Evaluative language in Chinese online food discourse: overall distribution, local patterning, and readers’ involvement
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Chan-Chia Hsu
Chan-Chia Hsu received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from National Taiwan University and is currently an associate professor at the Center for General Education, National Taipei University of Business. His research interests include pragmatics, discourse analysis, lexical semantics, and corpus linguistics. His most recent publications and presentations are on Chinese multi-word expressions, evaluative stances, online discourse, and application of corpus linguistics to language learning and teaching.
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Yu-Yun Chang
Yu-Yun Chang is an assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, and computational linguistics. She has a keen interest in research topics related to readers’ commitments and/or persuasion strategies. She seeks ways to implement linguistic knowledge in real-life applications, and has been working on a non-profit initiative to combat fake news.
Yun Biao is a master’s student at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Chengchi University. Her research interest lies in the field of computational linguistics. Her most recent publication is related to persuasion strategies used in online crowdfunding platforms. Additionally, she is interested in topics related to sentiment analysis, particularly focusing on analyzing the emotions of song lyrics in Mandarin Chinese.
Abstract
Internet users often express their evaluation of food in online posts. This study sets out to comprehensively annotate evaluative words in food posts in Chinese, which deserves more attention due to its increasing dominance on the Internet. The corpus includes 180 posts from Dcard, currently the largest anonymous social media platform in Taiwan. All the words annotated to be evaluative are categorized according to their grammatical class, evaluative function, and subjective polarity. We not only provide the frequency distributions of the evaluative words but also conduct four case studies of high-frequency evaluative words, identifying their lexico-syntactic patterns. While previous studies on evaluative language have tended to focus on particular words/phrases, with the data mainly from English, the present study provides a more comprehensive quantitative perspective and extends to Chinese data. Moreover, because conveying evaluations in online forums can be a mediatized performance intended for attention and visibility, our qualitative analysis demonstrates how Dcard users establish readers’ involvement through evaluation.
Funding source: National Science and Technology Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: MOST111-2410-H-141-006-MY2
About the authors
Chan-Chia Hsu received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from National Taiwan University and is currently an associate professor at the Center for General Education, National Taipei University of Business. His research interests include pragmatics, discourse analysis, lexical semantics, and corpus linguistics. His most recent publications and presentations are on Chinese multi-word expressions, evaluative stances, online discourse, and application of corpus linguistics to language learning and teaching.
Yu-Yun Chang is an assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, and computational linguistics. She has a keen interest in research topics related to readers’ commitments and/or persuasion strategies. She seeks ways to implement linguistic knowledge in real-life applications, and has been working on a non-profit initiative to combat fake news.
Yun Biao is a master’s student at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Chengchi University. Her research interest lies in the field of computational linguistics. Her most recent publication is related to persuasion strategies used in online crowdfunding platforms. Additionally, she is interested in topics related to sentiment analysis, particularly focusing on analyzing the emotions of song lyrics in Mandarin Chinese.
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Research funding: This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Council, formerly the Ministry of Science and Technology, in Taiwan, R.O.C. (grant number: MOST111-2410-H-141-006-MY2).
Appendix A: Results of the hierarchical configural frequency analysis of the relationship between the evaluative words’ grammatical category and evaluative function
| Evaluative function | Grammatical category | Freq | Exp | Cont.chisq | Obs-exp | P.adj.bin | Dec | Q |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evaluation of other objects | Verb | 122 | 748.1487 | 524.0431 | < | 5.95E-194 | *** | 0.133 |
| Indirect value judgment | Adjective | 41 | 482.1996 | 403.6857 | < | 1.44E-156 | *** | 0.089 |
