Sentiment analysis of Arabic language influence on Spanish vocabulary: An El Paí s newspaper and Twitter case study

摘要

Although digital online media and social networks have become a valuable resource for mining sentiments, there is no previous research investigating the layman’s sentiment towards Spanish words of Arabic etymology related to Islam. This study fills this gap through the analysis of a digital corpus of the Spanish leading daily newspaper El País, including 570,312 words along with a random sample of 4,586 out of 45,860 tweets collected using a specialized software. An expert-predefined Spanish lexicon of around 6,800 seed adjectives was used to conduct the analysis. Results indicate a generally positive sentiment towards several Spanish words of Arabic etymology related to Islam. By implementing both a qualitative and quantitative methodology to analyze sentiments towards Spanish words of Arabic etymology, this case research adds breadth and depth to the debate over Arabic language influence on Spanish vocabulary.