Why Are Spy Researchers Building a ‘Metaphor Program’?
May 26th, 2011
Via: The Atlantic:
A small research arm of the U.S. government’s intelligence establishment wants to understand how speakers of Farsi, Russian, English, and Spanish see the world by building software that automatically evaluates their use of metaphors.
That’s right, metaphors, like Shakespeare’s famous line, “All the world’s a stage,” or more subtly, “The darkness pressed in on all sides.” Every speaker in every language in the world uses them effortlessly, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity wants know how what we say reflects our worldviews. They call it The Metaphor Program, and it is a unique effort within the government to probe how a people’s language reveals their mindset.
“The Metaphor Program will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture,” declared an open solicitation for researchers released last week. A spokesperson for IARPA declined to comment at the time.
didnt read thru the entire article, but the obvious psyops applications for something like this are nightmare fuel.
can anyone say: culturally targeted auto-generating hypno-“therapy”
something about this feels more like public disclosure of old news to me, altho what reasons darpa would have for that is beyond me, to many typos in that article feels rushed also…
@ pessimistic optimist
Are you saying they could co-opt current memes/sayings/expressions etc. to maximise the power of propaganda through the use of terms designed to lessen potential resistance and maximise likely uptake in the collective or, if tailored to a finer grid, group or individual psyche?
…In other words, utilise language use to group people into categories for the purpose of more effective ‘marketing’ just like the advertising industry does?
being one myself, I find this interesting:
Employment fields most commonly chosen by linguists: (as of 2006, it being the last year for which I have data)
1) Advertising
2) Military
3) Government Services (unspecified)
4) researcher
Too bad “trader” isn’t there. Or “crank.”
-cybele
Hrmph. I’ve been running into stories related to the connection between language and thought lately. One bit I stumbled upon accidentally was a little gem from somewhere in Orwell’s writings. Took me a couple reads before I could make sense of it, but once I realized what I was reading, it took a bite out of my head.
Politics and the English Language:
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html