This paper aims to discuss how Facebook users reacted to the news that the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil) introduced social quotas for socially vulnerable transsexuals, immigrants and refugees. It tries to understand how lexicogrammatical choices might represent the various social entities which are present in users’ comments. Data was automatically scraped from Facebook using Netvizz, and “R” scripts were written to process and analyse linguistic features. Results show that most of the comments are related to the interactions amongst users during the process of taking a stand in favour and against the system of quotas. There are also comments related to prejudice against northeast citizens and states. Grammatical patterns could be identified for each of those general themes present in the comments.
Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir como os usuários do Facebook reagiram às notícias de que a Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brasil) introduziu cotas sociais para transexuais, imigrantes e refugiados socialmente vulneráveis. Este trabalho tenta entender como as escolhas lexicogramaticais podem representar as várias entidades sociais presentes nos comentários dos usuários. A metodologia incluiu a raspagem automática de dados do Facebook, usando o software Netvizz. O processamento e a análise de dados empregavam o software "R", uma linguagem de programação de análise estatística computacional que permite, além de outras funções, extrair e analisar dados textuais. Os resultados mostram que a maioria dos comentários dos usuários está relacionada às interações entre os usuários durante o processo de tomada de posição a favor ou contra o sistema de cotas. Também existem comentários relacionados ao preconceito contra cidadãos e estados do nordeste. Padrões gramaticais podem ser identificados para cada um desses temas gerais presentes nos comentários.
This article aims to analyse the lexicogrammatical patterns in a set comments made by users of a social media in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The comments were a response to a Facebook post publicising that Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) had instituted a specific system of quotas for socially vulnerable transsexuals, transvestites,
This paper has its theoretical basis on the Systemic-Functional Linguistics (hereafter SFL) and Corpus Linguistics (hereafter CL). The main focus is to establish the transitivity and appraisal patterns that represent the social actors (VAN LEEUWEN, 2005
The relevance of this study lies in the protagonism that social media have gained in our society. They are no longer just seen as the expression of youth culture (ELLISON; BOYD, 2013
Data analysis was based on both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data collection was performed by a social media scraping software, responsible for collecting all comments, as well as their reactions. A corpus clusterisation was calculated as a way of recognizing its main aboutness. Then, the comments were classified according to their position in relation to the UFBA’s quota system and the meanings they instantiate. The functions and patterns of the most relevant clusters and lexical items were analysed using scripts for concordance. The analysis was based on a series of scripts written in
Results showed that the discussions moved beyond the simple expression of opinions for or against the quota system. Racial and geographical prejudice (against Brazil north-eastern citizens) and intense interaction, not always friendly, amongst commenters were common. In the case of the latter, there is the presence of polarized political discussions and personal offences that are often not even related to the main topic of the post. Finally, systems of choices regarding the evaluation and transitivity representations were drawn based on the meanings observed in the comments.
In order to fulfil the research objective, the next section presents the literature review, followed by the methods. The analysis of the data and the final remarks close this article.
SFL is an approach that renders meaning and structure in order to describe how wordings are instantiated through paradigmatic system of socially motivated choices (HALLIDAY, 1994
For Martin and Rose (2003
In SFL tradition, there are two levels of context: situation and culture. The context of culture can be understood as the background in which the interaction is, as it provides the social potential for realisation of meanings. The context of situation (or register) is related to the immediate situation of text realisation (HALLIDAY; HASAN, 1991
·
·
·
The register variables are instantiated through three
·
·
·
Ideational metafunction could be defined as the grammatical resource by which language reaches its representational potential (HALLIDAY, 1994
According to Halliday (1994
The analysis of appraisal is a further development of SFL, and it is a response to our constant feeling that our language choices are evaluating other people, our context as well as characterising our ideological stand (ALBA-JUEZ; THOMPSON, 2014
The second is the system of engagement, and it makes possible for the writer/speaker to enlist (or not) him/herself interactively within the text. As any text would be the result of interaction with various other texts and voices, this system would be responsible for the systematic processes of performing commitment or non-commitment linguistically (MARTIN; WHITE, 2005, p. 93
This article focuses on the system of attitude and its relationship with transitivity choices. Although the simultaneous analysis of these two systems is not the most orthodox analytical practice in SFL, several papers have shown its potential for identifying the ideological and discursive patterns in Brazilian Portuguese (LIMA-LOPES, 2018
Collocation could be defined as units of formulaic language choices which might be considered prominent in language use (GABLASOVA; BREZINA; MCENERY, 2017
Gablasova
Phillips’ (1989
This research uses Phillips’ (1989
Data was collected using
All comments were treated using R,
Later, all comments were sorted manually. As any function-based classification, the interpretation of such system of choices is rather subjective — since they might be a result of the one's interaction with his/her contexts of culture and situation (FAWCETT, 2013
In this study I chose to perform such categorisation with the aid of concordances and collocates in order to observe each bi-gram in context. On the one hand, I believe that such procedure might have minimised possible bias in the sorting, on the other hand, it was responsible for the process to take longer. However, some comments seem to instantiate more than one meaning, a fact which led me to consider some comments as instances of more than one category.
