There is an interesting post on the Lexalytics blog about sentiment. Some of these observations resonate with experiences at BuzzMetrics, though my thinking about has changed quite radically (I’m now much more interested in what is often referred to as subjectivity though I don’t actually believe in the traditional distinction between subjectivity and objectivity). Perhaps the key thing to note here is that Lexalytics are walking the walk, not just talking the talk.
So, about my opinions on opinion. I think one has to look more broadly at ‘subjective’ statements, not just the corner called ‘sentiment’. The reason being that you need to understand all the interactions between belief, speaker performance and listener perception and context. Appraisal theory is a good place to start, but it doesn’t include the broader social contexts discussed in the LexaBlog post.
As for subjectivity and objectivity, I don’t believe that we can every really say that any statement is objective. Certainly we can talk about the intentions (explicit or implicit) of the speaker to either be objective or appear to be objective. That being said, we might recognize certain surface forms as being evidence of the intention to be or appear to be objective or subjective, but it is not clear that that really helps. If I say
“John flew to New York.”
I might appear objective, or at least more objective than if I said:
“OMG, I think John might have gone to New York!!!”
but that has no relation to whether or not John went to New York.
hi matt-- I agree, lexalytics is smart and the little exposure I've had to their results has been impressive. Your post points out some interesting parameters beyond subjective vs. objective -- Is vs. Appear, Content vs. Style, Emotional vs. Factual (not necessarily the same as Subjective vs. Objective). Could you clarify what exactly your broad definition of subjectivity includes: beliefs, performance, perception, and context? Also, I was actually surprised that Lexalytics finds machine agreement with humans around 80%. Do you have similar data?
Posted by: kate | November 20, 2008 at 12:25 PM
Of course, the degree to which saying “John flew to New York.” appears "objective" depends on prosody, facial expression and other paralinguistic information as well. Ah, the complexities of language in interaction.
Posted by: Livia | November 22, 2008 at 12:22 PM
Of course, the degree to which saying “John flew to New York.” appears "objective" depends on prosody, facial expression and other paralinguistic information as well. Ah, the complexities of language in interaction.
Posted by: Livia | November 22, 2008 at 12:23 PM