Logical Words? Negation and its Descriptive vs.
Metalinguistic Uses', in Taboada M. & Trnavac R. (eds.), Nonveridicality, evaluation and
coherence relations, Leiden, Brill, 76-110.
19
Thank you for your attention!
Elena ALBU
elena_albu84@yahoo.com
https://unistra.academia.edu/ElenaAlbu
20