Such a classification aimed at observing how each theme developed in comparison to the word associations calculated earlier. Four main categories were found: 1) those in favour of the quotas, 2) those against the quotas, 3) those bringing some prejudice against Bahia and other Northeast States and 4) those regarding interaction amongst users.
The next step was to generate an ordinary two-gram wordlist of each topic to observe which of such associations were more frequent in the corpus. The five most frequent terms present in the cluster association and at the wordlist were submitted to a matrix association calculation. This association takes the matrix of word co-occurrence and observes the most common via a co-relation (Pearson) test. These words were also submitted for concordancing in order to qualitatively observe their meanings.
Finally, this research followed this algorithm for data collection and analysis:
1. Collecting data from Facebook using
2. Anonymise manually all personal data present in the comments
3. Import data into R
4. Process a document term matrix network for the cluster’s calculation
5. Calculate and generate clusters visualisation (whole corpus)
6. Manually categorise all comments
7. Calculate and generate clusters visualisation (each subcorpora)
8. Generate wordlists (each subcorpora)
9. Generate concordances for each term studied
All scripts developed for article will be available on-line
Elements | Values |
---|---|
Original Comments | 2647 |
Tokens | 71788 |
Types | 63054 |
Types/token ratio | 1.14 |
Tokens per comment | 27.12 |
Table 1 shows the general metrics of the corpus. There are 2647 unique comments, more than 70,000 tokens and a little more than 63,000 types. The types/token ratio shows that there some variation in terms of lexis, since most of the comments seem to have mostly unique words.
The general aboutness of the comments seems to be related to the Brazilian system of quotas (figure 1).
The results are also significant for the
Figure 2 brings a Dendrogram cluster of the whole corpus. The main objective of such representation is to demonstrate how the most frequent words associate. It can bring us a very fair understanding of the aboutness (PHILLIPS, 1989) of such comments as it aids us to understand how the main social actors are discursively characterised.
Ten clusters resulted from the association of the different lexical items. The first cluster consists of three items, in which the expression
Cluster number 2 seems to bring meanings regarding the access of transsexual groups to the university. The quota system is portrayed as a solution to such an issue, as one might see in choices such as
Cluster seven expresses opinions about what a particular user has posted, as comments are commonly related to the interaction amongst the speakers than to the quota system itself (ex.19). It is similar in cluster 9, which has a common phraseology in Brazilian Portuguese
Cluster 8 characterises the groups who benefit from quotas as individuals with limited intellectual capacity (ex. 28). Finally, cluster 10 provides an overview of the topics discussed in the posts, regarding race and access to universities. There are several evaluative elements such as clowning (
This preliminary cluster analysis seems to reveal that the comments are centred on four main topics: 1) interaction amongst/between users — which focus on way users criticise/slander other users due to lack of knowledge or different opinions regarding the system of quotas —; 2) negative evaluation — which accounts for comments that disprove quotas —; 3) positive evaluation — which stands for comments that evaluate the quotas positively —; and 4) manifestations of pride/prejudice in respect of the Brazilian Northeast states.
