CONSTRUCTING EMOTION AND STANCE IN SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICAL POSTS: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY

Abstract

The increasing influence of social media has transformed political communication by enabling leaders and institutions to construct emotional narratives and ideological stances through concise and strategically framed posts. Despite the growing importance of digital political discourse, there remains a need to understand how emotions are linguistically constructed, how psycholinguistic features contribute to stance-taking, and how emotional expressions influence audience interpretation within online political environments. This study aims to examine the psycholinguistician mechanisms underlying emotion and stance construction in political social media posts, focusing on how language shapes evaluation, positioning, and audience alignment. Using a qualitative discourse-analytic approach grounded in psycholinguistic theory, stance theory, and appraisal frameworks, selected Facebook posts were analyzed to identify linguistic patterns such as evaluative lexis, modality, pronoun use, directive structures, narrative framing, and quantitative emphasis. The findings reveal that emotional meaning is often constructed implicitly through evaluative language, development-oriented framing, and institutional authority markers rather than explicit emotional vocabulary. Psycholinguistic features such as appraisal strategies and cognitive framing play a significant role in guiding audience interpretation and reinforcing ideological alignment. Furthermore, emotional expressions contribute to the formation of affective publics by encouraging shared emotional responses and enhancing engagement within algorithm-driven platforms. The study concludes that emotion and stance are deeply interconnected processes in digital political discourse, where linguistic choices function simultaneously as cognitive, affective, and persuasive tools shaping political meaning and audience perception.