Implicit and Explicit Ways of Expressing Personal Opinion on Twitter: The Tea Party Movement in the USA

This article examines the linguistic tools adopted by Twitter users to express their personal opinion on the Tea Party movement in the USA. The purpose of the current research is to define the link between the content of the message and the way it is expressed either implicitly or explicitly. The focus is on the linguistic tools aimed at fulfilling different functions. The investigation is based on the content analysis of tweets collected for three months and processed by program Atlas.ti. The program allows the coding of messages, defining the frequency of codes and their correlations. We conclude that people tend to express their opinion explicitly if they are positive about the protest or their aim is to proselytize. Simultaneously, Twitter users take advantage of metaphors, quotations and questions to express their opinion implicitly if they are negative or critical about the movement. The findings of this research illustrate how Twitter users communicate with each other and discuss political issues, and in what way they influence each other’s opinion using various linguistic tools while being restricted to only 140 characters