These four main groups (table 2) are the topics present in the comments. Interactions amongst users hold the highest numbers (45.5%) of the total of comments, while negative (24.3%) and positive (21.4%) are close to a quarter of the total. Prejudice is the least subject treated in the comments, a little shy form 9%.
Categories | Comments | % | Tokens | Types |
---|---|---|---|---|
Positive | 567 | 21.42 | 20626 | 15853 |
Negative | 649 | 24.51 | 20885 | 20885 |
Prejudice | 225 | 8.5 | 3680 | 4439 |
Interaction | 1206 | 45.57 | 26597 | 21877 |
Total | 2647 | 100 | 71788 | 63054 |
The initial expectations were that positive or negative evaluations would be the more frequent themes discussed in the thread of comments. As table 2 shows, the interaction between the users is the topic with the more significant number of comments, meaning that almost half of what users discussed refers to the opinions that they expressed regarding one another. Each positive and negative opinions are less than a quarter of the total interaction. As the examples will show, more than a place for expressing political views, the comments also were a place for exchanging of personal insults.
The presence of offences and racism towards people from Bahia, and the Northeast, in general, was also an unexpected result. The initial hypothesis was that the questioning of such social quotas would take place by the expression of a more conservative view of society but not by intolerance. Although the data collection could not map such comments in terms of their geolocation, the sort of tension they represent might be an indication that users who might have written them are from the southern areas of Brazil.
In terms of word distribution across these categories, the number of types/tokens seems to be disproportional. This so because the theme that produced the more significant number of comments is the one with least number of tokens per comment (figure 3). The positive comments are the ones with the larger number of tokens per comment (36.7 on average), while the negative opinions are the second longer streaming of texts (32.18 in average). Figure 3 also shows that expressions of prejudice against Bahia and Northeast have 19.72 words average.
As one reads through figure 3, positive commenters may make longer texts and have longer pieces of argumentation in favour of their beliefs, it seems that users who are in favour of quotas took more time explaining and making their point of view clear to the reader. As negative interactions are shorter, it is likely their authors took less time in argumentation. Themes as interaction (18.15 average) and prejudice (19.72 average) are similar in terms of size.
The primary hypothesis in the
As an outcome of the comparison between table 2 and figure 3, it would be possible to observe that the interaction amongst users is the most common topic discussed, while it is the smaller in terms of text extension. Positive and negative evaluations of UFBA’s quotas are quite similar in terms of the number of comments, types and tokens. The results are relevant not only because they show the natural polarity that would take place in a context like this, but also suggest that other social themes are relevant in such context.
Interaction amongst users is the more frequent topic in the comments, and four seem to be the most frequent subtopics discussed here: 1) questioning one's knowledge regarding the system of quotas; 2) mocking or insulting users; 3) racial tensions. Figure 4 brings a system of choices that represents such meanings.
As one might see in figure 2, there are direct co-textual expressions, like
On the other hand, these users are criticised for some lack of knowledge regarding the quotas in Brazil, since most of the major universities already offer quotas for underprivileged students (ex. 7, 9, 10 and 11). The common strategy is to make this person as a senser in a mental cognitive process. In most of the times, these processes come in the negative form in order to represent the user's incapacity to understand the system of quotas (ex. 11 and 12). The central argument lies in the negative characterisation of such users, who are judged in terms of normality (ex. 11) or appreciation (ex. 14). This appreciation is commonly expressed using adjectives (ex. 11 and 14), while normality is instantiated by either negation (ex. 12 and 13) or imperative (ex. 15).
Study and be informed for not getting ashamed on the internet!
The lack of familiarity with the system is interpreted not only as misinformation (ex. 11) but also as intellectual laziness (ex. 13) or stupidity (ex. 14).
Examples 16 and 17 represent quite negative feelings towards a “so called racial democracy”. They bring traces of irony as they put white people in the shoes of those who suffer prejudices. It is possibly a reaction towards a fabricated racial harmony and racial democracy in Brazil (HASENBALG, 2005
Example 18 expresses a different framework; it tries to identify the quotas as an attempt to exclude the white male from the educational system. This meaning relies on the use of
Collocates like
The negative evaluation of the quotas is commonly related to three main topics: (1) that minority groups should not be eligible for such policy (ex.21); (2) that is a means of exclusion of white people (Ex. 25 and 26) and (3) that the minorities might be characterised as less capable (ex. 27). Figure 5 brings a system of choices that represents such meanings.
