Semantic Web and the Virtues of Cooperation

As noted in emerging work on country music, there is a reason to think that personal identity is socially constructed. Authors have argued that the narrative implicit in country music’s aesthetic is used to construct the identity of the modern American Anglo Saxon man [@mann08; @shus99; @meis22a; @gros02; @haye10; @holl19; @hugh15; @wats20b]. Critical race theorists also ask similar questions regarding the social construction of the identities of racial minorities. Agency is a central concern on both accounts. Philosophical work on narrative and identity offers a way of understanding social influence on personal identity. In some philosophical and psychological literature, agency is rooted in one’s emotional experiences upon a retelling of their life story [@alts21; @shec90; @vell05; @kors96]. More specifically, a narrative can motivate various feelings, for instance of regret [@gold09], or pride, towards actions that one did or did not do. I consider questions of agency in regards to various relational virtues.

One’s emotional dispositions can effectively portray the endorsement or rejection of one’s past behavior or behaviors and subsequently, an agent’s inter-relational values. For my purposes here, there are three kinds of narratives that contribute to a narrative account of agency. They include autobiographical narratives [@mcad13; @mcad14; @pasu16]. These narratives are internalized reconstructions of events. They include an emotional evaluation of such events and taken as a whole, are central to one’s understanding of who they are. It has been argued that those which are biographical and autobiographical are important for social identities and that social identity is important for moral and relational responsibility [@mcle15; @fivu04; @fivu10]. As a case in point, we can imagine one’s sense of regret or lack thereof for a falling out between best friends, or a sense of self-blame, for the awkward way in which a dinner guest leaves their house. More importantly, we might ask how such regret motivates future behavior [Especially @gold09].

Agency too then is an important concern in questions of personhood in this regard. We can ask what are the implications of one’s personhood when person A’s agency, rather than B’s is cited as an explanation of B’s circumstances regarding their circumstances, relational and otherwise. Of course, if we only understand identity as a progression of psychological states over time, then these differences are not as significant. Therefore such distinctions would not be as important for non-personal conceptions of identity [See @parf87; and @alts21]. But if we think that narrative and agency are important, or important sources for one’s own sense of identity, e.g. autobiographical vs biographical narrative, then emotional dispositions and their social constraints are central to human behavior. As such, narratives may be central to moral and interpersonal or inter-relational responsibility. Importantly, this is because they are central to one’s past emotional dispositions and can effectively endorse pro or anti-social behaviors.

However, the sources of narrative is unclear. In regards to the relationship between narrative and identity, some are said to be biographical (personal) while others autobiographical (social) [@mcle15b]. Therefore, correspondingly, we might think that there is a missed opportunity in the existing philosophical literature on race to remark on the importance of relational agency as inferred by attributed social identities and how individuals navigate these. One area in the social construction of race where there could be more discussion, are the various characterizations of racial minorities regarding interpersonal relationship constitutions as inferred by their social identities. What does the familial structure of the typical racial minority look like according to popular culture for instance? What emotions are central to the breakup of a relationship and what emotions are central to companionship?

I consider extracted sentiment to understand represented relational term objects in popular art [@moha21]. This will enable us to visualize emotionally valenced relational content. By analyzing the sentiment content of music lyrics, I attempt to extract those phrases that artists attach the most sentient to. These include both negatively and positively valenced cultural ascriptions of the social values among members of various populations. I ask what contributions do these make in the construction of social identities. By determining the valence, emotions, and other affectual attributions from music lyrics, I suggest that a more comprehensive project in this area will go further towards determining the portrayed broader cultural attitudes about inter-relational dispositions of minority cultures.

While there is significant criticism regarding insufficient representation in media publishing, there is not similar concern for expressions of pro vs anti-social emotion expression. Some have previously attempted to explain human agency as a central aspect of personal identity by narratives both autobiographical and biographical [@mcle15b; @book22a; @brun90; @alts21; @vell05a]. This project continues that work by asking what values are suggested through an analysis of sentiment in important cultural artifacts. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, I primarily focus on popular music. Here, constructions of social identity necessarily entail relational agency more broadly. I suggest that such a study will go towards revealing the importance of broader cultural ascriptions of the relationships that exist between members of a given culture.