| Indirect value judgment | Verb | 496 | 149.9066 | 799.0351 | > | 1.84E-113 | *** | 0.065 |
| Evaluation of other objects | Adjective | 3,115 | 2,406.545 | 208.5598 | > | 3.27E-81 | *** | 0.232 |
| Attitude | Verb | 411 | 137.6451 | 542.8664 | > | 1.36E-80 | *** | 0.051 |
| Attitude | Adjective | 215 | 442.7585 | 117.1608 | < | 2.19E-34 | *** | 0.045 |
| Evaluation of other objects | Adverb | 43 | 171.1044 | 95.9107 | < | 4.96E-31 | *** | 0.024 |
| Indirect value judgment | Adverb | 118 | 34.2842 | 204.4188 | > | 5.61E-28 | *** | 0.015 |
| Manner | Adverb | 63 | 10.1315 | 275.88 | > | 8.43E-28 | *** | 0.01 |
| Attitude | Noun | 18 | 65.3814 | 34.3369 | < | 6.67E-11 | *** | 0.009 |
| Manner | Noun | 3 | 21.0423 | 15.47 | < | 2.53E-05 | *** | 0.003 |
| Manner | Adjective | 103 | 142.497 | 10.9477 | < | 0.005340599 | ** | 0.007 |
| Evaluation of other objects | Noun | 403 | 355.3706 | 6.3836 | > | 0.10990803 | ns | 0.009 |
| Attitude | Four | 29 | 18.735 | 5.6242 | > | 0.329071822 | ns | 0.002 |
| Indirect value judgment | Noun | 89 | 71.2056 | 4.4469 | > | 0.447890777 | ns | 0.003 |
| Attitude | Adverb | 23 | 31.4799 | 2.2843 | < | 1.435565503 | ns | 0.002 |
| Indirect value judgment | Four | 14 | 20.404 | 2.01 | < | 1.79462326 | ns | 0.001 |
| Manner | Verb | 51 | 44.2996 | 1.0134 | > | 3.476512637 | ns | 0.001 |
| Manner | Four | 4 | 6.0297 | 0.6832 | < | 5.619136522 | ns | 0 |
| Evaluation of other objects | Four | 100 | 101.8313 | 0.0329 | < | 9.065749019 | ns | 0 |
Appendix B: Results of the hierarchical configural frequency analysis of the relationship between the evaluative words’ grammatical category and subjective polarity
| Grammatical category | Subjective polarity | Freq | Exp | Cont.chisq | Obs-exp | P.adj.bin | Dec | Q |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verb | Negative | 115 | 152.082 | 9.0417 | < | 0.008864 | ** | 0.007 |
| Four | Negative | 8 | 20.7001 | 7.7919 | < | 0.013198 | * | 0.002 |
| Adjective | Negative | 549 | 489.1972 | 7.3107 | > | 0.028228 | * | 0.012 |
| Noun | Negative | 54 | 72.239 | 4.605 | < | 0.147845 | ns | 0.003 |
| Adjective | Positive | 2,925 | 2,984.803 | 1.1982 | < | 0.535517 | ns | 0.02 |
| Verb | Positive | 965 | 927.918 | 1.4819 | > | 0.942094 | ns | 0.008 |
| Adverb | Negative | 43 | 34.7817 | 1.9418 | > | 0.975314 | ns | 0.002 |
| Four | Positive | 139 | 126.2999 | 1.2771 | > | 1.365741 | ns | 0.002 |
| Noun | Positive | 459 | 440.761 | 0.7547 | > | 1.886608 | ns | 0.004 |
| Adverb | Positive | 204 | 212.2183 | 0.3183 | < | 2.970941 | ns | 0.002 |
Appendix C: Results of the hierarchical configural frequency analysis of the relationship between the evaluative words’ evaluative function and subjective polarity
| Evaluative function | Subjective polarity | Freq | Exp | Cont.chisq | Obs-exp | P.adj.bin | Dec | Q |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indirect value judgment | Negative | 64 | 106.7391 | 17.113 | < | 3.66E-05 | *** | 0.008 |
| Attitude | Negative | 139 | 98.0084 | 17.1446 | > | 0.00038 | *** | 0.008 |
| Attitude | Positive | 557 | 597.9916 | 2.8099 | < | 0.309004 | ns | 0.008 |
| Indirect value judgment | Positive | 694 | 651.2609 | 2.8048 | > | 0.318515 | ns | 0.009 |
| Manner | Negative | 33 | 31.5429 | 0.0673 | > | 3.36771 | ns | 0 |
| Manner | Positive | 191 | 192.4571 | 0.011 | < | 3.812108 | ns | 0 |
| Evaluation of other objects | Negative | 533 | 532.7096 | 2.00E-04 | > | 4.010975 | ns | 0 |
| Evaluation of other objects | Positive | 3,250 | 3,250.29 | 0 | < | 4.015648 | ns | 0 |
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Announcement
- Research Articles
- Narratives about epistemic trespassing
- Damned if feminists do, damned if feminists don’t? Political significance of institutional inclusive writing guidelines in a Belgian francophone university
- Evaluative language in Chinese online food discourse: overall distribution, local patterning, and readers’ involvement
- Metaphorical language in the discourse of Yasser Arafat
- The effects of modal value and imperative mood on self-predicted compliance to health guidance: the case of COVID-19
- Embodied movement as a stratified semiotic mode: how movement, gaze and speech mean together in the classroom
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Announcement
- Research Articles
- Narratives about epistemic trespassing
- Damned if feminists do, damned if feminists don’t? Political significance of institutional inclusive writing guidelines in a Belgian francophone university
- Evaluative language in Chinese online food discourse: overall distribution, local patterning, and readers’ involvement
- Metaphorical language in the discourse of Yasser Arafat
- The effects of modal value and imperative mood on self-predicted compliance to health guidance: the case of COVID-19
- Embodied movement as a stratified semiotic mode: how movement, gaze and speech mean together in the classroom