Firstly, comments discuss weather suffering discrimination and social vulnerability are acceptable criteria for quotas. In this context, the primary strategy is to make jokes by comparing such groups to other groups who might also suffer some sort of prejudice in order to under evaluate the problems of the people who quotas would benefit.
Examples ex.21 through 23 bring a refined system of disagreement which is typical of Brazilian Portuguese.
In the context of UFBA’s announcement, comments like ex. 16, 17, 18 and 23 tend to be a response to previous aggressions. Example 23 raises racial and gender issues, since women, black and gay are represented as people who should not belong in the university. A consequence of such quotas would be the exclusion white male from the higher education, a place which belongs to him as his right. Processes, adverbs and adjectives seem to have an important role expressing prejudice (ex. 23 and 18) and reaction to hostilities (ex. 16 and 17).
In this discourse framework, the quota system represents a form of exclusion, since white people would be gradually rejected from the university for not participating in affirmative programmes. In most cases, this occurs through a reaffirmation of personal characteristics (ex. 25), as an explanation for not being part of the groups covered by the quotas. This strategy tires to generate a paradox: the absence of some racial, gender and transexual characteristics defines a
Circumstantial elements may be responsible for expressing attitude towards the quota system (ex. 25), a possible exclusion caused by the inclusion of those who were not at university before the quota’s introduction. This grammatical and discursive strategy seems to build a new ideological representation: people who are now included would be responsible for excluding the ones who were already at university before them. It makes the system to look unfair in the eyes of the privileged white classes.
In Brazilian Portuguese, the future tense of
Transsexuals are ironically represented as intellectually handicapped (ex. 27, 28, 29). In the context of these examples, relational processes (
There were just a few references to refugees (66 occurrences) and immigrants (12 occurrences) in the comments, they are present almost exclusively in comments that criticise the quota system. This brings up an important finding: the discussion motivated by the post is focused mainly on racial issues (black vs. white) and gender identity (transgender vs. cisgender).
Transvestites/transexuals and immigrants/refugees might be treated as privileged, both draining resources that should be directed to the ‘normal people’ (ex. 33, 34 and 35). Some grammatical patterns emerge in this context, as
The discourse in favour of the quota system recognises the problems faced by vulnerable communities it is intended to aid. The main argument takes the prejudice they suffer in their lifetime as causing exclusion from Brazilian educational system, thus moving them away from labour opportunities. Figure 6 brings a system of choices that represents such meanings.
The propositions have their most common focus in the transsexual population, as they try to portray them as victims of some form of social inequity. This occurs in propositions in which the idea of intellectual inability is denied (ex. 36), inasmuch as their social vulnerability is hold responsible for making their lives harder. Relational clauses play an important role in this meaning framework, as they define the system of quotas as responsible for correcting social injustice (ex. 37).
Relational possessive processes establish a relationship between minorities and the need for inclusion. Transexuals are related lexical items as like
There are few material processes in which transexuals are goals (ex. 40, 41 and 42), typical examples are
As we can notice from examples 43 and 44, the comments evaluate UFBA as a provider of a new and excellent service for the transsexual community, to whom this sort of programme might be an important benefit (ex. 45).
As I have discussed earlier, a result that drew my attention during data analysis was the presence of attacks against some ethnic and social groups as well as some expression of proud for being part of these very groups. Figure 7 brings a system of choices that represents such meanings.
