 VARIATION AND CONTACT IN LANGUAGING:
9:00 Presentation of the Satellite 9:10 Modeling Language Contact: The Unbearable Lightness of Complexity Lucía Loureiro (Universitat de les Illes Balears) Complex systems are all around us. Traffic jams, bird flocks, and the human mind are just three widely cited examples. In sociological research, consensus problems have also been approached from this perspective (Ball 2004) and in this talk we will concentrate on one of them, namely language choice in a multilingual society. Stemming from the well-known works by Abrams and Strogatz (2003) and Minett and Wang (2008) we propose an agent-based model of language competition in which only two parameters are included: language prestige and speakers' volatility. By changing their values we describe different sociolinguistic situations, such as language endangerment, language coexistence, and the emergence of new linguistic varieties. In addition, different topological distributions of agents are considered, within the approach of complex networks, such as regular lattice, small-world networks, and random networks (cf. Castelló et al. 2006, 2007, 2008). References:
9:55 Complex Theoretical and Computational Models in Contact Sociolinguistics: How can we cooperate? Albert Bastardas-Boada (Universitat de Barcelona) Concurrently
with the conceptual and “technical” development of so-called “complex systems”,
there has also been a development of the “perspective of complexity” or of
“complex thought”, which takes a more philosophical and epistemological line
led, above all, by the French thinker Edgar Morin. This notion of “general
complexity”, as Morin himself put it, lays the foundations for a new vision of
scientific thought, which goes beyond the prevailing mechanistic, reductionist
and analytical view. One of the contemporary tasks yet to be resolved,
therefore, is how to find a way to integrate and exploit the mutual advantages
of these two approaches to reality and to complex phenomena. In the
sociolinguistics of contact, the complexity vision enables us to devise holistic
and ecological theoretical frameworks that can give an account of the
interdependencies and inter-influences of the various domains and factors
involved in the dynamics of such situations. The contributions of complex
systems should serve to galvanise methodological renewal, leading us to a
deeper understanding of the constraints and properties of the phenomena of
linguistic and cultural contact. 10:20 The Impact of Social Reputation in Language Evolution: a Simple Simulation Approach Gemma Bel-Enguix (Université d’Aix-Marseille)
This work aims to be a preliminary and small contribution to
the study of coevolution of language and social structures from the
perspective of complex systems and evolutionary biology, by
means of simulation and mathematical analysis of results. The paper
focuses on the role of social factors, especially reputation, in the
arising and diffusion of innovation in language acquisition and
interaction. 10:45 Linguistic Variation: Approach from the Perspective of Complex Adaptive Systems Àngels Massip-Bonet (Universitat de Barcelona) The
purpose of this communication is to highlight the interest of CAS
perspective for research in linguistic variation, and more specifically
in historical and geographical variation. We emphasize what CAS
can provide to HCL (Historical Cognitive Linguistics). We show examples
of the new approach from historical Catalan language and we
contrast interpretation differences between language view as an
organism or as species and language view as a CAS. We talk about language evolution, understood as the cognitive processes that give rise to cultural and linguistic change. CAS approach considers language as an emergent phenomenon, “the result of activity, the collective, cumulative behaviour of language agents over time” (Frank and Gontier 2013:39). References:
11:10 Coffee break 11:35 A Comparative Study of the Effect of Consciousness-Raising and Input Processing on Some Specified Grammatical Form Afrooz Arianfar and Parviz Maftoon (Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran)The
present study was inspired by the effectiveness of different techniques
of focus on form instruction which have been concerned after the shift
of focus on meaning- oriented teaching towards focus on form
instruction. The study was conducted to compare the effect of two
explicit focus on form techniques, input processing and
consciousness-raising, in helping Iranian EFL learners to acquire some
specified grammar structures (conditional sentences-type two, wish, and
relative clauses). To fulfill the purpose of the study, sixty
intermediate learners at Jahad Tehran University were chosen by means of
administering an achievement test (PET). These learners were
also pretested through a structured test to check their current accuracy
level of six target structures. The pretest conducted in the study
revealed that there was no significant difference between the two
groups of EFL participants. After the pretest, each group received its
own treatment. The first group received input processing (IP) and
the second group was exposed to consciousness-raising (CR) tasks. After
ten sessions of treatment, the two groups were posttested through the
same structured test. The analysis of the data was done through
repeated measure and t-test. Finally, it was concluded that IP group
outperformed CR group in their performance to use the target
structures on the posttest. The findings of the study also revealed that
IP group had better gains than CR group in interpretation tasks. As the
production performance, both groups were equal in their
performance to produce sentences containing target structures on the
posttest. Finally, it could be concluded that following
activities after introducing grammar structures explicitly had an
important role in learning the target grammar structures. As in the
current study, IP (referential and affective) activities
were more helpful in learning the target structures.
