Language Across Cultures, DoD Minerva Project

Language Across Cultures PI: Leah Windsor Co-PIs: Art Graesser and Carl Cai "A Computational Assessment of Social Disequilibrium and Security Threats" Department of Defense (Minerva Initiative Awarded: $1.2 million Dates: 9/14-8/17 plus additional two option years Website: lac.cohmetrix.com Abstract: Confusion During LearningOur project will continue work from a previous NSF Minerva grant Modeling Discourse and Social Dynamics in Authoritarian Regimes (#0904909) to analyze the speech of international actors to detect motives, identify threats, and find predictive patterns of language and behavior. Our project has three components: identifying language patterns related to armed political crises; identifying bluffs and threats pertinent to both national and international security; and analyzing the relationship between language and contentious behavior like protests, riots, and rebellions. We want to extend our analysis beyond the existing corpora which focus heavily on China and the Middle East/North Africa regions to encompass Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, where there are growing security threats and ample opportunities to collect and analyze linguistic data.