Annotating speaker stance in discourse: the Brexit Blog Corpus (BBC)
type: Dataset
description: In this study, we explore to what extent language users agree about what kind of stances are expressed in natural language use or whether their interpretations diverge. In order to perform this task, a comprehensive cognitive-functional framework of ten stance categories was developed based on previous work on speaker stance in the literature. A corpus of opinionated texts, where speakers take stance and position themselves, was compiled, the Brexit Blog Corpus (BBC). An analytical interface for the annotations was set up and the data were annotated independently by two annotators. The annotation procedure, the annotation agreement and the co-occurrence of more than one stance category in the utterances are described and discussed. The careful, analytical annotation process has by and large returned satisfactory inter- and intra-annotation agreement scores, resulting in a gold standard corpus, the final version of the BBC. Purpose: The aim of this study is to explore the possibility of identifying speaker stance in discourse, provide an analytical resource for it and an evaluation of the level of agreement across speakers in the area of stance-taking in discourse. The BBC is a collection of texts from blog sources. The corpus texts are thematically related to the 2016 UK referendum concerning whether the UK should remain members of the European Union or not. The texts were extracted from the Internet from June to August 2015. With the Gavagai API (https://developer.gavagai.se), the texts were detected using seed words, such as Brexit, EU referendum, pro-Europe, europhiles, eurosceptics, United States of Europe, David Cameron, or Downing Street. The retrieved URLs were filtered so that only entries described as blogs in English were selected. Each downloaded document was split into sentential utterances, from which 2,200 utterances were randomly selected as the analysis data set. The final size of the corpus is 1,682 utterances, 35,492 words (169,762 characters witho…
citation: CreativeWork
  name: Vasiliki Simaki, Carita Paradis, Maria Skeppstedt, Magnus Sahlgren, Kostiantyn Kucher, and Andreas Kerren. Annotating speaker stance in discourse: the Brexit Blog Corpus. In Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 2017. De Gruyter, published electronically before print. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2016-0060
conditions of access: http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/access-right/PUBLIC
conditions of access: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
creative work status: completed
  type: DefinedTerm
  in defined term set: http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/dataset-status
  term code: COMPLETED
creator: Andreas Kerren
creator: Carita Paradis
date modified: 2024-05-21
date published: 2017-10-13
funding: Grant
  funder: Swedish Research Council
language: English
is part of: https://doi.org/10.5878/002924
keywords: MEDIA, COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE
keywords: Language and linguistics
keywords: Information technology
keywords: Natural Language Processing
  type: DefinedTerm
  term code: 10208
keywords: Comparative Language Studies and Linguistics
  type: DefinedTerm
  term code: 60201
keywords: Studies of Specific Languages
  type: DefinedTerm
  term code: 60202
keywords: blog post texts
keywords: modality
keywords: attitude
keywords: opinion
keywords: evaluation
keywords: sentiment
keywords: evidentiality
keywords: positioning
keywords: subjectivity
keywords: text annotation
keywords: appraisal
publisher: Linnaeus University
size: QuantitativeValue
  unit text: cases
  value: 1682
size: QuantitativeValue
  unit text: variables
  value: 8
temporal coverage: 2015-06-01/2016-05-31
distribution: data/brexit_blog_corpus_raw.zip
  type: DataDownload
  additional type: data
  conditions of access: http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/access-right/PUBLIC
  conditions of access: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  content size: 7085617
  encoding format: application/zip
distribution: data/brexit_blog_corpus.xlsx
  type: DataDownload
  additional type: data
  conditions of access: http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/access-right/PUBLIC
  conditions of access: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
  content size: 155052
  encoding format: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
version: 1.0

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.5878/002925

Andreas Kerren
type: Person
affiliation: Linnaeus University
family name: Kerren
given name: Andreas

Linnaeus University
type: Organization

Carita Paradis
type: Person
affiliation: Lund University
family name: Paradis
given name: Carita

Lund University
type: Organization
department: Center for Language and Literature

English
type: Language
alternate name: eng

MEDIA, COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE
type: DefinedTerm
term code: MediaCommunicationAndLanguage

Language and linguistics
type: DefinedTerm
description: Data from linguistic studies, linguistic analysis and sociolinguistics, as well as data on language policies, people's language skills, languages spoken at work and at home, attitudes towards minority languages etc.
term code: MediaCommunicationAndLanguage.LanguageAndLinguistics

Information technology
type: DefinedTerm
description: Information and communication technologies that are used in the home, workplace and other community setting. Use note: The use and impact of these technologies are covered by 'Information society'.
term code: ScienceAndTechnology.InformationTechnology