18-19 August 2014, 5th AISB Workshop on "Figurative language: its patterns and meanings in domain-specific discourse", Birmingham, U.K.

Forms of figurative language such as metaphor and metonymy are key resources for communicating domain-specific information in an accessible way. Modelling such patterns of communication is a key aim of academic disciplines such as linguistics, discourse studies, and psycholinguistics, and understanding such phenomena is an emerging goal within Artificial Intelligence and the related field of Natural Language Processing. A particularly interesting current area of research is work on automatically generating as well as understanding metaphor, which are both emerging as important sites for addressing long-standing problems in linguistics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science.

To facilitate communication about such efforts, we are planning a two-day workshop on modelling the meanings and patterns of health and political conflict, where discourse in these domains typically gives rise to some of the richest and most figurative forms of human discourse. The workshop will take place at the University of Birmingham, and will be jointly organized through the University's Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) as well as the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB).

For more information, see http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~gargetad/