12:00 Using Language, Using a Language and Using Languages. Common Knowledge in Conversation of Bilinguals Roland Terborg and Raquel Acosta (Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México) Every
person feels a certain pressure to communicate with other persons.
Specially in the case of bilingual speakers this includes pressures as
to how s/he communicates with other persons. To be successful s/he has
to be creative in her/his communicative actions. In order to explain the
creative and complex process of communication among individuals whose
performance is the result of an intricate combination of pressures
experienced by all participants, we propose an approach in which
bilingual communication is seen as a super-network composed of smaller
networks of directly and indirectly shared knowledge among speakers. We
assume the successful communicative practices of such individuals to be
based on a “common routine” which implies the combination of at least
two individual competences. Thus communicative actions are the product
of pressures that emerge in the context of personal and social
histories. Our purpose is to explain multilingual and bilingual
communication as the combination of direct shared knowledge (DSK) and
indirect shared knowledge (ISK) within a social network. In many cases
this is quite different than the concept of 'a language' in its
normative sense. What is seen different in our approach is the opposition of action to language. Action as a process is the outcome of individual and social pressures. These pressures are a combination of interests directed by needs, ideologies, values, believes and emotions on the one hand and on the other by the state of the world. This is the context that will be modified. The state of the world together with the interests is modifying the pressures which will lead to the action. So by pressures the context will be modified. In this way communication is seen as a complex process in an ecological system. Sometimes language is still seen as a static system and sometimes language is seen as a dynamic system. The point of a static view of language may be convenient in some cases. But often the concept of “a language” does not really help us to understand how people are communicating in a creative and successful way. We would like to show how bilingual speakers are able to use their shared knowledge in a successful way in a small network. These speakers are using knowledge that is only shared among known people while “a language” is knowledge also shared by unknown people in a super-network.
12:25 Generic Framework for Simulation of Cognitive Systems: a Case Study of Color Category Boundaries Dariusz Plewczynski*1, Franciszek Rakowski*1, Peter Lewiński6, Michał Łukasik3, Konrad Kurdej4, Filip Leonarski1, Natalia Bielczyk5, Joanna Rączaszek- Leonardi3 Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and
Computational Modelling1, Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and
Mechanics4, University of Warsaw; Amsterdam School of Communication
Research, University of Amsterdam6, Radboud University Nijmegen
Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands5; Institute of Psychology2,
and Institute of Computer Science3, Polish Academy of Sciences;
*contributed equally. The
generic model of an cognitive system is presented here, where a symbol
couples dynamic behavior of two cognitive systems, therefore
functionally constraining its function. In most agent-based
models of communication, symbols are treated in the traditional manner –
as entities that can be mapped to external objects. These
models assume that semantics can be unequivocally ascribed to a
symbol. Steels and Belpaeme (2005) analyzed the cultural emergence of
colour categories using their original modeling framework.
Agent-based model of cultural emergence of colour categories shows that
boundaries might be seen as a product of agent’s
communication in a given environment. We propose here the generic
agent-based modeling framework of cultural emergence of colour
categories shows that boundaries might be seen as a product of
agent’s communication in a given environment. We therefore underscore
external constraints on cognition: the structure of the
environment, in which a system evolves and learns and the
learning capacities of individual agents. We discuss the methodological
issues related to real data characterization
(World Colour Survey), as well as to the process of modeling the
emergence of perceptual categories in human subjects.
12:50 Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Race, and the (Style-)Shifting Politics of "Sounding Presidential" H. Samy Alim (Stanford University) Barack Obama is widely considered one of the most powerful and
charismatic speakers of our age. Without missing a beat, he often moves
between Washington insider talk and culturally "Black" ways of speaking.
But what does it mean to speak as a racialized subject in contemporary
America? What does it mean to "sound presidential" in the New America?
And what are the cultural, political, and educational implications of
these shifting politics of language and race? Importantly, how can an
analysis of styleshifting help us begin to answer these questions?
13:15 Harnessing the Complexity of Social Phenomena Carlos Gershenson García (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) The complexity of a system scales with its number of elements, number of interactions among them, complexities of elements, and complexities of interactions. Social systems have been increasing their complexity, as all of the previous factors have also increased. A generalization of Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety tells us that a controller requires at least as much complexity as that of the controller. Social organizations fulfill the purpose of managing (controlling) societies. However, if the organization is such that it depends on one or few people, they will be able to coordinate successfully a society with low complexity. It is because of this that social systems have escaped centralized management. Technology is offering an alternative approach, where the management of societies can be distributed among thousands or millions of individuals, opening the possibility to the efficient management of social systems. 14:00 Lunch    |
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