IDENTIFICATION OF TOPICS FOR ONLINE DISCUSSIONS BASED ON LANGUAGE PATTERNS

A topic identification system identifies topics of online discussions by iteratively identifying topic words or keywords of the online discussions and identifying language patterns associated with those keywords. The topic identification system starts out with an initial set of keywords and identifies language patterns that each include a keyword. The topic identification system then uses the identified language patterns to identify additional keywords of the online discussion that match the patterns. The topic identification system then again identifies language patterns using the keywords including the newly identified keywords. The topic identification system may repeat the process of identifying language patterns and keywords until a termination criterion is satisfied.