The US intelligence agency IARPA is putting a heavy research focus, not into lie detection or speech recognition, but metaphor.
That’s right, the figure of speech where you describe something as something else. But why would that be useful for national security? What can we learn about human language by studying metaphor?
Linguist Daniel Midgley will illuminate the issue (so to speak) on this week’s Talk the Talk.
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http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xmlShow notes
Some introductory articles:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/why-are-spy-researchers-building-a-metaphor-program/239402/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/05/john-naughton-networker-spooks
Here’s the IARPA call for proposals, if you’re keen (PDF):
http://www.iarpa.gov/Metaphor_Presentations/Metaphor_Proposers_Day_Brief.pdf
Excerpts from “Metaphors We Live By” by Lakoff and Johnson:
http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html
