What is the mood? Cross-language mood description for works of fiction

Lee, Wan-Chen; Cho, Hyerim

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/123133 Copy

Description

Title

What is the mood? Cross-language mood description for works of fiction

Author(s)

• Lee, Wan-Chen
• Cho, Hyerim

Issue Date

2023-09

Keyword(s)

• Cross-language Information Retrieval
• Emotion
• Fiction
• Indexing
• Metadata
• Mood
• Taxonomies

Abstract

Fiction is a popular resource type for pleasure reading. Many readers pursue escapist moments and emotional experiences through reading fiction. While mood is a critical factor in fiction reading, most information systems fail to support mood description and mood-based retrieval of fiction. To address this gap, previous study (Cho, Huang, & Kohlburn, 2023) collected mood terms from fiction readers, and identified 30 mood categories (e.g., happy, nostalgic) and 3 overlapping families of mood in fiction: atmosphere/setting, emotion, and tone/narrative. The findings were based on English data. Expanding on the previous study, this study explores cross-language mood description for fiction. Through an open-ended online survey, we collected reader-assigned mood terms in Chinese and Korean. With a small sample size (16 Chinese and 13 Korean responses), the purpose is to observe unique or challenging cases rooted in language differences. One type of challenging cases is metaphorical mood terms. These terms describe mood with metaphors and require interpretation. For instance, one reader uses eclosion in Chinese to describe the complex feeling of relief, empowerment, and gaining freedom after transformation. Other challenges, such as the lack of satisfactory match in English, were observed as well. Identifying translation challenges and unique mood terms could set directions for further research, and ultimately improve cross-language mood description and retrieval for fiction.

Series/Report Name or Number

Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference, 2023

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/123133

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2023.1313

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2023 Wan-Chen Lee, Hyerim Cho
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Owning Collections