Sentiment

Gabriella Szabó, HUN REN Centre for Social Sciences, Hungary
szabo.gabriella@tk.hu

In a communication context, sentiment is the individual's subjective attitude or point of view regarding a particular subject. It demonstrates how a person perceives and evaluates the topic of their communication. A statement's general orientation and tone are included in its sentiment, which primarily categorises it as neutral, negative, or positive. Understanding the nuances of opinions and interpersonal interactions requires this subjectivity. Sentiment enables people to voice their thoughts on a range of topics, such as political issues, social trends, and individual experiences. For instance, when someone comments on a new environmental policy, they might say that it is ‘beneficial for future generations,’ which shows their values and beliefs, or that it is ‘ineffective and poorly planned,’ which shows their disapproval. Sentiment can be measured by observing linguistic cues such as word choice and phrasing that reveal the speaker's point of view. Indicators of sentiment often include specific words (e.g., good, amazing, wonderful for positive sentiments; and bad, poor, terrible for negative ones). Phrases and idioms also convey sentiment and, together with sentiment words, form what is known as a sentiment lexicon. For example, when reviewing a product, one customer might write, ‘This smartphone has an excellent battery life,’ while another might write, ‘The camera quality is disappointing.’ Neutral sentiment may be evoked by objective statements that do not use strong evaluative language, such as ‘The meeting starts at 10 AM.’ In many fields, including marketing, communication, and the social sciences, an understanding of sentiment is essential because it helps practitioners and researchers evaluate attitudes, predict behaviours, and appropriately adjust messages. Sentiment analysis can reveal crucial information about people's attitudes towards specific subjects and the underlying causes of their opinions and actions. For instance, examining voter sentiment can assist political campaigns in creating plans that successfully engage their supporters.

Keywords: expressivity, sentiment, sentiment analysis

References:
Cambria, E., Das, D., Bandyopadhyay, S., & Feraco, A. (Eds.). (2017). A practical guide to sentiment analysis 5. Springer International Publishing.
Liu, B. (2012). Sentiment analysis and opinion mining (Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies). Morgan & Claypool Publishers.
Zhang, L., & Liu, B. (2018). Sentiment analysis in social media, Aspect extraction for. In R., Alhajj, & J. Rokne (Eds.). Encyclopedia of social network analysis and mining. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7131-2_110207