Mass surveillance is only possible with the help of smart computer algorithms. Whenever text data is monitored by machines, methods from computational linguistics come into play. The main goal is to automatically filter and identify content that points to certain attitudes or behavioral dispositions viewed as a threat to security. When monitoring online data, the task is even more complicated.  Since people are not usually required to provide their real identity in cyberspace, the tracing of identities through language features ("writeprint") is another challenge for computational linguistics at the service of the intelligence apparatus. Surveillance through language relies on the idea of the expressive function of language: Whenever we utter something, we do not just say something about the world to someone else, we also reveal something about ourselves.

In my talk I will give a critical account of some of the linguistic methods used to automatically attribute identities such as "extremist", "endangerer", or "potential terrorist" on the basis of text analysis. Starting with an overview of the political, legal, and technical framework of state surveillance measures in Germany, I will discuss core concepts of the surveillance discourse and present examples of how linguistic knowledge can be used to assign identities for the purpose of control. In doing so, I hope to foster a discussion on the logic of surveillance in western democracies and the responsibility of the sciences and humanities.

Don't miss this opportunity to see and hear the the James Leva Quartet performing A Kindly Visitation, a play about fiddler Tommy Jarrell. This event is free and open to the public!  The performing quartet is James Leva, Riley Baugus, Danny Knicely, and Ira Bernstein. The play starts at 7:30 in the Recital Hall of the Singletary Center for the Arts on Tuesday, October 14, 2014.

Please, join the UK Appalachian Center for a SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) discussion of Judicial Systems and Institutions in Appalachia from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, October 20, 2014.  This will be held at the UK Appalachian Center at 624 Maxwelton Court.  Brenda Waugh is an attorney specializing in collaborative law, conflict resolutions, and restorative justice in West Virginia and Washington, D.C.  Judah Schept is Asst. Professor of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University and does research on prison expansion in Appalachia.  This is a free event, and lunch is provided.

Come hear about the logical form of imperatives, and what sets prescriptive language apart from ordinary descriptions and questions!

"Speakers of German enjoy forming compounds and the German language is infamous for long words like 'Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz". Even though compound formation is an easy task for speakers, the linguistic analysis of the semantic relations of the stems of a compound is a complex task. This talk will discuss possibilities of how we can use compound analysis for a deeper understanding of cultural change, discuss data-driven methods, and present empirical evidence from large German newspaper corpora. The talk will present: 1. a quick overview of the different word formation processes in German, 2. different heuristics for the semantic analysis of compounds, 3. analysis of distributional patterns of stems in large corpora, and 4. possibilities of a data-driven identification of the semantic relations between the stems."