Gender Neutral Language in (Greater) Buenos Aires, (Greater) La Plata, and Córdoba: An Analysis of Social Context Information Using Textual and Temporal Features

Abstract

In this article, I explore Twitter data to analyze Gender Neutral Language (GNL) in (Greater) Buenos Aires, (Greater) La Plata, and Córdoba. The goal is to characterize the social context behind GNL. Social context analysis of social media data is challenging given that this data type does not contain the social characteristics of its users and the circumstances under which the tweets were written. In order to fill this gap, I will derive the social context information from textual and temporal features by analyzing the names of locations, companies, and people used in the text and relating these entities to the message of the tweet. The analysis of temporal features will give us insights into the correlation between language use and social events. Our results show that the general characterization of the social context behind GNL is associated with socio-economically rich areas in city centers. Users of GNL in the investigated areas address certain groups of people with words that express familiarity and close social relationships, such as those meaning “friends” and “neighbors” and that give them information about a political, cultural, or social event or concerning commercial products/services. The temporal analysis by month supports this characterization by showing that certain political and social events induce a higher frequency of GNL. This paper contributes to previous research on GNL in Argentina by testing existing hypotheses quantitatively. The new discovery presented here is that political activism is not the only language context in which GNL is used in social media and that GNL is not exclusively used in big cities of Argentina but also in smaller cities.