Bengali Emotion Classification from Social Media Text Using Deep Learning and Transformer‑Based Models with Explainability
Journal of Engineering Research and Sciences, Volume 05, Issue 06, Page # 39-55, 2026; DOI: 10.55708/js0506004
Keywords: BanglaBERT, Bengali emotion classification, BiLSTM, CBAM attention, LIME, Natural language processing, Transformer
(This article belongs to the Special Issue on SP8 (Special Issue on Digital and Engineering Transformations in Science and Technology (SI-DETST-26)) and the Section Artificial Intelligence – Computer Science (AIC))
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Alam, M. , Aonty, S. S. , Mahmud, S. N. , Swachha, N. R. and Wazih, A. T. (2026). Bengali Emotion Classification from Social Media Text Using Deep Learning and Transformer‑Based Models with Explainability. Journal of Engineering Research and Sciences, 05(06), 39–55. https://doi.org/10.55708/js0506004
Mujtahid Alam, Shuhena Salam Aonty, Sha Newaz Mahmud, Nahid Riaz Swachha and Ahmed Talal Wazih. "Bengali Emotion Classification from Social Media Text Using Deep Learning and Transformer‑Based Models with Explainability." Journal of Engineering Research and Sciences 05, no. 06 (June 2026): 39–55. https://doi.org/10.55708/js0506004
M. Alam, S.S. Aonty, S.N. Mahmud, N.R. Swachha and A.T. Wazih, "Bengali Emotion Classification from Social Media Text Using Deep Learning and Transformer‑Based Models with Explainability," Journal of Engineering Research and Sciences, vol. 05, no. 06, pp. 39–55, Jun. 2026, doi: 10.55708/js0506004.
Bengali emotion classification remains challenging due to limited annotated resources, informal social media language, and the lack of comprehensive evaluations of modern transformer architectures. This study presents a unified framework for six‑class Bengali emotion classification using a corpus of 5,401 manually annotated social media comments. We systematically compare recurrent neural networks, transformer‑based models, and hybrid architectures, and propose a soft‑voting ensemble that integrates complementary contextual representations. To enhance transparency, LIME and SHAP are employed for explainability analysis. Experimental results show that the proposed ensemble achieves 91.31% accuracy and a weighted F1‑score of 0.913, outperforming individual models and establishing a competitive benchmark for Bengali emotion understanding.
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