Attacks are primarily against the residents of Brazilian Northeast, where UFBA is located, and they express racial/social tensions amongst users by questioning the way that the quota programme is organised. Examples 46 and 48 instantiate common negative meanings. The first advocates that the Northeast should not be part of the country, while the second ascribes a meaning of shame to the region. Northeast is represented as a goal in a material process (ex. 46) without a clear actor, a pattern represents a modalisation strategy in most of the propositions in which this meaning is present. As Northeast states should be excluded from Brazil,
The expression of prejudice seems to be related to both aggression Bahia and other northeast states (ex. 49, 50 and 51). Much of the aggression is not related to the quota system, but to geographic-racial tensions between the South and the Northeast of the country. In some propositions, Bahia (ex. 49) is a superordinate of all Northeast states, which denotes a rather offensive way of representation. The irony is common, it usually combines the use of material and behavioural processes followed by a circumstantial element that indicates an attitude. The idea is to establish a semantic prosody in which Bahia (and all the Northeast States) should not be taken seriously.
Example 49 is an attempt to make the quotas sound ridiculous. The user actualises the Actor in two material process
Economic disputes are a relevant thematic element. In this context, the Northeast play the role of Carrier in relational attributives processes in order to represent it as economically dependent on the South (ex. 50 and 51). Adjectives are a means to evaluate some states negatively —
Some comments are reactions to the prejudice, they commonly are responses to other comments, and they praise the state of Bahia or the Northeast region. Such pride is expressed by identifying relational processes, in which Bahia plays the type while another noun (like
Users also express shame and pride simultaneously, as they describe themselves as not originally from Bahia or the Northeast region however showing some admiration for the quotas system (ex. 55 and 56). Two grammatical patterns express this meaning. First, there is a parataxis relationship in which the first sentence identifies the origin of the speaker, while the second establishes the positive evaluation. The second brings a modalisation adverb at the beginning of the comment followed by the location of origin, usually expressed by a material process (ex. 56), a typical configuration in BP.
This article aimed at studying choices in comments made on Facebook at the time of the announcement that the quota system at the Federal University of Bahia would include immigrants, transsexuals, refugees and transvestites. The theoretical foundations are in Systemic-Functional Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics. The first provided the interpretative background necessary for understanding meanings and patterns, while the second was responsible for the systematic survey of language patterns.
The methodology was based on data scraping and automatic processing. Scraping was performed using the
Lexical association was an important tool, as hierarchical association between clusters defined the main themes in within the comments. The main themes discussed are the interaction of users, the role of the public school and the quota system, as well as prejudice against universities and states of the Brazilian Northeast. It was observed that the interaction between users is centred on offences questioning the unawareness regarding the quota system. The negative evaluation is instantiated in three main discursive patterns. In the first, there is a criticism of any policy that is not based on a socioeconomic criterion, while the second arises from the interpretation of this system as necessarily excluding the heterosexual and white population. Finally, the situation of social vulnerability is not considered a valid criterion. The system positive evaluation lies on the perception that they would be a reparation or form of inclusion to the minorities. Prejudice against UFBA, North-eastern states and their citizens manifests itself through economic issues or evaluations that place such states and institutions as not serious. Manifestation of pride for Bahia, Northeast and the system of quotas is the common reaction to such prejudice. Some grammatical patterns regarding each of these most common meanings were systematised (figures 4 through 7) and their relevance is in helping to understand how the different themes are instantiated.
This research has important social contributions, since shed some light in the way interaction occurs on social media, especially in contexts of political debates. This paper is corroborating some others already carried out in BP (LIMA-LOPES, 2018
I would like to thank CNPq for the funding that made this research possible (process 422111/2018-0).
In this paper, the use of the words
https://www.facebook.com/quebrandootabu/
https://bit.ly/2ZuHCmb
https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolNetvizz
The Brazilian educational system has been undermined for the last 50 years of a policy that has taken away investments and made secondary and primary school teachers underpaid. As an extensive educational crisis emerges in the early 1990s, private schools rise as a solution for the educated Brazilian high and middle classes, but not for the poor. A long-term consequence was that only private school students were able to get the high scores necessary to the entrance in the Brazilian public university system. As a remedial policy, in early 2000 most of the Brazilian universities started to offer quotas for students who have finished their High School (or Secondary Upper School) in any state school. For a more comprehensive discussion on the Brazilian educational crisis, please see Frigotto and Ciavatta (2003
Rachar could be translated literally as to crack, but since its use in this context is somewhat metaphorical, I have chosen to keep the original meaning in Portuguese.