Perspective Matters: Event Framing in Language and Society
Gosse Minnema
University of Groningen
Sara Gemelli
University of Bergamo & University of Pavia
Chiara Zanchi
University of Pavia
Tommaso Caselli
University of Groningen
Viviana Patti
University of Turin
Malvina Nissim
University of Groningen
Different linguistic expressions can conceptualize the same event from different viewpoints by emphasizing certain participants over others. In my presentation, I will try to show that frame semantics, as a theory of linguistic understanding (Fillmore 1985), is useful for analyzing social perspective-taking on news events, in particular relating to societal power imbalances (e.g., between men and women, Italians and refugees, car drivers and pedestrians). Then, based on my own PhD work, I will show how several recent Natural Language Processing methodologies can be used to perform large-scale frame-based corpus analysis, predict how linguistic choices in news text influence people's perception of events, and even help to suggest alternative perspectives on an event.
