From Text to Political Positions 2010
9-10 April 2010, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Plenary speakers
- Ken Benoit (Trinity College, Dublin, Dept of Political Science)
- Jan Kleinnijenhuis (Vrije Universiteit/VU Amsterdam, Dept of
Communication Studies and The Network Institute)
- Veronika Koller (Lancaster University, Dept of Linguistics and
English Language) and Paul Davidson (University of Bradford, Dept of
Peace Studies)
- Janyce Wiebe (University of Pittsburgh, Dept of Computer Science).
The workshop 'From Text to Political Positions´ (T2PP) is intended to
provide a meeting place for individual researchers and research groups
focussing on the development of methods and techniques for the
analysis of political texts. It will allow for dialogue between
scholars working on complementary multidisciplinary projects, and so
may lead to further collaboration. During these two days, plenty of
time will be reserved for social and intellectual exchanges and the
event will close with a round-table discussion.
The meeting will focus on comprehensive and precise methods for
manual and automated analysis of subjectivity and the presentation of
opinions in political texts. Examples of relevant text-types include,
but are not limited to: television news broadcasts, interviews,
newspapers, opinion papers, parliamentary debates, manifestos, party
websites, blogs, public-opinion polls on the internet and voting polls
and election results.
We plan to compile a selection of the papers and submit them to a
peer-reviewed international journal for publication as a special
issue.
Call for Abstracts
We invite 500-1000 word abstracts in English. They should be sent to
T2PP@let.vu.nl
-- Deadline for abstracts: 18 January 2010.
-- Notification of acceptance will be made by February 15th.
-- Participation will be based upon acceptance of refereed abstracts.
-- Only a limited number of papers (12-16) can be accepted to allow
for 20 minutes per paper plus discussion time.
-- Deadline for papers from accepted participants: 10 March 2010.
-- Accepted papers will be posted on the T2PP web site two weeks in
advance as 'working papers' to enhance discussion and debate.
Workshop dates: 9-10 April 2010
Workshop cost: FREE - There will be no registration fee!
Topic suggestions
* Modelling positions of actors in political texts on issues and dimensions
* Sociological and linguistic models for deep-structure analysis
of political texts
* Linguistic evidence of popularisation of language in politics
* Politics in the media: methods of analysis in media discourse on politics
* Securing quality in quantitative research methods
* Analysing political discourse from a regional (e.g., European,
Asian, African, British, USA) or global perspective
* Acquisition and representation of subjectivity and modality
(emotion, deontic and epistemic modality, urgency) as expressed
lexically (e.g. 'for/against', 'can/will/must', 'say/
state/demand',
pos./neg. 'possible/likely') or on a higher discourse level.
* The automatic annotation of subjective, deontic and modal layers
of implications in texts to model complex opinions and positions of
political/social actors
* Applications for political opinion mining and positioning tools
* ... other suggestions are welcome
Venue
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU University Amsterdam)
Metropolitan Building
Buitenveldertselaan 3 - 7
1082 VA Amsterdam
The Netherlands.
Organising Committee
The T2PP team:
Prof. Dr. Piek Vossen
Prof. Dr. Liesbet Hooghe
Dr. André Krouwel
Dr. Alan Cienki
Drs. Annemarie van Elfrinkhof
Drs. Bertie Kaal
Drs. Isa Maks
The research project 'From Text to Political Positions' (T2PP) is
funded by the Center for Advanced Media Research Amsterdam (CAMeRA) at
the VU University Amsterdam. The goal of the project is to combine
analytical methods from the social sciences with linguistic and
discourse analytic methods from the humanities to find 'deeper'
meanings expressed via political texts and to characterise positioning
strategies used in them. The research group is developing a
political/linguistic model to incorporate content analysis with
context analysis as well as lexical-semantic analysis. It is aimed at
uncovering characteristic semantic and stylistic variations in
language use of political actors which express their positions and
also evoke a range of reactions in the media and the electorate.
Contact: T2PP@let.vu.nl
Details and updates on: http://www2.let.vu.nl/oz/cltl/t2pp/index.html