An Exploration of Attitudes Towards Transgender People on a Q & A website

Journal article

Authors/Editors

Strategic Research Themes

No matching items found.

Publication Details

Author list: Jeerawan Wongburi;Sompatu Vungthong

Publication year: 2019

Volume number: 7

Issue number: 2

Start page: 96

End page: 113

ISSN: 2286-8755

URL: https://so03.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/liberalartsjournal/article/view/232295

Abstract

Online social question and answer (Q & A) websites have become an important venue for individuals to seek information and voice their opinions through questioning and answering on a broad range of topics. This study aims to explore people’s attitudes towards transgender people on a social Q & A website based on the ‘attitude’ system in appraisal theory. 194 sentences which include the term ‘transgender’ or something related from the first 100 written answers to the question “What is your opinion on transgender people?” from the Quora website were collected as data of the study. After that, each sentence was analyzed and categorized into each type of the attitude system. The findings of this study reveal that people tended to have more positive attitudes towards transgender people. For their expression of positive attitudes, the sentences in the category of ‘judgement’ were mostly used to reveal their opinions that transgender people are normal and there is nothing wrong with being a transgender person. Negative attitudes towards transgender people were expressed through the category of ‘appreciation’ to showtheir reaction to transgender people’s negative traits.

Keywords

Question and answer (Q & A) websites, Transgender people