Corpus-Based Analysis of Demonyms in Slovene Twitter

This paper reports on a corpus-based analysis of demonym mentions in the corpus of Slovene tweets. First, we analyze the frequency of mentions for the demonyms for the inhabitants of the European and G8 countries. Then, we focus on the representation of demonyms for residents of Slovenia's neighboring countries: Austria, Italy, Hungary and Croatia. The main topic of the tweets mentioning Croatians, Austrians and Italians is sport, whereas Hungarians occur most often in relation to the Eurovision. Some economic and political issues are also represented, such as the selling of Slovene companies to foreign firms, the refugee crisis and the arbitration procedure between Slovenia and Croatia. A collocation analysis revealed a highly stereotypical treatment of the neighboring nations and hostility of some Slovene Twitter users to inhabitants of Slovenia's neighboring countries.