Languages and Social Interaction

Tackling globalization is a great challenge – it is both extremely beneficial and essentially problematic.

This comprehensive, multidisciplinary study confronts this ambivalence through the use of computer simulation. It discusses the findings of social interaction and social simulation through the use of understandable global examples. Readers can use this book as a tool to outline significant aspects of intercultural simulation and highlight the issues that need to be considered in the reader’s analysis.

The author leads the reader via sequential narration from a colloquial description of intercultural situations to final simulation prototypes; each step is accompanied by descriptive comments and program code. Social Interaction, Globalization and Computer-aided Analysis shows the reader how to acquire intercultural data from seemingly inconceivable information sources.

Researchers and software developers engaged in interdisciplinary research projects in the field of Human-Computer Interaction will find this book to be a useful companion in their work.

The concept of migration can be broadly defined as the movement of people from one place to another. Those involved in this kind of movement are generally referred to as migrants. This entry traces different ways in which LSI scholars engage with the topic of “migration discourse,” or the study of the specific and distinct communicative practices that accompany the phenomenon of migration. The different sections identify the main foci and contexts of this kind of research, highlighting the interdependence of the specific everyday contexts in which migrants develop their identities, as well as the more macro, institutional dimensions where the concept of “migrant” is framed in particular ways and for different kinds of purposes.

Reviewing the "language instinct" debate, the paper identifies generativist views with the baby's proverbial bathwater. As Sampson suggests, empirical evidence can lend no support to the claim that grammatical analysis illuminates the study of development, evolution, or the brain. Language instinct theory is coherent only if we adopt Pinker's (dubious) hypothesis that syntax possesses 'inner' reality. However, it is argued that it is equally unsatisfactory to regard grammar as purely 'cultural'. In order to avoid these kinds of cichotomy, it is suggested that we reject the idea that language consists in form-based units and, in its stead, treat it as an aspect of social life that derives from the human capacity to contextualize experience.