# Toward Automatic Understanding of the Function of Affective Language in Support Groups

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.01910 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.01910/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 6 Oct 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Conversations Gone Alright: Quantifying and Predicting Prosocial Outcomes in Online Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08368/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Understanding expressions of emotions in support forums has considerable value and NLP methods are key to automating this. Many approaches understandably use subjective categories which are more fine-grained than a straightforward polarity-based spectrum. However, the definition of such categories is non-trivial and, in fact, we argue for a need to incorporate communicative elements even beyond subjectivity. To support our position, we report experiments on a sentiment-labelled corpus of posts taken from a medical support forum. We argue that not only is a more fine-grained approach to text analysis important, but simultaneously recognising the social function behind affective expressions enable a more accurate and valuable level of understanding.