Offensive language in user-generated comments in Lithuanian
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Giedrė Valūnaitė-Oleškevičienė
Giedrė Valūnaitė Oleškevičienė is a Vice-Dean for Scientific Research of the Faculty of Public Governance and Business and a professor at the Institute of Humanities, Mykolas Romeris University. Her scientific interests in humanities include discourse analysis, professional English, legal English, linguistics and translation research, while in the domain of social sciences, her scientific interests include social research methodology, modern education, philosophical issues, creativity development in modern education system, and second language teaching and learning. The researcher coordinated international research projects funded by the EU, publishes scientific articles, participates as a presenter in scientific conferences.
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Linas Selmistraitis
Linas Selmistraitis has over 24 years of experience in higher education, specifically in developing and implementing quality assurance systems for higher educational institutions. He earned his PhD in the Humanities. Currently, Professor Dr. Linas Selmistraitis holds the position of Vice-Dean for Studies at the Faculty of Human and Social Studies at Mykolas Romeris University and the position of Professor at the Institute of Humanities at Mykolas Romeris University. His interests in research are semantics, morphology, cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics. He publishes research articles and gives presentations at conferences.
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Andrius Utka
Andrius Utka is an associate professor at the department of Lithuanian studies and a senior researcher at the Institute of Digital Resources and Interdisciplinary Research (SITTI), Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas). He defended the doctoral dissertation
Statistical Identification of Text Functions in 2004 (VMU, Kaunas). He was the head of Centre of Computation Linguistics in 2010-2022. He coordinated a number of national and international research projects. His research interests: statistical text analysis, language resources, computer-assisted translation, automatic summarisation, terminology extraction, and the language of disinformation.
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Dangis Gudelis
Dangis Gudelis is a professor at Mykolas Romeris University, specializing in public administration and governance. He earned his PhD in Social Sciences, focusing on performance measurement in Lithuanian municipalities. Gudelis has led and contributed to various national and international research projects, particularly in public governance and public policy. His current research interests include applications of big data and AI technologies in the public sector. He is a prolific writer, with numerous publications in scientific journals and presentations at conferences. He teaches courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Additionally, he has played a role in policy analysis and consultancy, advising governmental and non-governmental organizations on strategic development and public sector innovation.
Abstract
The aim of the current research is to investigate the feasibility of identifying offensive language in Lithuanian by utilising the Simplified Offensive Language Taxonomy (SOLT). The key principle behind this taxonomy is its ability to complement existing offensive language ontologies and tagset systems, with the ultimate goal of integrating it into publicly accessible Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) resources. The dataset used in the current study is a publicly available corpus of user-generated comments collected from a Lithuanian portal (Amilevičius et al. 2016). The study identified that offensive language predominantly focuses on collective derogatory language rather than individuals. The most common category of offensive language is related to physical and mental disabilities, followed by ideological offenses, xenophobic and sexist remarks, and less frequent categories like ageism, classism, homophobia, and religious discrimination. These results highlight the diverse range of offensive language online and underscore the need to combat discrimination and promote respectful discourse, particularly concerning marginalised groups.
About the authors
Giedrė Valūnaitė Oleškevičienė is a Vice-Dean for Scientific Research of the Faculty of Public Governance and Business and a professor at the Institute of Humanities, Mykolas Romeris University. Her scientific interests in humanities include discourse analysis, professional English, legal English, linguistics and translation research, while in the domain of social sciences, her scientific interests include social research methodology, modern education, philosophical issues, creativity development in modern education system, and second language teaching and learning. The researcher coordinated international research projects funded by the EU, publishes scientific articles, participates as a presenter in scientific conferences.
Linas Selmistraitis has over 24 years of experience in higher education, specifically in developing and implementing quality assurance systems for higher educational institutions. He earned his PhD in the Humanities. Currently, Professor Dr. Linas Selmistraitis holds the position of Vice-Dean for Studies at the Faculty of Human and Social Studies at Mykolas Romeris University and the position of Professor at the Institute of Humanities at Mykolas Romeris University. His interests in research are semantics, morphology, cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics. He publishes research articles and gives presentations at conferences.
Andrius Utka is an associate professor at the department of Lithuanian studies and a senior researcher at the Institute of Digital Resources and Interdisciplinary Research (SITTI), Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas). He defended the doctoral dissertation Statistical Identification of Text Functions in 2004 (VMU, Kaunas). He was the head of Centre of Computation Linguistics in 2010-2022. He coordinated a number of national and international research projects. His research interests: statistical text analysis, language resources, computer-assisted translation, automatic summarisation, terminology extraction, and the language of disinformation.
Dangis Gudelis is a professor at Mykolas Romeris University, specializing in public administration and governance. He earned his PhD in Social Sciences, focusing on performance measurement in Lithuanian municipalities. Gudelis has led and contributed to various national and international research projects, particularly in public governance and public policy. His current research interests include applications of big data and AI technologies in the public sector. He is a prolific writer, with numerous publications in scientific journals and presentations at conferences. He teaches courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Additionally, he has played a role in policy analysis and consultancy, advising governmental and non-governmental organizations on strategic development and public sector innovation.
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction to the Special Issue: Exploring offensive language in digital perspectives
- Research Article
- Offensive language in media discussion forums: A pragmatic analysis
- Offensive language in user-generated comments in Lithuanian
- Online gaming and language aggression in a Tunisian Arabic context
- Evaluations of appropriateness through impoliteness in political discourse reframed for entertainment purposes
- LLOD schema for Simplified Offensive Language Taxonomy in multilingual detection and applications
- Hebrew offensive language taxonomy and dataset
- Implicit offensiveness from linguistic and computational perspectives: A study of irony and sarcasm
- “Somewhere along your pedigree, a bitch got over the wall!” A proposal of implicitly offensive language typology
- Detection of extremist messages in web resources in the Kazakh language
- Clickbait detection in Hebrew
- Opinion Events: Types and opinion markers in English social media discourse
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction to the Special Issue: Exploring offensive language in digital perspectives
- Research Article
- Offensive language in media discussion forums: A pragmatic analysis
- Offensive language in user-generated comments in Lithuanian
- Online gaming and language aggression in a Tunisian Arabic context
- Evaluations of appropriateness through impoliteness in political discourse reframed for entertainment purposes
- LLOD schema for Simplified Offensive Language Taxonomy in multilingual detection and applications
- Hebrew offensive language taxonomy and dataset
- Implicit offensiveness from linguistic and computational perspectives: A study of irony and sarcasm
- “Somewhere along your pedigree, a bitch got over the wall!” A proposal of implicitly offensive language typology
- Detection of extremist messages in web resources in the Kazakh language
- Clickbait detection in Hebrew
- Opinion Events: Types and opinion markers in English social media discourse
