Beneath the Tip of the Iceberg: Current Challenges and New Directions in Sentiment Analysis Research

Sentiment analysis as a field has come a long way since it was first introduced as a task nearly 20 years ago. It has widespread commercial applications in various domains like marketing, risk management, market research, and politics, to name a few. Given its saturation in specific subtasks — such as sentiment polarity classification — and datasets, there is an underlying perception that this field has reached its maturity. In this article, we discuss this perception by pointing out the shortcomings and under-explored, yet key aspects of this field necessary to attain true sentiment understanding. We analyze the significant leaps responsible for its current relevance. Further, we attempt to chart a possible course for this field that covers many overlooked and unanswered questions.